Then you pick which files you want to back up. To get started, click Add backup, and Duplicati will take you through the process of setting up an account at a cloud storage provider and entering your login credentials. You can set backups to run however you’d like, from yearly to hourly, and you can tell Duplicati to back up or ignore any folder or file you want. ![]() It’s a free, open source backup tool that connects to just about every cloud-based backup service around.ĭuplicati uses a web-based interface (running locally on your computer) and offers very fine-grained control over your backups. This is why I recommend Duplicati for more advanced users. Another option I tested is Acronis True Image, which is not as cheap and is Windows-only but does a great job of automating your backups. The iDrive software isn’t quite as simple as Backblaze, but it offers additional features-like keeping deleted files indefinitely-that more advanced users might like. Other options include iDrive, which offers 5 terabytes of storage at $59 for the first year, $70 per year after that. The company retains each version of your file for 30 days, though you can increase that if you pay a little more. Backblaze works on both Windows and macOS, and the default settings will do a good job of backing up your data. If you don’t want to pay the $70 upfront, you can pay $7 a month. For $70 a year you can get unlimited storage for one machine. This is what we suggest for newcomers.Īfter testing a dozen backup services like this, I found Backblaze offers the best all-in-one backup-a good combination of features, price, and reliability. Some are all-in-one: You sign up, download the service’s app, and you’re done. You copy the file to the backup and then it’s never touched again.įortunately, there are plenty of cloud backup solutions available. That means if a file becomes corrupted, the corruption is then sent to Dropbox and cascades through all your backups. When you change a file on your computer, those changes are then synced to Dropbox. Those are all great ways to share and sync documents, but they aren’t good for backups. What you don’t want is something like Dropbox, Google Drive, or. While File History works quite well in my testing, and can take the place of something like Time Machine if you go through and set it up for every folder you need to back up, Windows still doesn’t really have a utility like Time Machine. A WIRED reader tipped me off to the File History features in Windows, which performs automatic incremental backups on any folder you designate. Windows 11 offers Windows backup, which will back up most of your personal data to your Microsoft account, but it isn’t intended to fully restore your system, should a hard drive fail. Time Machine is smart too it will only back up files that have changed, so it won’t eat up all your disk space. Apple has good instructions on how to set up Time Machine so it will make daily backups to your external hard drive. It’s a wonderfully simple piece of software and possibly the best reason to buy a Mac. These days there is software that can automate all of your backup tasks. ![]() ![]() If you have to make a backup, you probably won’t. A good rule of thumb is to get a backup drive that’s two, or even three, times the size of the drive in your computer.Ī good backup system runs without you needing to do a thing. But even so, you need a larger drive for backups than whatever is on your PC. Incremental backups-which is how all good backup software works-save disk space by backing up only the files that have changed since the last backup. Get the largest backup drive you can afford. These slower drives are cheaper, and since the backup software runs in the background, you probably won’t notice the slower speed. One nice thing about buying a drive for backing up your data is that you don’t need to worry about drive speed. If you don’t mind a larger form factor, there’s a Western Digital 6-terabyte “desktop” version that’s not much more ( $140 at Amazon). I like this 5-terabyte model ( $108 at Amazon, $108 at Best Buy), which will back up this very article later tonight (it’s backed up to the cloud as I type, more on that in a minute). Several of us here on the Gear team have had good luck with Western Digital hard drives. Even within brand names, though, some drives are better than others.
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