What Should I Look For In An Online Backup Service For My Mac?

Do you want to start using an online backup service for the data on your Mac? Do you know where to start looking? This article will give you some guidance in what to look for when you are shopping for your online backup company.

Why Online Backup?

Recently I decided it was time to have an offsite backup for important files on my computer (mainly movies and photos of my son). I have two external backups in my house, but if anything were to happen to those drives all of those files would be lost. I wanted to make sure I had a way to get those files if my externals were not an option. I did a lot of research before settling on Crashplan because they met my requirements. Here is what I used as a guide to picking my service.

One note: This is not a review of the Crashplan backup service. It happens to be the service I chose, so I mention it quite a bit.

Is it Mac compatible?

Of course, the first thing you should look at in exploring backup services for your Mac is the system requirements for the company. Most importantly, is the service Mac compatible? Macs are growing in popularity, but there are still many companies and services that do not work with and/or support Macs.

Pricing and Storage

Next to being Mac compatible, the main feature of any service that you will be looking at is price. Most services range from four to five dollars a month depending on how much you want to pay up front.

One nice feature of Crashplan is that you can actually backup to a computer at someon else’s house instead of the Crashplan servers. If you do this route, the service is free. However, you have to make sure the computer at the house you are accessing is always on and available to backup to. If it isn’t on 24/7 it is useless.

The next item on your list is how much storage space you are getting for your money. Many services give unlimited space, however when I researched the company I was going with I found a couple that did not provide unlimited storage. I highly suggest you go for unlimited space, but there might be something in a service you like that overrides this.

 

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