Data Backup Digest

With the rise of cloud services available, online data backup has become a more viable option for business and consumer alike. Nowadays it seems that everyone is launching their own cloud service. It’s an exaggeration, but there’s certainly a lot more choice than there was a few years ago. As such, it can prove difficult to know who to store your data with. This article will explore some of the best services out there, judged on a variety of factors like amount of data allowed, any file limitations and customer support.

Bitcasa
Bitcasa is a relatively new service, but it made news due to the fact that it offers an infinite amount of storage space. You read that right: apparently, you can never run out of space. Store as much as your data as you like and you’ll have no issues.
Bitcasa has some great features on top of the standout storage. The service encrypts everything before you upload it, meaning that only you can access it. This is a much safer method of encryption over something that protects only when the data is on the server. They keep at least three copies of your data across their data centres. It should go without saying that nothing is ever one hundred percent safe, but Bitcasa is pretty secure if what they say is true.
The service also offers the ability to rollback to previous file versions, recover deleted files and share your files (no matter the size) with anyone. Of course, it wouldn’t be a very good cloud service if you couldn’t access your data anywhere and anyplace – Windows and iOS support, along with all popular mobile handset operating systems, means that this is true.
You can grab 10GB of data for free, or pay $100 (£69) a year to get the unlimited data and chat and email support. If you just want to pay a fixed rate for all your data, Bitcasa is a good bet.

CrashPlan
In a LifeHacker poll, CrashPlan came out top when users were surveyed what their favourite cloud backup service was. It’s easy to see why. It allows you to easily customise what you backup (be it a folder or the whole drive) onto an external storage drive, a different device on a network or to CrashPlan’s encrypted servers.
You can run the backup tool in the background; set it up and never have to touch it again. It’ll backup only data that has changed if you wish and allows you to back up to multiple destinations. Again, it has support for mobiles, meaning you can access the data while you’re on the move.
Prices vary depending on the plan, but they begin at 10GB for $2 a month or $4 for unlimited storage (on one computer).

Backblaze
This third cloud provider also offers unlimited storage space – why settle for less? Backblaze is capable of backing up pretty much everything important that you have on your system. It continuously backs up and it does it securely too. It will compress your files where possible and deduplicates your data to save space.
Unlimited storage space will cost you $5 a month. You can get it cheaper if you pay upfront, making it $50 for a year or $95 for two years.