Backup

Every file on the shared drive has a new name, or a renewal form has just asked how you back up. Small business backup is usually two purchases: IDrive Business for the computers, any server and any NAS, and a Microsoft 365 backup if your mail and files live there. A few laptops holding a lot of data suit Backblaze better, at $99 per computer a year. Prices are in US dollars. If it’s happening now, disconnect first and don’t restore yet.

Know what Microsoft 365 already keeps, then buy for finding out late

OneDrive can roll back to any point in the last 30 days, and its recycle bin holds deleted files for 93 days unless an admin changed it. So a ransomware hit on OneDrive that you notice on the day may cost nothing to undo. Deleted mail lasts 14 days by default. Late is what you’re paying for: a folder someone deleted in March is gone by July.

Buy one storage price, not one price per laptop

IDrive Business charges for storage, so a new starter’s laptop doesn’t raise the bill. From its second year, with a Microsoft 365 seat for each person and 60 to 100 GB each, that’s $339.88 at 5 people and $1,759.88 at 40. There’s the sum at 5, 15 and 40 people beside Backblaze’s. Backblaze lists no server or NAS backup, so past laptops and desktops it’s out.

If a form says “immutable”, buy IDrive 360, which says its daily snapshots are; IDrive Business’s pages don’t use the word. Here’s what the renewal form asks about backups.

Ignore the feature list until you’ve restored one file

Restore yesterday’s version of a file to a new folder and open it. Budget about 30 minutes for the whole check, our estimate from counting the steps. If you can’t get last month’s version back, you have sync rather than version history, and no other feature makes up for that. Keep the backup login in a password manager that doesn’t live on those computers.