iDrive are giving some Microsoft 365 users unlimited cloud storage⦠sort of
Several asterisks are involved
IDrive, one of our favorite cloud backup services, have announced the ability to backup and encrypt the Microsoft Office files resting in your account for $20 a year per user.
Some of you might be scratching your heads: Microsoftās Office 365 is already integrated with the companyās own cloud storage juggernaut, Microsoft OneDrive. Well, quite. But, with automating AES-256-encrypted backups three times daily, ICloud thinks it can keep your work secure, while freeing you from ādependencyā on OneDrive.
Weāll get right to the catches, as revealed in the press release: the āunlimited cloud storageā only applies to files backed up from Microsoft 365 Personal accounts, so itās not intended to service an entire organization. It also costs $20 a year.
IDriveās Office 365 backups
There's no surprises in the rest of the offering: preserving snapshots of previous file versions is nothing new, Ā but when IDriveās doing so three times a day, weād say thatās about as robust a backup solution as you can get, offering protection from ransomware and the nebulous world of data recovery software.
What we do like as part of the deal is what IDrive are calling āgranular recoveryā, which really just means that you can, if youād prefer, restore singular missing files rather than a whole backup, which could save you an awful lot of time.
We also canāt fault the logic of making a āCloud to Cloud backupā, as they're calling it, although an additional cost, and having to manage an additional cloud storage service for the privilege sounds like a pain.Ā
Still, if you already have an IDrive and a Microsoft account, itās not a bad idea. You can even add 365 Personal backups to your IDrive account rather than create a new one.
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
More from TechRadar Pro

Ā Luke Hughes holds the role of Staff Writer at TechRadar Pro, producing news, features and deals content across topics ranging from computing to cloud services, cybersecurity, data privacy and business software.