What is Cloud Backup?

Cloud technology is the development trend, chasing cloud computing is also a trend!

With the continuous development of the "cloud" concept, cloud is more and more appearing in people's daily life and work, one of which is cloud storage. Users can anytime and anywhere back up their personal data to the network by using cloud storage such as Google Drive (many users misunderstand that this service is google cloud backup, but it is not), OneDrive, Dropbox, etc. This is Cloud Backup.

Is it safe to backup to the cloud?

Compared to traditional disk backup, cloud backup makes data more secure. The data transmission process is encrypted, which makes people more reassured; it is not limited by space and equipment, and there's no need to use a cable or back up to the memory card. It can avoid the risk of data loss.

At the same time, it also supports multi-platform management. Your storage space will be effectively integrated through backup and transfer, it can not only increase storage space utilization but also reduce your costs.

And as mentioned in the most famous data backup method - the 3-2-1 backup strategy, you need to store your data offsite to prevent you from losing all your data and backup versions in situations such as natural disasters, and the cloud is the most direct offsite storage destination.

Advantages of Cloud Backup Services

So why do you need to use a cloud backup service? This is inseparable from its several advantages.

Improve scalability and reduce costs

Using hard disk backup not only needs to pay maintenance costs, when you need to increase storage space, but you must also buy hardware, and order more equipment as the amount of data increases and storage requirements increase. Cloud Backup services can subscribe to different plans at a lower price to get more space.

Avoid forgotten backups

Cloud backup services can realize backup automation, avoid human error, and no manual backup is needed, so your enterprise data backup is always complete, reliable, and up-to-date.

Access anytime, anywhere

If you store the data in the cloud, as long as you can access the Internet through a computer or phone application, you can access the data anytime, anywhere. Some services even support access to your files from any device, operating system, or platform, so you can easily work and collaborate on projects.

For small businesses and personal use, they would prefer a cloud backup service professional that doesn't cost much. Here I will introduce the 5 best cloud backup services for you.

Which One Is the Best Cloud Backup Service for You?

Nowadays, you can see many cloud online backup services on the market. Undoubtedly, the most popular PC cloud backup services are Crashplan, BackBlaze, Carbonite, CBackup, and IDrive. But are they really suit you? Let's simply sort it out. (The following description order is independent of ranking.)

Cloud Backup Pricing Comparison

You might need the cheapest cloud backup on the market, here we will show you a chart about the cloud backup service pricing and cost, and let you can find the cost-effective cloud backup service.

According to the above cloud backup solutions and pricing plans, you might find that CBackup could be the cheapest cloud backup service, which allows you to use it on unlimited computers. IDrive and BackBalze could be the possible choice if you prefer. Carbonite is the expensive cloud backup that applies to enterprise from the price aspect.

CrashPlan - Enterprise Cloud Backup Service

CrashPlan is one of the cloud backup services for small businesses and enterprises. This service provider provides unlimited storage and security layers to protect user data. The tool provides real-time backup and recovery of data; supports Mac, Windows and Linux; supports Cross-platform integration with iOS, Android, and Kindle devices, etc.

It has so many advantages, but there’s a problem. It provides customized services only for small businesses and enterprises. That's not a good choice for home users. $10 per month per computer, you can try the one-month free trial first.

BackBlaze - Personal Cloud Backup Solution

BackBlaze is also one of the most reliable online backup services that store users' data in the cloud. Customized services are available for personal and business cloud backup. Users can upload entire drive data or manually select the data to save; access their web-based space from anywhere, or just use their iOS and Android apps. $50 per computer per year (or $5 per month), then you can get unlimited storage space while using BackBlaze cloud backup. Server cloud backup is also supported.

Carbonite - Personal Cloud Backup Service

Carbonite Cloud Backup tool can upload files to the cloud automatically and is considered one of the best cloud backup solutions. It customizes different plans for families and businesses. Simply install the Carbonite desktop application on your system and upload data to the cloud anytime, anywhere.

It has a 15-day free trial for users to experience its features and supports Server cloud backup. After that, users can get an advanced plan of $59.99 a year and get unlimited space in the cloud.

CBackup - Free Cloud Backup Solution for Personal & Small Business

CBackup is a professional and reliable cloud backup service that focuses on personal online backup and small business cloud backup, which provides both PC Cloud backup and cloud to cloud backup services. For PC to cloud backup, it provides its own stable and remote cloud server called CBackup Cloud, each account has 5GB of free storage for this space. Meanwhile, CBackup also allows you to back up and sync files to mainstream cloud storage including Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive, etc. 

As for cloud to cloud backup, it allows you to add multiple cloud accounts on its interface and create a backup or sync task to move files between any of two accounts freely and easily. Also, it offers many useful backup settings like scheduled backup and file filter for both PC cloud backup and cloud to cloud backup. What's more, it is cost-effective, all of the features are free and the storage plans of CBackup Cloud are also reasonable.

IDrive - Cloud Backup Service for Enterprise

IDrive offers a versatile cloud backup service at a good price. In terms of function, the service offers online backup, cloud storage, sync, and share solutions. Its key functions contain also snapshots, versioning, and true archiving which doesn't delete data without your permission. You can perform Server cloud backup as well.

IDrive Basic offers 5 GB of free storage permanently, IDrive's Personal tier costs $69.50 per year for 2TB of storage for an unlimited number of computers. If you want more space, you can choose the 5TB plan ($99.50 per year) or IDrive Business. IDrive is full-featured and supports different devices, but there are also different opinions saying it runs slightly slower and is not intuitive enough compared to other cloud backup services.

Cloud Backup Best Practices for Personal Use

You may already be attracted to the powerful features of cloud backup services, to make it clear how to perform cloud backup for your critical data, here we will use the free cloud backup service - CBackup for example, and show you how to do cloud backup to CBackup Cloud, Google Drive backup and sync, let's see the details.

Free Cloud Backup to CBackup Cloud

CBackup provides cloud backup software for you, the CBackup desktop app, which has a simple interface and simple operation. The free 5GB of CBackup Cloud allows you to store more files, even 1TB or 5TB, etc. Follow the below steps to do an online backup for your files. 

Step 1. First, please download and install the CBackup desktop app, sign up with a CBackup account, and log in.

Step 2. Click the Backup icon and press the Backup PC to CBackup Cloud button

Step 3.  You can change the Task Name to distinguish the task, select the computer files to backup, and the CBackup Cloud will be automatically selected by default.

Step 4. Press the Start Backup button to backup files to CBackup Cloud.

Google Drive Cloud Backup

Besides backing up files to CBackup Cloud, CBackup also supports public cloud drives, like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. Thus, it is capable of backing up or syncing files to Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc. Here are the steps of Google cloud backup listed below for reference.

1. Please click Storage > Google Drive > Authorize Now to add Google Drive to CBackup.

2. Then hit Backup > Backup PC to Public Cloud.

3. Select the computer files to backup, and choose Google Drive as the target. Press the Start Backup button to backup files online to Google Drive easily.

★Tips:

You could enable Scheduler in Settings (bottom left) to perform Google Drive automatic cloud backup hourly, daily, weekly, or even monthly.

Your folders may contain some files that do not need to be backed up (such as system files, cache files, etc.), and the specified file types can be backed up through settings. You can set the excluded types or the contained types, and only back up the files that are needed to save backup time and space.

You could enjoy the email notification if you are not in front of the computer to monitor the backup process.

CBackup is a free cloud backup service, and most of the clouds on the market now provide synchronization features only while CBackup offers both for backup and sync. The advantage of backup is that after the source file is deleted, the backup file remains. In this way, you can delete unnecessary source files to make room for the local disk or cloud drive.

Other useful features of CBackup you might be interested in while performing free cloud backup:

CBackup can merge multiple Google Drive accounts to increase Google Drive storage space for free, and then you could get larger cloud space, even free unlimited cloud storage.

Besides backing up a PC to the cloud, you could also do the cloud-to-cloud backup, as well as cloud-to-cloud sync, which helps you migrate everything from one cloud to another directly without downloading and re-uploading.

Unlimited backup version management allows you to keep all the backup versions so that you can restore files to any version you like, preventing data from losing.

There is a very useful restore feature. When the hardware or server crashes, you can quickly restore data through the backup file. When you need to change the computer, you can back up the data of the old computer and restore it to the new computer.

CBackup uses 256-bit AES Encryption and a standard OAuth authorization system to protect your data.

Conclusion

These cloud backup tools can protect data from accidental crashes and malware attacks, even by extreme disasters such as fires and floods. If you are still looking for one of the best cloud backup solutions, you may wish to try CBackup and discover more possibilities! According to your actual needs, choose the one that suits you best!