Best Online Backups For Mac

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Best Online Backups For Mac Rating: 3,5/5 800 votes

If you're backing up your data but you're not saving it offsite, you're putting it at risk. If something happens to your home or electronics, all that data could be lost. That's why there are tons of affordable, easy-to-use online backup services that you can send your data to seamlessly for safe keeping. This week we're going to look at five of the best, based on your nominations.

Best Online Backups For Windows
Best Backup Storage For Mac
Backup Programs For Mac

Other ways to backup your Mac If you’re not too worried about Time Machine and just want a great backup for your Mac, take a look at our list of the 5 Best Online Backups for Mac 201 8. Alternatively, if you want to store data from multiple devices, or are looking for a backup for your small business, you could also consider network attached storage ( NAS ). Best ways to back up your Mac Here are our favorite online services for backing up your Mac. So, I'm here to give you some suggestions to help you secure and store your most precious files with a list of the best online backup services and external hard drive backup programs. An online backup service is one of the best ways to protect yourself against the loss of precious data, whether it's the result of a crashed hard drive or an unintentional deletion. The online backup service for Mac enables sophisticated security measures and continual backup which keep your data private and secure. We would prefer to see an alternative to get in touch with the company via live chat or phone for technical support. The idea is that the backup normally be located somewhere _other than_ where the computer is, as insurance against theft, fire, etc. (Isn't this what the 'online backup' outfits are, anyway?) Best way to maintain an offsite backup is with multiple backup drives. Acronis recommends the 3-2-1 backup rule, which includes storing a copy of your backup files locally (on external hard drives, network drives and NAS devices) and another copy off-site. That way if a fire or flood damages both your original files and the local backup, the off-site copy is available to use for recovery.

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It's been a long time since we last looked at online backup tools, so we figured it was time to take another look. Earlier this week we asked you which online backup services were the best: The ones that offered the most seamless and simple backups, fast and complete restores, easy-to-use backup clients, and of course, storage for your money. You responded with a number of options, but we only have room for your top five. Here they are, in no particular order:

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The polls are closed and the votes are counted! To see which of these five great online backup services took the top spot, head over to our Hive Five followup post to see and discuss the winner.

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Carbonite

Carbonite is one of the web's most popular online backup services, and for good reason. The Carbonite client runs quietly in the background uploading your data to Carbonite's servers to make sure it's safe in case something happens to your computer. Carbonite can automatically back up documents, music, email, and other files (although it manually backs up video), and grants you access to those files and your archives on your smartphone. Carbonite supports Windows and OS X (although its Home Plus and Home Premier plans only support Windows), and make restoring your files as easy as backing them up. Your offsite files are encrypted to keep them safe from prying eyes, and all of their plans include unlimited storage for your backed up files. Carbonite's Home Plus plan extends its features and allows you to back up external hard drives and not just files on your computer, and allows you to back up full system images. The Home Premier plan includes both of those features and adds automatic backup of your video files, and a courier recovery service that delivers you backups on a hard drive to you ASAP if something terrible happens.

Carbonite is online backup only, so it doesn't really work well for local backups or backups to external drives. You'll still have to handle that yourself. You can try Carbonite for free for 15 days, but after that you'll need to pay up $60/yr to back up one computer with their Home plan, $100/yr to back up one computer with their Home Plus plan, and $150/ur to back up one computer with their Home Premium plan. You can read more about Carbonite's plans and pricing here.

Backblaze

Backblaze earned praise from many of you for being easy to set up, even for non-technical people. It's built for people who want to get their data backed up, without being forced to search for error codes and cryptic status messages whenever something goes wrong. To that point, Backblaze backs up just about everything on your system. You get some control over what's backed up and what isn't, but the point is to be fast, easy, and hands-off, so everything on your system—documents, music, video, external drives you have plugged in, just about anything. Instead of telling what they do back up, Backblaze actually has a special page dedicated to what they don't back up instead. Backblaze offers unlimited storage for your backed up data, and while by default it only backs up files smaller than 4GB, you can bump that up if you need to. Like other online backup services, it runs in the background, backing up your data all the time (or when you schedule it to, if you prefer), and your data is encrypted so only you have access to it. It supports Windows and OS X, and is smart enough to de-dupe data, do incremental backups, and keep backup processes low on system resources. You can read more about Backblaze's features here.

BackBlaze doesn't have an offline component, so you'll have to handle that yourself, but it's by far one of the most affordable options on the market. Accounts are $5/mo (you get a break if you pay up front for one or two years), and you can add more computers to the same account for another $5/mo. You can read more about Backblaze's pricing options here.

CrashPlan

CrashPlan is our favorite backup tool for Windows, for the Mac, and we've even shown you how to build a bulletproof backup solution with it. CrashPlan gives you the flexibility to back up any folders you select on your computer (or whole drives, if you prefer) to external hard drives, other computers on the same network, a friend's computer across the internet, or online to CrashPlan's own servers, where it's stored and encrypted to keep your data safe. The backup utility is set-it-and-forget-it, and it runs quietly in the background whenever you're away from your computer, or at specified times of day. It's smart enough to only do differentials and incrementals, and supports multiple backup destinations so you can back everything up at one time everywhere it needs to go. Restores are just as easy, and a few clicks drops all of your files right back where they should be. You even get access to your backup data on your mobile devices. If you have a ton of data to back up or restore, you can even have CrashPlan send an external hard drive to your house that you can back up to and use to seed your first backups or restore from, all without blowing past your ISP's bandwidth limitations. You can read more about CrashPlan's features here.

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CrashPlan is completely free if you're just doing local backups, but even online backups are affordable, with CrashPlan+ accounts starting at $2/mo (per computer) for 10GB of online backup storage, and going up to $4/mo (per computer) for unlimited online backup storage and $9/mo for unlimited online backup storage for a whole household. You can check out their plans here, and try them free for 30 days with a new account.

SpiderOak

SpiderOak is well known as one of the most privacy-centric cloud storage services, but it's also a great backup service. The same power and features that you get for file syncing and access extend to its backup client, and SpiderOak's 'Zero Knowledge' policy extends to your backups as well. Even they don't know what you're storing on their servers, and all of your data is encrypted on their servers and before it leaves your computer. The SpiderOak desktop client has a fully-featured backup tool in it that lets you back up your entire desktop, documents, email, music, or movies right to the cloud, or you can hit the 'Advanced' tab and pick the files and folders you want to save, including external drives, network drives, or anything else on your computer. As you add files to your backup job, you'll get a live preview of how much space you'll use with what kinds of files, and whether you have space for it. SpiderOak supports Windows, OS X, and Linux, has mobile apps for iOS and Android, can do incrementals, and if you uncheck a file to stop backing it up, the files will still live in your SpiderOak account, just as an archive. Your backups happen in the background, or when you schedule them.

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SpiderOak's beauty is that it's a combination cloud syncing and storage service as well as a backup client all in one. Unlike some of the other services though, you'll have to pay for the storage you use. You get 2GB for free just for signing up, and you can get up to 10GB by referring friends. SpiderOak Plus nets you 100GB for $10/mo to use for syncing and backups, and every 100GB after that is another $10/mo. Plus, you can connect as many computers to any SpiderOak account as you want, so you're not paying by the system. You can read more about SpiderOak's plans here.

Bitcasa Infinite Drive

Bitcasa Infinite Drive is relatively new, but it's one of your favorite cloud storage providers in general, mostly because they offer virtually unlimited stroage for syncing and backups. When we say unlimited, we mean it—some of you are using terabytes of storage with Bitcasa. It's not primarily a backup service though, and while it was built for file syncing and storage, the Bitcasa desktop client does support regular file backups. Bitcasa supports Windows and OS X, and encrypts all of your files before uploading so they stay safe from prying eyes. Bitcasa even keeps revision history, so if you've backed up a file multiple times and need an older version, you can pick it out and restore it. Plus, you can use the Bitcasa mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone to access your data on the go.

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Bitcasa starts you off with 10GB for free, but $100/yr throws the floodgates open and gets you unlimited storage for anything you want to sync, share, or back up. Plus, you can connect as many computers or devices to your account as you choose, so you don't pay by the PC. It's client isn't quite as robust as some of the other tools here, but if you're more interested in a flat fee for unlimited space and you can handle the details of which files go where and when, it's a solid option. You can read more about Bitcasa's pricing here.

Now that you've seen the top five, it's time to put them to an all-out vote to determine the winner.

No honorable mentions this week, as the nominations dropped off pretty sharply from these five. Some of you pointed to your own kind of franken-backup solution that made use of traditional cloud storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive in addition with desktop utilities and clients that can automatically copy whatever you want from your computer to specified files and folders in those services, which is a great option if you want the absolute ultimate in control.

Have something to say about one of the contenders? Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasn't included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Don't just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative is—and make your case for it—in the discussions below.

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it's not because we hate it—it's because it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com.

You absolutely have to back up your Mac. If you don't, one day — maybe tomorrow, maybe next week or next year — you will lose something important and irreplaceable and there will be nothing future you can do but curse at and blame past you. I don't say this to scare you. I say it to save you. Back up. Do it now. And do it like this.

Why do you need to back up?

One copy of your data is no copies at all. That's because hard drives and solid state drives (SSD) fail. They fail all the time. Two copies of your data is basically one copy, since there's a chance both could fail at the same time.

To make sure your data is safe you want to back it up in a way that minimizes the chance you could ever lose it. Realistically, that means a local back up as well as an off-site or online backup.

What's a local back up and how do you do it?

A local back up is literally taking a the data on your Mac and copying it to another drive in your home or office. Both copies are in the same place, so you can easily get to the back up when and if you need it, and either keep it up-to-date or restore from it if something bad happens to the original.

There are a couple ways to do a local backup. The first and easiest is with Apple's built-in Time Machine.

What's Time Machine and how do I use it?

Time Machine is the easiest way to get started with local back ups. Because it's built right into macOS, there's no additional software to buy, you just need an external drive to get started. Time Machine is even supported by popular mass-storage (NAS) devices, so it can scale as much as you need.

If you're really brand new to backups and want the simplest, most set-it-and-forget-it solution possible, you can get an Apple AirPort Time Capsule router. It's literally a Wi-Fi router with a hard drive built in.

Fair warning, the Wi-Fi router part is current-generation fast, but hasn't been updated in years and doesn't use modern networking technologies like mesh. Still, if you're not into or interested in the technology, get a Time Capsule, plug it in, hit start, and you'll be halfway there. (See online backups, below, for the other half.)

Even though I also use the other methods outline below, I have, and use, a Time Capsule as well. That way, even if I forget everything else or something else fails, I know every Mac in my house is still getting a base-level backup every few hours.

What about 'cloning' for local back up?

The big advantage to cloning is that it makes a bit-for-bit copy of your drive which means that, if anything happens to your Mac, you can actually boot from the clone and get right back to work if you need to, before worrying about fixing your main drive or restoring any data.

I use SuperDuper! for this and rotate between two different back up drives. That way, I minimize the chance of losing anything should one of those drives fail. Carbon Copy Cloner will get the same job done, so you have options.

Best Backup Storage For Mac

What's off-site backup?

Having a backup or two at home is fine unless there's a fire, flood, or theft that eliminates everything in your home, all at once. Same for the office, if your Mac and backups are all in the same place there as well.

So, to reduce that risk, you take one or more of your backup drives and store them at a different physical location. It should be a place that you trust with your data and is far enough away that any disaster striking your place won't also strike the secondary place. So, not the neighbors, but your parent's or sibling's place across town, your office, even a storage unit or safety deposit box at the bank a few blocks away would all be great.

The most convenient way to manage it is, if you're already rotating between two or more local drives, simply swap the local and off-site drives once a week or once a month, depending on your needs. Take the drive with your latest local back up to the off-site location and bring back the older one to update. Then swap again the next time.

This is also the best option if you have sensitive financial, health, or personal information you simply don't want to trust to an online service no matter how secure.

What about online or cloud backup?

We live in the age of the internet and, while local and offsite backups are a good enough solution to recommend them, there are considerable advantages to going to the cloud.

Similar to Time Machine and Time Capsule, online backup 'just works'. You pay for a subscription, download a utility, start it up, and then it churns away in the background copying your data to giant server farms and updating it as and when needed.

There's typically also an option to send or receive hard drives, if you have a large amount of data, to get you started or in the event you need to recover.

BackBlaze and Carbonite are solid services that have been around for years.

What about iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive — can't you just use them?

If BackBlaze or Carbonite are like disk cloning in the cloud, iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and the other storage providers are like copying a few important files over. They're incredibly handy to keep things in sync and to restore a few files here and there if and when you need to, but if you lose your entire Mac, unless you've stored a disk image, you won't be able to simply restore and go back about your business.

That said, most of them have free and cheap plans and are well worth using in addition to an online backup service because you can quickly and easily sync and recover files.

I use all three. iCloud automagically syncs and backups basic Mac files and lets me access them on iOS. Dropbox is where I store all my Mac document folders. Google Drive is what my company uses for documents.

Back it up. Just back it up.

Pick a date. Set a calendar reminder. Every time it goes off, check your backups and improve your strategy as needed. Wireless backlit keyboard for mac. Even though backups always feel like tomorrow's problem, losing your data can profoundly screw up your today. And odds are it will happen at some point, so be ready.

Don't let past you destroy future you. Back up now.

If you already have a backup strategy, let me know what it is. If you don't already have one, let me know what you choose!

Updated September 2018: These are still the best ways to back up your Mac and really just sound advice.

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