Great services go even further, providing courier service to you a hard drive containing all your files when you need to bulk-restore quickly.

And they employ state-of-the-art encryption to ensure no one else has access to your data. They'll keep old files you've deleted, and hang on to old versions of files you've updated. They allow you to backup all kinds of files from whichever drive you like, including external and network drives. In general, good online backup services provide user-friendly apps that securely store your files and work on any operating system you want. There are better choices for security nuts and power users, though, so I’ll detail those as well. In the end, my choice was clear: iDrive Personal ( available at IDrive) provides by far the best blend of features and performance at a great price- about $5.79 a month, or cheaper if you get in on one of iDrive’s frequent sales. I spent more than a month testing eight of the most popular cloud backup solutions to find out which one is best for most users.

But when disaster strikes, you’ll thank your lucky stars that someone else is looking out for you. When nothing goes wrong, they feel like a waste of money. Cloud backup services are like any other kind of insurance.

Best value personal backup cloud