Let’s see if we can clarify some things about backup.

Apple’s iCloud, Microsoft’s OneDrive, Google’s Drive and other similar services like DropBox are cloud-based file-sharing services. What these companies offer is the ability to share files between computing devices. In reality, though, they aren’t really what we would call back up companies.

What’s the difference? The primary difference is that backup services like Carbonite will back up all the data on your computer – as long as you tell it to do so; file-sharing services will only keep a copy of files which you save in their folders.

For instance, on my computers, I use iCloud, OneDrive, DropBox, Google Drive and Amazon Drive. These are all file-sharing services and they will only upload the data I put into their respective folders.

On the other hand, I also use Carbonite and it will back up all the data on my computer, without having to be in a “Carbonite” folder.

Finally, all of the file-sharing services have a limited amount of “free space.” While Carbonite has a yearly fee, the amount of data you back up is unlimited. (For personal use.)