While Google Drive is already a decent cloud storage tool, it’s about to get a lot more useful: starting June 28, the service will let you back up entire folders from your hard drive, and keep them in sync with your account.
You’ll need to first download the Backup and Sync tool for your PC or Mac when it launches; once you’ve signed in, you’ll be able to choose which folders on your desktop you want to keep backed up, and access them through Drive across your devices. That sounds handy for people who already use Drive extensively – it’d certainly be nice to have a powerful search function for backed up files.
However, unless Google comes up with new pricing plans to support this feature, Drive’s backup will cost you a fair bit more than other services, as it only comes with 15GB of space for free. 1TB of space will set you back by $100 a year, while most rivals like Backblaze charge about half that price: Backblaze’s unlimited storage and syncing costs $50 annually, and Carbonite as well as small business-focused Crashplan come in at $59 a year.
Would you consider Google Drive for your backup needs, or do you already have a favorite app for that? Let us know in the comments.
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