Online backup: We test the best services—Carbonite, iDrive, Backblaze, Livedrive

Online backup is an essential hedge against physical data disaster. Whether it’s an act of malice or an act of nature (earthquakes, floods, hard-drive devouring locusts), you never know what could hit your PC or phone, and when. Most of us stand to lose a significant store of digital possessions if our primary device disappears or is rendered inoperable.Uploading your data to an online backup service covers a lot of the bases. Some people call these “cloud” services, but in reality, your data is stored on servers at the other end of the connection—that is, someone else’s hard drives. But that’s part of the plan! The backup Rule of Three says you should maintain three copies of your data: the original, a copy, and a copy of the copy. One copy should be in a safe place away from the original and secondary.To read this article in full, please click here