But Arq Premium doesn’t support continuous backups, instead relying on scheduled backups, so there’s always a chance it won’t be perfectly up to date. Its restoration process is far less cumbersome than Backblaze’s and speedier than IDrive’s, too. During setup, Arq Premium encourages (but doesn’t require) you to use a private encryption key for a secure backup.

The Arq Premium software gives you a lot of control over how your backup works, including options to choose how long to keep files around, to select any external drives, and more. Arq Premium supports up to five computers, and if you need more than the included 1 TB of storage, it’s an additional $0.00599 per gigabyte each month (which amounts to about $6 per terabyte each month, making it more expensive than Backblaze and IDrive for data hoarders).

If you like to configure software to meet your specific needs, Arq Premium, available for Windows and Mac, offers far more customization options than Backblaze or IDrive and costs less than both for 1 TB of storage.

Idrive external hard drive backup