The best cloud backup services in 2021

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Feb 5, 2021
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One needs a careful warning for iDrive. As a customer, I can say that their customer service will infuriate you. Here's the scenario:

Had less than 5 TB to image for the iDrive Express service (i.e. included in pricing package). If you're a non-techie, you won't know that there is less than 5TB available on the 5TB Express Drive. Or... you just forget. Or you're "close", and figure you'll try it out. So you order the 5TB drive. Not big enough. Send it back.

Upgrade to 10 TB because they won't send you a 10 TB Express Drive unless you sign up for the 10 TB service. Order 10 TB Express Drive. Won't send it to you free because you've already used your "one free per year". Send you a note to ask why you sent back an empty Express Drive and if you really meant to do that. Reference trouble ticket notes. No response.

After one year. Request 10 TB drive to backup what is now 5.88 TB. Should be okay, right? Nope. Fails. 9.1 TB available isn't enough to do encrypted imaging on 5.88 TB because the encryption needs space to generate temporary files that are then deleted from your Express Drive. Total space needed? 11.3 TB. Told by support to send in 10 TB drive and order 20 TB Express Drive referencing technical support notes on ticket. Request for 20 TB drive denied. Why? "You have to upgrade to 20 TB storage to get a 20 TB drive."

What...the...heck. So you want me to pay for 20 TB of storage to store 5.88 TB because y'all can't get your crap in a group and read trouble tickets and make a sane judgement? Company appears to be run out of a call center in India. No particular help from support or sales team. No one at iDrive who has a brain and the ability to actually just put a hard drive in a box to make a customer happy.

BEWARE! iDrive support is horrible. Not sure what it would be like if I ever need to get a backup. At which point, I'm probably already going to be irritated, so probably not the best time to haver someone holding your data hostage. Caveat emptor, here, y'all. Each function is divided up into a "department" and "departments" don't/can't/won't talk to each other. Service promises much. Can't deliver on simplest functions of that.
 
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Feb 22, 2021
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I agree about I-Drive.
I also find BackBlaze problematic. I would say, it is not ready for prime time. The calling card seems to be the ease of use?, and lack of set-up required.? It's the little things, 1) The first time you want to recover a files your generated file list appears on a part of the screen that is not visible. You are looking at a black page- ESP helps to figure out what is going on. 2) no set up? that's great until they tell you - oh, they don't have any of your emails. .pst files aren't part of their saved files. They expect you to know this, because you are expected to have worked your way through their detailed set-up instructions, which are just as complicated as everyone elses. 3) Cuntomer service is only occationally available. And now it is email only. They used to have phone techs, some of whom were actually rude, With the nice ones, each one would tell you something different. Now with the e-mail, on a weekend, you have to monitor your email until they respond. That means you have found an alternative solution and the e-mail is irrelevant when it arrives. The answer chat bot is useless, it is easier to search the site yourself- you get the same or better answers... and then there was the time my hard drive blew up and I wanted to save it. I even payed extra to save it, but someone at BackBlaze just changed the name of the new computer, to the old computer name, and the additional saved hard drive disappeared. Luckily I was able to save oldhard drive- or I would have complained to who? Now I'm trying to get the account closed. Wish me luck.
I miss Mozy!
 
Mar 8, 2021
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Beware of iDrive - they are the most untrustworthy of all the backup providers our there. While it sounds like an amazing deal to use their iDrive or iBackup products, because they are so cheap, this is a classic bait and switch policy. I signed for 500 Gb of backup space - and accidentally use 750Gb of backups for less than 24 hours. They kept on allowing the backup to run, and instantly debited my credit card with a $450 charge, because they charge you $3 for 500Gb, then $2 per Gb over !!!! This was for going over the limit, instead of just blocking the backup. They make their money by having the most unbelievably crooked business model. I would avoid them like the plague. Rather pay a bit extra - you go over your limit with them and you'll get charged thousands of dollars WITHOUT ANY NOTICE!!! They are outright crooks.
 
Apr 9, 2021
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Well Tom, you completely missed the boat here. iDrive.com has been horrible. The affordable annual fee has led to substantial fraudulent and unauthorized usage charges from the iDrive company. The idrive app does not display folder sizes so one can not tell where backup capacity is being used. Furthermore, there is nowhere in my account to delete the credit card. Finally, their customer disservice department was completely unhelpful and refused to remove the unauthorized charges even stating that there will be more charges if I do not manually delete backed-up data each month. Just another scam. I used Tom's Guide to pick IDrive and now I regret both choices.
 
May 29, 2021
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Used the free version for a few months with no problems and then bought the 5TB plan and the problems started.
I began with the free version, and that seemed to work OK. Switched to the 1 year 5TB discount plan about a year ago. Here is a list of problems:
  1. Support never responds to website requests for support.
  2. Error messages are nebulous. For example:
a. "Failed to continue the Backup operation. Reason: There are no files to backup]"
If there are no files to back up, why is that a failure?
b. Some files could not be backed up because of an unexpected error". However, the unexpected error is never explained. How is the user to know which files encountered unexpected errors?
  1. I would think that when I have to reboot during a backup, instead of getting an error that the backup failed, there would be a continuation from where the backup left off, but I have never seen anything like that. Instead, the backup starts again from the beginning.
  2. Sometimes when I reboot or do an update, instead of my mapped drives being shown in the bottom pane, iDrive changes them to the upper pane without notifying me. I have to uncheck those drives in the upper pane and then close the change box and only then will the mapped drives appear in the bottom pane.
  3. In the logs under 'Operation', the mapped drives are not specified. Why not call the backups operations of the mapped drives, "Mapped Drives"?
  4. Backups are very slow. I have a 1GB down/500MB upload connection, which I have tested with many broadband speed tests, but backing up, for example, 180GB on my mapped drives, can take 2-3 days. I have the throttles set to between 85-100%.
My OS is Windows 10 on an ASUS VIVOBook S15 with 20GB RAM

I have reported all of these, but never got an answer except once...telling me to go to the support page where I posted all the above but never got a response. 'iDrive support' is an oxymoron in my experience.

Have cancelled renewal and will look for alternatives.
 
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