Online Backup Supports Network Drives
Your Data, Your Cloud, No Restrictions
Should it matter where you store your data to determine if an online backup service will support protecting it for you? I mean, really, there are very few “true” cloud backup providers, most everyone else sells you a certain amount of space and maybe some syncing features.
Note: A Network drive and a mapped drive are essentially the same thing as far as the data is concerned. However, some online backup software will backup a network drive based on a UNC (Universal Naming Convention) path, such as “\\{servername}\{sharename}”. Other online backup services require the network drive be “mapped” to a drive letter, such as “F:”.
So why do so many online backup services refuse to allow you to secure data from your external hard drive or a network drive in your cloud backup account? What justification do they have? Or is there software just that marginal and they don’t want to hire better programmers?
Maybe it should be no surprise that our #1 pick for online backup works fantastic for someone with nothing but a laptop to protect as it does for someone with a laptop, desktop, external hard drive and a home NAS – even one of those funky Android phones – to protect.
IDrive Supports Network Drives and Everything Else Too
IDrive knows you want to protect your data. Period. And you don’t want to juggle it on and off your PC so that you can somehow get it stuffed up into the cloud. So IDrive supports network drives, external drives, desktop drives, even your phone. And yes, the limit how much space – kind of. By that I mean that the “true” archiving they offer does not count against your quota.
You might guess that because they do all of that they are more expensive than everyone else. Nope. In fact they are one of the least expensive, another reason they are in the #1 spot.
LiveDrive Is Another Service That Supports Network Drives
One of the most popular articles on our site is this one about supporting network drives. From that we found that a great number of visitors took the LiveDrive trial and decided that, yes, it worked very well for them. We have less experience with LiveDrive than IDrive but we have never had anyone get back to us with negative feedback on it.
LiveDrive is just a bit more expensive because they charge extra for network drive support – but their customers are quite happy with the service at the price.
The Bottom Line For You
If you are at all like me, you just want your data to be protected by being backed up to the cloud, securely, reliably, and be able to access it when you need it. The last thing you want to have to think about when determining where to store your data or what piece of computer hardware you might buy is “will my cloud backup service provider support it?”
Unless you buy something totally off-the-wall, there should be no question about it.
Why not pick up a free lifetime 5GB account at IDrive and give them a try,
or,
Go for a test drive of LiveDrive.
..