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I used to spend upwards of $10 on cans of compressed air for cleaning my PC and accessories—and every time I bought one, I’d always eye the electric air dusters in envious consideration. I knew it made financial sense to spend $30 up front to never buy compressed air again, but it was tough to justify spending that much just to blow out dust. But eventually I folded. I hated going back to buy yet another can every few months, racking up a bill for basically nothing… so I bit the bullet and bought this 2-in-1 cordless air duster and vacuum. (Actually, mine’s not available anymore, but the one I linked is nearly the same.) Jon Martindale / Foundry And let me tell you: it was $35 well spent. It’s as gloriously over the top as I’d hoped and far more effective than I’d expected. I’ll never have to buy cans of compressed air ever again, and my only regret is that I didn’t buy it sooner. Plus, it’s also a vacuum! What a bonus. It’s better than cans of compressed air Compressed air is great at cleaning inside computers, under keyboard keys, and inside any other nooks and crannies that are either too tight or too sensitive for your typical vacuum cleaner. But compressed air has its quirks. It’s hard to control the strength of each puff, making it feel almost arbitrary—you never know exactly how far you need to hold the can when blowing on certain components. It also has the habit of spitting out liquid propellant if you spray too long, it doesn’t last very long, and you have to keep buying more when it runs out. That’s bad for the environment and your wallet. An electric air duster doesn’t have that problem… and it often comes as a 2-in-1 device with vacuum capabilities. My Whatook air duster and vacuum can blow and suck at an impressive rate, making it useful for not just dusting things off but actively removing dirt and debris. Would you rather blow around the dust inside your PC case or suck it out? Before (left) and after (right). It’s not perfect, but it makes a real difference.Jon Martindale / Foundry The fact that it’s consistent means it can be more useful. You can happily blast away at a huge 480mm radiator with abandon, knowing that if it runs out of battery you can just charge it up again. No need to use quick bursts to avoid condensing propellant on your electronics or to save what little air the can has left for other jobs. You can use it how an air duster is supposed to be used: with all the powah! Yomile 2-in-1 Cordless Duster and Vacuum Best Prices Today: $33.24 at Amazon It’s more effective than expected Seriously, I laughed out loud the first time I used this on my graphics card and CPU AIO radiator. The amount of dust that came out was ridiculous. I wipe them down often and usually do a good job of keeping my dust filters clear enough to keep my PC as dust-free as possible. But with this 2-in-1 electric air duster, I really gave them a good clean. The vacuum attachment is nice. But it’s primarily a blower, not a sucker.Jon Martindale / Foundry It doesn’t remove caked-on dust, so just as you wouldn’t use compressed air to remove that kind of grime, know that this cordless vacuum isn’t going to magically clean it either. But for surfaces that are tricky to clear out, like between heatsink fins and fan shrouds? It’s perfect. I love this thing. It feels like it’d be a one-time-use gimmick, but it’s really the opposite of that. It saves me money, it’s fun to use, and it’s quite effective at its job. I recommend it to all PC owners. Forget the cans. Get this 2-in-1 cordless air duster and vacuum insteadBuy now on Amazon Read...

At a GlanceExpert`s Rating Pros Online and local backup Supports multiple PCs and devices on the same account Can back up Office 365, Google Workspace, and NAS Low price per terabyte Basic imaging and disaster recovery Cons QNAP app install issues Needs better imaging and disaster recovery implementation Our Verdict iDrive has you covered six ways to Sunday when it comes to backup. Online, local, sync, NAS support, imaging, disaster recovery, online workspaces, snapshots, hard drive shipment… You name it, the company does it. It’s not the cheapest service our there, but it’s easily the most comprehensive. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Retailer Price iDrive $69.65 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: iDrive Online Cloud Backup Retailer Price iDrive $69.65 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices My latest look at iDrive’s online backup service offered nothing out of the ordinary. That’s a good thing, since the ordinary is that iDrive is the most comprehensive online backup and sharing service I’ve tested. And now it has even added backing up your online Office 365 and Google Workspace accounts as well as Synology and QNAP NAS boxes to its bag of tricks. The company also provides additional storage for syncing all your devices and PCs, and allows sharing of files with anyone. Additionally, there’s now full-featured file and image backup to local media, as well as disaster recovery. Like I said: comprehensive. That said, iDrive is not the cheapest service out there, it’s occasionally unintuitive, and some of the features are still works in progress — imaging and disaster recovery in particular. But when those are ironed out, iDrive will have a legitimate claim to best backup solution on the planet. Online or otherwise. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best online backup services for comparison. How much does iDrive cost? Believe it or not, iDrive still offers a free storage plan — 10GB. Nice. Beyond that, the price per terabyte is fetching, at least initially. You can see the basic end-user plans for iDrive in the image below, and get the full low-down here. However, the prices in large text are for the first year only — the struck-through prices commence after that. For example, the first year of the Personal plan is $69.65, or the first two years for $149.25, then increases to $99.50 per annum after that. The current iDrive plans with first year, or two-year discounts. Per terabyte, all those plans are affordable, but don’t get caught up in the price-per-terabyte game: The size of your essential data is probably a lot smaller than what’s being offered by iDrive, unless, of course, you’re into high-resolution video or the like. Then 5TB may not be enough. If you enable the separate sync service (Cloud Drive), you get an equal amount of storage just for that task — no extra charge. Cool. S3-compatible storage via iDrive e2 is more affordable. But if you’re looking just for storage without all the bells and whistles, there’s a separate S3-compatible object storage service called e2. It starts at only $24.95 for 1TB — again for the first year, then $49.95 per annum subsequently. What are iDrive’s features? Like competitor Carbonite, iDrive offers continuous data protection (CDP), in addition to its traditional scheduling. If you have a rapidly changing data set, it’s nice to have files backed up as they change, not just periodically. iDrive is split among two main functionalities: file backup and file sync, the latter operating as the aforementioned Cloud Drive, which functions like OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc., with a local folder that syncs to the cloud. If you’re confused as to the difference between backup and sync, consider this: A backup is an immutable or cataloged snapshot of your data at a point of time (iDrive stores up to 30 versions of any changed file). Synced data (Cloud Drive) is one malleable set of data shared across multiple devices, with any of those devices able to add, delete, rename, and otherwise alter the data set. Changes are then propagated to the other devices. iDrive supports nearly every type of PC and device: Windows, OS X, Android, iOS, and various NAS boxes. Also nice are the snapshots, which make it easy to restore your PC to a particular point in time. Unlike my last look, local and online backup are now separate jobs. Formerly the local backup was simply a duplicate of the online. Separate is obviously more versatile and allows you to keep large files locally but not online, though it’s not as simple or foolproof. An option to use the same data set might be useful. Also separate are the “Entire Machine Backup” and “Disk Clone.” The former is file-level backup of your entire system, while the other is imaging — several types of it. The service also features iDrive Express, a two-way hardware shipping service. Say you’re walled off from the internet, or just in a very low-bandwidth location. Use iDrive’s local backup function to back up your data to a storage device provided by the company, then ship it to them. It will get uploaded to your online account, and then updated by your local client thereafter. Or if you need to restore from a backup in hurry, iDrive will ship your data to you on an appropriate device. All within a week’s time. Personal customers get 3TB of data delivered via iDrive Express to or from for free — the first time. Team and Business users get three free deliveries. Subsequently, there’s a $60 charge per delivery.  How easy is it to use iDrive? When it comes to basic file backup and sync, iDrive is simple enough to use. Even if the interface sometimes seems more intent on catchy names such as “Cloud Drive” rather than intuitive labels such as “Sync your data.” iDrive does automatically select the data locations that most likely require backup, and you can easily add other locations, including those on your local network. Nice. Note the Add network path button. Not all software will let you back up from network locations. Where the program gets a bit dicey in the ease-of-use department is with imaging and disaster recovery. But before I nitpick, kudos to iDrive for even including those. Not a lot of online backup vendors do. Actually, no others that I can think of. My first nit is that imaging and disaster recovery should be in the backup section, not “More.” Then again, given their current clunkiness, that’s likely deliberate. When I say clunky, I mean that the “System Image” function enumerates disks by number without telling you which is actually the system disk. You have to check in Disk Management to see which is which if you don’t already know. Note that 0 may not be your system disk. If you’re not familiar with Disk Management, right-click on the Windows Logo on the Taskbar, then scroll up and select it. The System Image also creates needlessly huge images containing all sectors including “empty” ones. Including empty sectors (which may be listed as not in use, but not actually empty) is generally an option for data recovery where you might need to revive some deleted files. Not a lot of online backup services offer imaging and disaster recovery. Kudos to iDrive for including those. The real issue here is that my system disk is 2TB, and couldn’t be backed up to a 2TB SSD — even though it contains only 250GB of data. I plugged in a 4TB disk for testing, but I’d recommend Macrium Reflect Free in lieu of iDrive’s imaging at this point in time. Also, you’re obviously going to need a recovery disk to restore an image if your system goes belly up, but I found nothing to indicate that this was possible in the client software. I asked and PR sent me this link (see below where you can download a rescue media creator. Fold it into the client, please.) This is how you create a disaster recovery disk for iDrive’s imaging. The procedure is extremely well hidden on the website. Reiterating, for its basic mission, iDrive is easy with only a little reading up, but the imaging and some other rough edges could use some sanding. How does iDrive perform? The majority of my experience with iDrive’s various features was operationally successful. There was one error which turned out to simply be a file that couldn’t be backed up because it was on the destination drive. To be fair, this might’ve been my fault. I also ran into an issue where the iDrive app in the QNAP app store wouldn’t successfully install. This is actually a non-issue as QNAP’s Hybrid Backup/Sync (HBS3) program supports iDrive as a destination for its operations. But it’s sloppy and iDrive should have QNAP remove the app. The aforementioned inability to back up a drive with 250GB of data to a 2TB external drive was the only other issue. Please make “only used sectors” the default, iDrive! This is a bit silly and because iDrive wants to back up all sectors, not just those with data as most programs do by default. There’s not even an option to skip them. It’s generally hard to gauge the speed of an online service, as it varies with the infrastructure between your computer and the company’s servers. By and large, however, iDrive performed in line within the bandwidth of the internal NVMe, external 20Gbps USB, and my 2.5Gbps local network I used for testing. Lest my minor complaints sway you in the wrong direction, iDrive performed quite well overall. As expected. Should you use iDrive’s backup service? Yes! I nitpicked quite a bit in this review. But they’re just that — nits. iDrive still offers the most comprehensive set of backup and backup-related features of any online service I’ve tested — by far. And it’s all available at the basic subscription level. Take a look if you haven’t already. For more about data backup, see our roundup of the best Windows backup software. Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article. Read...

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