SafeCopy Backup Review
Pros
- 200 GB for $50 / year (300 GB for $75 / year) unlimited machines (Windows, Mac & Linux)
- Realtime backup
- Private email links
- Support for External, Networked & USB Drives
- 3GB Free Account
Cons
- Restoring files isn't very intuitive
- iPhone app needs further development
Complete Review
SafeCopy Backup is an online backup company which differentiates themselves from the rest of the pack primarily in their pricing model: $50 per year for 200 GB of storage space. You can use this 200 GB by backing up one, two, three or more computers, including external drives. Compare that to Mozy or Backblaze, where you pay per machine, and if you're backing up more than one computer, SafeCopy may save you money.
Installation & Configuration
Installation of SafeCopy is a breeze: download the installer and run it. After clicking Next
and OK
a few times, installation is complete and SafeCopy is ready to be configured.
They make this process simple, too: enter your email address and choose a password, then choose the files to backup.
Backup
SafeCopy's backups are some of the fastest we've seen. When we turned up the throttle all the way, our files were uploaded in no time. We soon hit the 3 GB limit on free trial accounts.
Privacy
As with all online backup companies, your data is encrypted on SafeCopy's servers. However, going one step further, the file's contents, structure, and ownership are kept separately, which adds an additional layer of security.
Data Access
You can access your data via the web, browsing through a list or thumbnails of your files. You can even search across all of the computers backed up in your account, or use your mobile phone (including the iPhone) to search and view your files. The search is a bit inadequate, and the iPhone app needs serious improvements before considering it a selling point for SafeCopy.
Sharing
You can share the large files you've backed up quickly & easily. Just right-click on a file and select share
, then enter the e-mail address of the person you want to share the link with. For added security of shared files, links can be set to expire in 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, or no expiration date set.
I shared a file with myself, and it took some time for the message to make it into my inbox – I wouldn't recommend this if you were on the phone or chatting with someone over IM and wanted to instantly send a file, but if you already have the file backed up, it's better than resending the file up to the cloud.
A pro to SafeCopy's sharing service is that the recipient does NOT have to download the SafeCopy software in order to view the shared file.
File Versioning & Archiving
All versions of a file are saved with SafeCopy - not just the latest one. So if you accidentally overwrite a file, it's easy to get the last good version back. Of course, if you work on a file on a regular basis, you could have many, many versions of this file available to roll-back to. This could take up a lot of disk space, but SafeCopy only counts the most recent version of a file towards your disk space quota.
In addition, if you accidentally delete a file, you can restore it whenever you remember (other backup companies only keep deleted files for 30 days)
Restore
If you can't restore a file from your backup set easily, then it's not a good solution, so we put SafeCopy to the test here. At first, restoring isn't as intuitive as, say, Mozy's interface. I right-clicked on a file and couldn't find a restore
option. I had Share...
, Upload Now
and Info
. Info
pulled up a webpage with similar files, but still I didn't see a Restore
link.
So I logged in and went to browse through my files. Navigating to the folder was slow, as I had to open another webpage for each folder (and my file was 8 folders deep!). Upon finding the file, I clicked on it and SafeCopy very quickly downloaded the file to my computer. I was really impressed with how fast the file was brought from the archive and delivered to me. Other options were to Preview, Share, Delete, view Versions Saved or (again) Download the File.
After watching this video, I tried logging into browse.safecopybackup.com, but ended up in a 1990's Gopher-like interface.
iPhone App
Finding and downloading the iPhone / iPod touch app was easy, and logging in very quick after already having set-up my account on my laptop. However, I found the search to be disappointing. In fact, I couldn't get any search to return any results! I could see files in the Recently Updated list, although I wasn't sure what some of them were.
I clicked on a file, documentation.txt and saw given some specs about the file, including the 806,369,500 updates (what!?!?). Previewing the TXT file didn't work, but I was able to quickly share it with myself. Unfortunately, when sharing the file, the filename (and extension) were lost - if I were sharing this file with someone else, they wouldn't know what application to open it with.
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Conclusion
SafeCopy Backup is quick to install, easy to set-up, and backs up your data fast and often. I'm a fan of the Windows Explorer icon overlays that Mozy and Carbonite have, so you can quickly see if a file is backed up or not, and I hope to see this as an option with SafeCopy in the near future. Unfortunately, I found restores to be clunky, and the iPhone app to be nearly completely useless.
The pricing model, which allows you to backup many computers for the same price, is an attractive feature which earns it high praise. If you have multiple computers to backup (like I do), SafeCopy can really save you money. Instead of paying Mozy's $54.45 per year per computer (I have 3 licenses), I could pay SafeCopy $75 per year to backup my 181.1 GB of data, saving me about 50%.
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