Online backup services can help you protect files by storing them offsite, but some people may want to create redundant copies of files locally, too. Wherever they are stored, extra copies can come in handy in the case of accidental deletion, natural disasters, or ransomware attacks. NovaBackup is one of the few services we’ve reviewed that offers both online (new for the latest NovaBackup release) and local backup options. However, it charges far more than other services for online storage, has an nonintuitive desktop interface, and is available only for Windows devices. NovaBackup was also the slowest performer in our upload speed test. Both of our Editors’ Choice winners, IDrive and Acronis True Image, are a better value and easier to use.
How Much Does NovaBackup Cost?
NovaBackup costs $49.95 per year for a single license, $79.95 per year for three, and $99.95 per year for five. These prices give you access to both NovaBackup’s local and online backup capabilities. NovaBackup offers a free, 30-day trial for each of these plans. Notably, NovaBackup now offers in-house online backup capabilities instead of pointing you toward the sketchy-looking FirstBackup website, which used to be its preferred partner.
This subscription-based model is a departure from other local backup services, most of which require only a one-time purchase. Paragon offers a completely free edition of its Backup and Recovery software.
NovaBackup’s online storage prices compare poorly to others, especially considering that you get a pitiful 5GB of cloud storage with each of its plans. For instance, NovaBackup charges $2,449.95 per year for a single-device plan with 2TB of online storage. It costs $699.95 per year for a five-device plan with 500GB of online storage. Even a 100GB plan for a single device is $169.95 per year. Those prices are drastically out of line with what the competition charges.
Acronis’ $89.99-per-year subscription tier, for example, includes local backup capabilities, 500GB of storage for online backups, and an entire suite of security tools for a single device. IDrive‘s $69.95-per-year plan includes 2TB of storage for an unlimited number of devices. Both Carbonite ($71.99 per year) and Backblaze ($60 per year) offer an unlimited amount of storage for a single PC.
NovaBackup works on PCs as far back as Windows 7 SP1 and up to the latest release of Windows 10. NovaBackup does not offer any software for macOS, Linux, iOS, or Android devices. Apps for any of these platforms, or even a web interface, would be useful for running backup processes remotely and accessing uploaded files from anywhere. Most of the online backup services we’ve reviewed offer mobile apps and web interfaces for browsing and sharing files.
To cancel your NovaBackup account, you must locate a link within the original email you got from the company when you signed up for the service. This is a highly unusual process and we much prefer to see the option to manage and cancel licenses from a web interface. You can, however, upgrade the amount of online storage you have from a web dashboard (in the desktop app, click the See Options button under the Your Cloud Storage module or head to the Support section).
Security and Privacy
In terms of file encryption, NovaBackup gives you the option to maintain a private key (up to 20 characters) that secures each local backup set using technology that conforms with the AES-256 encryption standard. NovaBackup also enables you to encrypt your entire online backup set with a private key that secures your files using a technology that conforms with the AES-128 standard. To set this up, you need to head to the Devices tab, select the Cloud Storage device, click on Properties, and then select the Security tab. By default, NovaBackup uses your login password as the key, but you can create a custom one. NovaBackup should make this feature more obvious to discover.
A private encryption key ensures that you, and you alone, can decrypt your backups. One potential downside is that if you lose this key, NovaBackup cannot help you recover it. Other online backup services, including IDrive and SpiderOak One, allow you to manage your own encryption keys for online backups, too.
Because NovaBackup doesn’t offer any real web interface to speak of, that also means that it does not offer two-factor authentication. The lack of an online portal makes it impossible for someone to access your files online, but we prefer the convenience of those services that have this feature and offer two-factor authentication for securing access. Backblaze, IDrive, and OpenDrive are among those online backup services that offer both.
NovaBackup’s privacy policy is lengthy, but it’s generally easy to understand. NovaBackup says it collects the following types of personal information: usage information collected from its website, such as your IP address and geographical location; personal information you provide on any forms on the site; any voluntary contact information you provide; transactions you enter on the website and “information about you that is available on the internet, such as from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, or publicly available information that we acquire from service providers;” and billing information.
There’s also this line: “From time to time, we may receive Personal Information about you from third party sources including partners with which we offer co-branded services or engage in joint marketing activities, and publicly available sources such as social media websites.” Make sure you are comfortable with these terms before signing up for the service. For reference, NovaBackup is based in Agoura Hills, CA. NovaBackup’s parent company, NovaStor, has offices in Germany and Switzerland.
Desktop Interface
During the setup, NovaBackup requires you to enter a name and a valid email address, but this doesn’t create an account of any kind. You can optionally enter a license at this point, too. If you plan to use NovaBackup’s online storage capabilities, you will need to create an account later.
The predominantly gray desktop interface looks crowded and its dated iconography recalls the age of Windows Vista. There’s no clear flow to the experience either, though most people will figure out that they need to click the large Start button in the middle of the Home tab. Compared with SpiderOak One’s and Acronis True Image‘s desktop apps, NovaBackup’s feels decades older. The software never crashed in testing but browsing through file hierarchies sometimes caused it to temporarily freeze.
On the left-hand panel, you can view any recent or scheduled jobs, which is helpful. That said, the Ask a Question and In the News sections look like ads. On the bottom of the Home tab, there are four links for running or opening a job (backup task), importing media, or adding a network drive. There are nine tabs across the top: Home, Copy, Backup, Restore, Logs, Schedule, Device, Status, and Support. These sections use a basic, but effective, file browser for selecting and viewing your local files.
NovaBackup’s notification tray icon lets you start, pause or restart the backup service, but I wish this had a few more quick-action options, such as a link to the status of the backup or even to the program settings. File Explorer integration is another feature that I would like to see added. Although it is easy enough to select files to back up within the interface itself, it’s more convenient to add files and folders to a set straight from the source.
Backup Settings
Like most other backup software, NovaBackup requires you to configure individual backup jobs. Depending on whether you want to run a local or cloud backup job, you would either choose the Start or Cloud Backup option from the Home tab. The disk-imaging option appears on this main page, too. You can set NovaBackup to continuously sync folders or files with a connected cloud syncing service, such as OneDrive or Dropbox, if you’d like, but that’s a far more roundabout way to upload files to those services. Livedrive offers a more effective folder syncing experience.
(Editors’ Note: Livedrive is owned by j2 Global, the parent company of PCMag’s publisher, Ziff Davis.)
NovaBackup gives you several options for scheduling your backup, including One Time, Minute, Hourly, Daily, Weekly, and Monthly. Those are all welcome options and the Every Minute setting is basically equivalent to the truly continuous backup option we prefer, though, for the sake of simplicity, we’d prefer the latter option.
For local backups, NovaBackup gives you a few different options for verifying, writing, and ultimately backing up your files. Starting with Verify modes, you can choose between none, normal, and advanced. It’s important to switch this setting on to ensure that the backup completed successfully, especially if it’s of great importance. For Write modes, you can either choose to overwrite media or append to media depending on whether you want to keep the original files on your hard drive. Further, there are multiple Backup modes, as well. Full and Snapshot both back up all of the files you selected, but only the former marks each file as backed up. Incremental and Differential both look at what files have changed since the last backup job ran, but only the former marks each file as backed up.
Rounding out the available preferences for online and local backups are the options to set up backup completion notifications, filter out certain files from the backup, and configure custom commands to run before or after the backup process completes, such as ejecting media or restarting the computer.
Restoring Files
From the Restore tab, there are two modes to choose between: Time Mode and Device Mode. Device Mode should be familiar to most users; here, you can select files from any of your backup sets. If you chose to encrypt your backup, you need to enter the password before you can access your files. NovaBackup keeps files in their original folder structure, so you can restore everything as is or select individual files and folders.
The Time Mode adds a slider that lets you view a history of your backup jobs and select ones to restore within a specific time frame. This is particularly useful if your files are corrupted at some point and you need to access older versions. Windows 10’s built-in File History feature offers similar functionality.
NovaBackup can save an unlimited number of file versions for files in both local and online backup sets. The only limit is the amount of storage at your backup destination. To restore an older version of a file, head to the Restore tab, navigate down the file tree to the file in question, right-click on the file, and selection Version Information. In testing, I successfully restored older versions of a file that I had backed up to online storage. This is another feature I almost missed; NovaBackup needs to a better job of making all its features more discoverable to the user.
For comparison, OpenDrive can maintain up to the last 99 versions of each file, while SpiderOak One can keep an unlimited number of versions. IDrive keeps the last 30 versions of a file forever.
As with the Backup tab, there are a ton of settings that you can configure here as well. For example, you can set up filters, choose how to deal with existing files, choose a new restore location, or even set up some commands to run after the restore operation completes.
How Fast Does NovaBackup Upload Files?
To test the performance of online backup services, we time how long it takes for the service to upload three 1GB file sets. Then, we take the median of the results for comparison. Since we do not have access to PCMag’s fast corporate testing network due to the COVID-19 pandemic—yes, we’re working from home, like so many other people—I ran these tests over my home Ethernet connection (16Mbps upload), My test device was a Dell Inspiron tower running Windows 10 with a 256GB SSD and 32GB RAM.
NovaBackup took 22:14 (minutes:seconds) to finish the task and was the slowest performer. It ran about 10 minutes longer than IDrive (12:29) and ElephantDrive (12:44). Acronis True Image (18:21), the second-slowest performer was two minutes quicker than NovaBackup, as well. Of course, your results may vary based on variations in computer and network resources.
When I reached out to the company about this slow performance, a representative from NovaBackup suggested I exclude NovaBackup from Windows Defender. These steps involve more effort than should be required of the user.
Previously, I tested NovaBackup’s (and several other local backup services we reviewed) performance with a 15GB folder of mixed-media file types. I configured the software to transfer these files from a Lenovo ThinkPad T470 laptop running Windows 10 to an external drive. NovaBackup completed the test in a rapid 2:18, and that’s with AES 256-bit encryption enabled. Acronis True Image bested NovaBackup, completing the test in a blazing-fast 1:35 with AES 256-bit encryption enabled. Other services came in with slower times, but not by much. NTI Backup Pro notably took 17:04 for the same task.
Several Stumbling Blocks
If you have important data on your computer, you should really have some sort of backup process in place. NovaBackup is a decent option for local backups of your Windows PC, since it supports an unlimited number of versions and was quick in our local file transfer test. But if you are looking for an online backup solution, you’re better off with another service. NovaBackup charges excessive rates for online storage and was slow to upload data in our tests. Its desktop app is poorly designed and makes it difficult to discover all of the software’s capabilities, too.
IDrive and Acronis True Image are our top picks in the online backup category. IDrive offers exceptional value and Acronis True Image is unique because it combines excellent backup and security features.
If you intend to use NovaBackup’s local backup capabilities, check out our roundup of the best external hard drives.
