what are the best online backups services for mac

What Are The Best Online Backups Services For Free Via A
What Are The Best Online Backups Services Install Software From

That said, Mozys file restoration options arent quite as good as Backblazes.

If you dont back up your Macs files, then its a matter of whennot ifyoull lose data thats precious to you.

But a single bad power surge, or a true disaster like fire or vicious weather, could render your Time Machine backups worthless.

A slew of Web services offer affordable online backup for your Mac.

What Are The Best Online Backups Services Install Software From

These services are often simple to use as well: you install software from the service on your computer, and it backs up your files over the Internet.

By keeping current copies of your treasured data far away from your home, you can feel far more confident that your files are safe.

I looked at six online backup providers: Backblaze, Mozy, Carbonite, JungleDisk, Dropbox, and CrashPlan.

They all offer the same core approach, but vary significantly in precisely what they offer, what they charge, and how they work.

Note that when you first start backing up your files with an online service, it can take some time to upload all your dataeven days.

If your Internet service provider caps your bandwidth, you may need to consider throttling your initial backup (by limiting how much data the backup service can transfer per day, or by limiting the number of files it backs up initially and ramping up over time), or instead choosing a service like CrashPlan that lets you send in a hard drive for your initial backup (with an additional cost).

The service costs 5 per month (or 50 for a year), which affords you unlimited backups for the files on a single computer, and any directly attached USB and Firewire hard drives.

Extra discounts are available if you prepay even more; the price gets as low as 3.96 per month if you pay for two years at a time.).

Like several services covered here, Backblaze places limits on what types of files it will back up.

It specifically doesnt back up the operating system, installed software, temporary files, or any files larger than 9 GB.

Fortunately, seemingly huge files like your iPhoto, Aperture, or Lightroom libraries are generally smaller than they appear, since theyre really bundles of many fileswhich Backblaze can handle.

Backblazes software runs as a well-designed pane in System Preferences on your Mac.

The options are simple: You can initiate a backup, check out restore options, or configure settings.

The settings let you throttle how fast Backblaze backs you up (and thus how much of your bandwidth it consumes), exclude specific files, and browse reports and logs regarding just what the software is doing.

On the whole, its very simple to navigate and configure the preference panel.

Backblaze backs up your files continuously (though you can switch to once daily or manually triggered instead), and keeps up to four weeks of file revisions.

What Are The Best Online Backups Services For Free Via A

When you need to restore files, you can do so for free via a Web interface, or order your files on a DVD (for 99) or a USB drive (for 189).

Mozy costs 4.95 per month per computer, or as little as 4.33 per month if you prepay for two years at a time.

Also like Backblaze, the service keeps up to 30 days worth of file revisions, backs up your files continuously, and ignores certain file types like your applications.

Mozyagain, like Backblazewisely uses what it calls block level backups, meaning that the service attempts to back up only new or changed portions of files, to save bandwidth and time.

And, like Backblaze, it backs up any drives connected via USB or Firewire.

What Are The Best Online Backups Services For Mac