The iDrive client program that manages backups both locally and to the cloud is available on all the major computing platforms: Once you’re done with the initial backup and have configured the wi-fi (which is easy), subsequent local backups can be done without the computer and drive being hooked up, or even in the same room! And even plugged in, it can take overnight – or over a few nights – to complete.

Small, easy to carry around, and quite capable! It has the ability for you to plug it directly into the USB on your computer, which I actually recommend for the first backup because that’s usually quite a bear, tens or hundreds of gigabytes of data. To start, here’s the actual iDrive hardware: Now, with that out of the way, let’s actually look at the iDrive software and hardware so you can see what a nice setup it is and how easy to use once you’ve got it configured. Between the two you can back up 2TB of data or redundantly backup 1TB in both places (what I recommend). It usually runs $100, but for readers of AskDaveTaylor, they’re offering a killer deal: For $59.50, you’ll get the 1TB drive and the quite slick iDrive software and - but wait! there’s more! - 1TB of space on the iDrive cloud server to have your redundant backup for a whole year.

The company offers an incredibly budget-minded 1TB hard drive that has built-in wifi support and a battery that can keep it running for up to 8 hours when the power’s out. And then has a secondary strategy that offers yet another copy somewhere else.Įnter iDrive. Not one where once a month they email themselves the latest documents and letters, not simply trusting that Flickr or Google Photos is the best place to archive everything forever, but a locally based solution that creates redundant copies of files on an hourly or daily basis. Smart computer users know this and have some sort of backup scheme. In an ideal world, systems would never fail and all data would be permanent, but that’s just not how it works. Most people curse and recreate the lost data, or just write it off to bad computers, programs, or similar, but I don’t want to lose irreplaceable photos and videos from my children’s lives, work projects that take weeks to complete, or even archival files like digital copies of my books, ready for an update or new edition. But it happens, and it happens more often than you may realize. It’s too complicated, they don’t have spare disk drives, they’re complacent that their computer will never crash or fail, or they just have no idea that they could lose their data at any time with the crash of a program, failed restart or bad system update. Most computer users I talk with don’t do backups.

Where do you install idrive hard drive