🔄 Backups.🔒

⚠️ ALWAYS HAVE 2 COPIES OF ANYTHING IMPORTANT ON DIFFERENT MEDIA. ⚠️

Extremely important, but often overlooked, is protecting your documents, photos, contacts, etc with proper backups. Make sure you try restoring a recently backed up file on a regular basis to ensure the backup is working.

Backup your entire network or just 1 machine.

Manual. Poor reliability. Drag and drop your data to a USB drive, cloud storage or other system. Extremely unreliable as people typically only do it once in a while.
Local 1 backup drive. Better reliability. Susceptible to damage and Ransomware. Works well with Windows Backup and Apple Time Machine. Both systems backup hourly by default.
Local 2 backup drives. Good reliabilty. Keep 1 drive offsite. Exchange drives on a regular basis. Protects against Ransomware by ensuring you have an offline backup. Mac Time Machine works well. Windows Backup does not handle this well. We provide custom backups or third party backup software is available.
Cloud. Good to Best reliability. When first turned on, I have seen it take a week or more to do the first backup. After that just the changed files are backed up (usually quite quickly).
- Backblaze.
  Works on: Windows and Mac only.
  Cost: $60/year per computer.
  Data: Unlimited.
  Retention: 30 days.
  Hands down, my pick for best backup system. 😲Gasp! It's a paid subscription service. No where else on this site have I recommended paying for something (except me 😀). Best value for large backups. It has never failed me yet. Solid protection against Ransonware.

Cloud Storage and Syncronization.

Protect your Documents and Photos by syncronizing to the cloud. Syncronize your data, contacts and calendar between multiple computers and mobile devices. The difference between syncronization and backup is that if you delete a file, syncronization also deletes it (usually to a recycle bin), backup keeps the deleted file.

Features	*Google Calendar/Contacts/Drive	Apple iCloud	Microsoft OneDrive/Outlook
Free Storage	15GB Combined email, documents, original quality photos and videos. Unlimited photos/video at high quality.	5GB. Combined email, documents, photos.	5GB Data / 15GB Email.
Extra Storage Cost	$2.79/month - 100GB.	$1.29/month - 50GB.	$2/month - 100GB.
Recycle Bin Retention	Until out of storage.	30 days.	30 days
Calendar & Contacts	Web, Mac, iPhone/iPad, Android, CalDAV, Server name: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/<emailaddress>/events , CardDAV, Server: google.com User Name: Full Gmail address Password: Your Gmail password App Password.	iCloud, iTunes / Finder, CalDAV, Server name: https://caldav.icloud.com. If you get an error, make note of the p##- and change the server name to https://p##-caldav.icloud.com:443 CardDAV, Server: contacts.icloud.com User Name: Apple id or email address (use @icloud.com even if using @me.com or @mac.com Password: Your Apple password App Password.	Web, iOS, Android, Windows 10, Mac, Setup using Mac Calendar in Mac Settings > Accounts. Outlook for Mac 2013 and lower require third party addons to work. Outlook, Sync to Web based calendar: GO Sync Mod, Outlook CalDav Synchronizer Sync to Outlook 2007 - 2019: iTunes (Now Finder on Mac), Blackberry. App Password.
Bookmarks	Google Chrome	iCloud bookmark sync is the most flexible. You can select the browser to sync with.	Edge
Windows	Backup and Sync. Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders.	iCloud folder.	Moves Desktop, Documents and Pictures to OneDrive folder.
MacOS	Backup and Sync. Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders.	Moves Desktop, Documents and Pictures to iCloud folder.	OneDrive folder.
iOS	Google Contacts, Google Photos, Google Drive.	iCloud.	OneDrive.
Android	Google Contacts, Google Photos, Google Drive.	No support.	OneDrive

* Larger free storage and syncronization without moving your files, makes Google my recommendation.
Apple's iCloud and Microsoft's OneDrive move your files when setting up syncronization.
This breaks recent file links and is a major drawback.