our review (continued)
After I clicked on the sign up button, I was welcomed and given a link for downloading the client. I was also presented with the following:
“Refer Friends – Get 10GB Free! Share the benefits of the IDrive online backup solution with ALL of your contacts and get an additional 10 GB free backup space.”
IDrive will automatically scan your email and send referrals to all of your contacts and then you will receive an additional 10GB of backup capacity for free. It certainly wasn’t worth it to me, so I skipped that part, but it seems like an interesting marketing tool.
I proceeded to download the client (approximately 9 MB) and install it. The install is quite typical, but I was surprised when they defaulted to "C:\IDrive" as opposed to "C:\Program Files\IDrive". It's been awhile since I've seen that in a professional application. I tried to change the install to "Program Files" but it told me to pick another folder. I put it back to "C:\IDrive" and it continued just fine. I'm not a fan of being forced out of "Program Files". I will say that the install looked very professional as well as the subsequent dialog. After the install I was prompted to login with a username and password. 
I used the credentials that I had created at the beginning and logged in. After I entered my credentials I was asked to choose my encryption option. I could choose for IDrive to manage my key or I could set my own encryption key (password or phrase). I was surprised that the recommended option was to choose my own key. Other online backup providers seem to discourage this because if you forget your key (password/pass phrase) then you won't be able to recover your data. I chose to manage my own key and entered it and then reentered it to confirm. They did provide a warning to save the key, but it wasn't a very strong warning.
Once I logged in the resulting client application started with a help screen that provided some basic overview of the client application. I quite like the IDrive client UI. 
It is easy to use and looks very professional. It wasn't too busy, yet there is quite a bit that you can do with the client and I didn't feel I had to hunt through lots of menus to figure things out. There is a bandwidth test that let me test my upload and download speed and then told me about how long it will take to upload 1 GB of data. This can vary depending on your provider and even the time of day. When I took the test I was getting about 350 Kb/sec which equates to about 1GB/7hrs. This is probably fairly typical for many home users. After that, I chose the files that I wanted to backup from a tree control (typical of nearly every provider) and then I needed to decide whether I wanted to "Backup Now", "Schedule Backup" or "Enable Continuous Backup". The user interface was very straightforward, but I was surprised that IDrive didn't just default to "Enable Continuous Backup". Giving the users choices is great, but sometimes it's better to choose the safest choice so that users don't shoot themselves in the foot later. I chose "Enable Continuous Backup" and expected that it would begin immediately. It didn't, it scheduled the backup to start in 9 hours. I left the continuous option on and then told it to "Backup Now". Once I did that a dialog popped up with a status bar as well as what files were being copied. It also had a bandwidth slider that was defaulted to 100%.
Once the backup started I was surprised to see that I was actually uploading at almost twice the throughput compared to what the bandwidth test had indicated. I started the backup maybe 5 minutes later, so I don't think anything had really changed. My takeaway is that the bandwidth test is somewhat suspect. 
I left IDrive
working for a few days to see how the continuous, incremental backup worked. One thing that I learned from the log is that a scheduled backup had been created automatically, so I was getting scheduled backups and continuous backups. It looks as though I could turn one of them off. I really like the logging in IDrive. It's very similar to other applications, but I found it a little easier to navigate. As with most logs you double click the high level entry to see all of the details behind each operation. You can see each file that was backed up as well as the time when it was backed up and the file size.
I restored one file as a test from the client UI and it was very simple. You just click on the restore tab and navigate the tree and pick a file or folder and then click “Restore Now”. You are then prompted to pick where you want it restored. I chose to restore it to “C:\Temp” and the one file I chose took about 5 seconds. You can also right click on a file and choose which version you want restored. IDrive also has an explorer plugin which gives you the ability to navigate your backed-up files in the Windows File Explorer. I was surprised to find out that it was a separate download and install aside from the original client install that I had already performed. I kicked it off by choosing “Tools” from the client UI (start the client by double-clicking on the IDrive icon in the taskbar) and then choose “Open IDrive Explorer”. This prompted me that I would need to install some more software. Anyway, I did it and it was easy, but it should have just been added as part of the initial client install. Navigating IDrive from the file explorer is the same as other apps that support this feature. There is a virtual drive (in this case called IDrive) and you can expand the tree to find the folders or files that you would like to restore. Right click on the folder or file for options including restore. If you’re on a file the right click menu has a “View Versions” which allows you to restore whatever version you choose. I quite like the ability to navigate via an interface that I’m already familiar with like Windows Explorer. As part of a more extensive test I restored all of the files that were backed-up (about 320MB) using the virtual drive through Windows Explorer. It was quite fast (just over 20 minutes) and worked just as I expected.
One last test. I wanted to verify that my files were encrypted and check out the web management available for IDrive. I decided that the best test was to use a different computer. I started by logging into my account at Idrive.com and entering my credentials. The first thing that I saw really didn’t make sense to me. In the middle of the screen they had a box that said “Your Backup Files” with a drive name of “C:” and size and last modified date registering as nothing. I could click on the “C:” and then it drilled down to the next level of folder in my backup set. Then I realized that I could continue to drill down to see all of my files. I clicked on a document file and it immediately asked me for my encryption password. I put in the wrong password just to check it and it informed me that it was incorrect. I then put in the correct password and was informed that my “…encryption passphrase has been validated” and to click on a link to restore that file. After I clicked on the link a simple http download was initiated and I saved the file. I opened the file to verify the contents and it looked fine. I then tried to restore all of my documents. That required me to download the entire client—which I did. During the install process I was prompted to enter my encryption key again and it was verified. At this point the IDrive client looked the same as it did on my other computer and I was able to restore as described earlier. One last note, when I uninstalled the IDrive client from my second computer I was informed that not all files were removed and that I would need to remove them manually. When I checked the folder it didn’t look like any of the files were removed. I just deleted them all, but I am not impressed with the uninstall.
Overall, I like IDrive. It was easy to install, it worked fast and it didn’t get in the way. I do think that the more advanced user will appreciate IDrive and some of the extra features that are available, whereas the less advanced user might be confused at times and wonder if everything is setup properly.