UpdateStar Online Backup review

UpdateStar’s Online Backup service provides you with an unlimited amount of online storage for around £45 per year, or $5.95 (£3.80) per month for a single-computer license. The company also provides a range of Corporate and Server backup packages for business users. A 30-day trial is available for users who want to see what they’ll get before opening their wallets.

Setting up your account is simple – all you have to do is download the UpdateStar Backup utility, enter a few details to create your account or log in to transfer an existing account to a new PC. When you first install the program, it offers to back up a few common directories, such as Documents, Music, Pictures or Desktop, and allows you to choose the days on which you want a backup to be carried out. The Advanced View lets you select any folder on your hard disk to back up, but doesn’t let you add network shares or external drives. An initial backup is carried out immediately.

Once installed, the backup application sits in your notification area, from where you can open its clear and simple interface to easily restore entire backups or individual files. Backups are retained for 30 days using the service’s handy versioning system, so you can restore that vital file even if you’ve backed up since you saved over it. Your backups are secured with a 256-bit Rijndael encryption key before they’re sent and are stored at multiple data centres in various secure locations.

If you install UpdateStar Online Backup on a new computer, you’ll need your encryption key to access your data; your username and password will not be enough. This extra layer of encryption will be a reassurance to very security-conscious users, but probably won’t be a major consideration for most home users.

Unlike many online backup services, you can’t access your files over the internet or share them with others – this is a pure backup service. If that’s all you want, then UpdateStar offers a reassuring level of security. However, it’s significantly more expensive and less feature-packed than most online backup services offering unlimited space. We prefer Livedrive Backup