If you ask people around, many still prefer to backup their important files and folders on a hard drive – an external one. However, online backup is getting quite a lot of attention of late. There are dozens of companies which provide inexpensive online backup services. In addition to paid one, online backup providers normally include a free personal account that offers between 5 to 10 GB of free storage (or more?). When your data is stored on the cloud, you can access the data anywhere, anytime, as long as you are connected to the internet.
Avira Secure Backup is one such online backup tool from Avira security software maker. It offers users a total of 5GB free cloud storage to store your important files and folders on the cloud. To get more storage, you can refer friends to try Avira Secure Backup. Every friend that you successfully referred will earn you an extra 500MB. The maximum you can earned is 10GB. If money is not a problem, you can upgrade your storage to 200GB for $55 (RM170) for 1 year. But for now, let’s stick with 5GB first.
Avira Secure Backup is a straightforward application. The first thing to do after a successfully installation is to create an account, in order to get the 5GB free storage.
By default, the tool will take backups of your Desktop, Documents, Photos, Music and Videos folders. You can specify folders to backup if you want to. Click the Advanced button to set the backup speed and backup size. The backup size is capped at maximum of 200MB a file (by default). If you want to increase (or decrease) the backup size, go ahead.
Now, let’s put the online backup service to test by hitting the green Backup button. There is nothing to worry about the security of files and folders when you have Avira behind the tool. But in term of upload performance, it’s not very encouraging. During our tests, the upload speed is not as fast as we all have expected (aka s-l-o-w).
After complete upload (or during the process), you can access the uploaded files and folders by clicking the Access button. It will direct you to a webpage that houses the files and folders. You can browse them using the file manager.
If you have file to share with friends, you can try the Share option. It will upload the file to the cloud and generate a link to the file. Give the link to your friends to enable them to access and download the uploaded file.
In addition to Windows version, Avira Secure Backup is also available on Mac and have apps for iPhone, iPad and Android – which means that you can access your files across multiple devices.
