This article was published on November 6, 2013

Backup service IDrive launches new express service to ship your data back to you in 48 hours


Backup service IDrive launches new express service to ship your data back to you in 48 hours

Online backup provider IDrive has officially launched Express 48, a new data restore service that promises delivery of a 1TB drive with your data in 48 hours or less.

IDrive, which bills its backups as “NSA-proof” because it uses 256-bit AES encryption and includes an option for a private key, has a few caveats to the service, which costs $99.50. It doesn’t count weekends, and you’ll need to put your request in before 3PM Pacific time to start the timer that day. Otherwise, the 48-hour countdown will start on 9AM the next business day.

By comparison, IDrive’s existing standard Express restore service offers to deliver a drive – for either backup or retrieval – within seven business days. The seven-day service costs $59.95, though Pro Personal and Pro Business users are eligible for a limited amount of free drive shipments. IDrive offers a free 5GB storage plan, while its Pro Personal and Pro Business offerings start at $34.65 and $69.65 a year, respectively.

At nearly $100, the 48-hour turnaround is designed to appeal to business customers where going without their data would have costly repercussions. For its part, IDrive said it expects a “surplus of orders” for Express 48 from both personal users and businesses.

The amount of data I need to back up has grown faster than the speed of my Internet connection, so having a physical backup and restore option like IDrive saves having to spend days anxiously watching the progress bar. Given my current Speedtest figures of 15.88 Mbps down and 0.98 Mbps up, it would take me 147 hours to download a 1TB backup and 2,377 hours to upload one.

For those of us that need our data at a moment’s notice, IDrive 48 could be a lifesaver.

IDrive Express 48

Image credit: Andruszkewiecz / Shutterstock

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