Acronis has launched Acronis 2017, the latest version of their multi-platform software. The new version includes new features such as user-provided storage, Facebook data backup and improved Network Attached Storage (NAS) support. There are many more improvements, but these are, in my opinion, the ones that people should focus on.The addition of (better) user-provided storage is very important: in my experience, cloud backups are great for being a very secure location, and I consider them to be my last line of defense (my office is burning).
However, retrieving Terabytes from the cloud in an emergency can be challenging, so it’s always nice to have a local backup too. Also, local storage is much cheaper than cloud storage, so there’s little reason to hold back.
If you backup mobile devices with Acronis’ Android or iOS apps, local backups will unlock a mode where you can backup as many devices as your local storage has room for. With the cloud version, there is a limit, and you will have to pay to add more.
Related: How To Backup Familly Computers & Mobiles Using The Acronis Cloud
Acronis has a new “backup manager”, which is a dashboard that allows a user to see and manage backups for a group of computers and mobile devices. The idea is that there is typically one person who’s managing the backup in a family or a small business. While this is not a full-blown IT dashboard, it should make life easier for the “admin”.
Related: How To Backup an iPhone with Acronis
The Facebook backup will scan your account on a regular basis and will download and backup all your posts, comments, photos, and conversations. This could be handy if your account gets hacked or deleted by accident, although I don’t think there is a way to “Restore” your account but just for preserving and having your FB photos locally, it’s an interesting option. (Facebook may have backups in case of a hacking, though, but it’s not guaranteed)
Many customers will opt for a NAS as a local storage solution (NAS=box with hard drives connected to the home network). Acronis will try to detect the most popular models, but any NAS that can be mounted as a drive or a directory on a PC will be accessible by Acronis, that’s virtually all of them.
If you want to backup to a remote location using your storage, you will have to setup a VPN solution. The data never transits through Acronis servers when doing local backups.
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