ElephantDrive describes their online backup service like an elephant: it's very big, never forgets, and works for peanuts! But how well does the company live up to its claim of being both a powerful and affordable service?

Looking over this backup solution in this ElephantDrive review, you'll find that it does hold some promise. For one, it is powered by Amazon's S3 services so you can be sure that it is backed by a secure and reliable storage solution. Features-wise, ElephantDrive has a lot to offer. You can set it up to perform backups on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and do it fast with its proprietary delivery system. ElephantDrive also offers file sharing and versioning, support for mapped drives, drag and drop functionality, and the capability to set administrative controls.

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Those who want to find out just how well these features work can try the service by taking advantage of the Lite plan that offers 2GB of storage for free. If you want to move on to the paid plans for home users, you can choose from the Personal or Family plans. Business users will want to look at the various Enterprise plans that are available.

One thing you have to remember about ElephantDrive is that it sets an individual file size limit for files backed up, with the limit varying according to the plan subscription. Users can only transfer files up to 100MB in size for the free plan, and up to 1GB, 2GB, and 5GB for the Personal, Family, and Enterprise plans respectively. This shouldn’t be a problem for the average user (except for the free plan subscribers) but still worth keeping in mind especially for those who may have to deal with large multi-media or video files.

Ease of Use

ElephantDrive online backup has made it quite easy for novice users to start backing up their data. Their ad says a user can get started “in less than one minute” and begin the backup process “in three clicks.” Most reviews we’ve come across seem to agree that the service does indeed offer a simple interface that makes the process practically a no-brainer.

You first need to download the ElephantDesktop software to be able to start uploading files to your ElephantDrive Trunk, and then schedule succeeding backups. The good thing is, while most can just opt for the “set and forget” approach to doing backups, there are also advanced options for the more tech-savvy users who want to customize their backup settings.

The user interface has also been designed so that you can view and browse through your Trunk as you would on any drive on your PC or Mac. This feature makes it very convenient to drag and drop files from your computer drive to your storage account for uploading, and vice-versa.

The Backup Process

Once you’ve got ElephantDesktop downloaded and installed (shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes), you can immediately begin backing up your files. One thing that ElephantDrive does differently from other services is that it gives you the option to choose a Backup Category; that is, you can backup either by Folder or by Type.

To run a backup by folder, just choose a specific folder in your computer – e.g. “My Documents” or “Desktop” or “D://” – and the program will proceed to upload all folders and files within that main folder or drive. On the other hand, if you choose to backup by type, you need to indicate which file type group you want backed up – e.g. “.doc” or “.jpeg” or “.avi” – and ElephantDrive will backup all files in that particular directory with that extension.

You only need to define the Backup Category on the initial backup because once created, these backup sets will be automatically selected on the next scheduled backups.

As mentioned earlier, drag and drop functionality is available when backing up or restoring files. To easily choose and backup individual files, go to the ElephantDesktop Manager. Clicking Your Files will allow the program to open the ElephantDesktop Explorer, which shows your Trunk account (with the backed up files) on the upper window and your computer window below it. Dragging files or folders from your computer drive to the Trunk account on top will immediately save your data to the storage cloud.

Like most initial backups, it may take a few hours to a few days to get most of your data backed up to the Trunk, depending on two factors: the volume of files uploaded and the connection speed.

Backup Status

If you have already uploaded all data on your computer to your storage account, all that’s left for the program to do is perform incremental or differential backups as scheduled. What this means essentially is that ElephantDrive will only scour your computer for files that have been modified since the last backup, and update these files. As compared to backing up your entire system every schedule, incremental backups will save you a lot of time and bandwidth.

You can check your backup sets anytime and make changes to the categories you have initially specified. To do this, just click on the client manager and go to the Backups tab, where you’ll find the backups that are already running on a regular basis. Here you can add new sets for backup or remove the current backup categories if necessary.

Performance

On its website, ElephantDrive claims to utilize an “innovative delivery technology” that allows for fast data transmission. Now they don’t exactly give specific details as to what this proprietary technology actually does but it’s worth noting that many reviewers who have tested ElephantDrive find it as one of the better-performing online backup services they’ve tried. BestOnlineBackupDeals.com for instance, points out that in “various testing scenarios,” ElephantDrive was faster in doing backups compared to the competition, and without causing any slowdowns in the system. One also said that it “works nicely in the background.”

To ensure that you will have better management of your bandwidth resource, ElephantDrive gives you the ability to control how much speed is allocated to your local computer and how much goes to the backup program.

Security

As expected of any service that wants to make a name in the online backup industry, ElephantDrive also puts a high premium on security. Any data transferred to and from the company’s servers is first encrypted using advanced 256-bit AES encryption, and then sent over a hack-proof 128-bit SSL tunnel. This type of system is comparable to that used in online banks and e-commerce websites.

ElephantDrive also takes security a step further by providing users their own encryption key to ensure that not even employees can gain access to your account. You’d have to be extra careful though, because your key is the only way to decrypt your data and ElephantDrive does not keep a copy of it for you. That means if you lose your encryption key, you lose your backed up data!

Lastly, ElephantDrive’s servers are stored in at least two distinct physical locations, each of which are designed to be resistant to natural disasters, further ensuring that subscribers’ data is protected at all times.

Restoring Data

If you’re restoring files back to your original computer, you can easily do this again by using the drag-and-drop functionality of the ElephantDesktop Explorer via the client manager. This time, you retrieve the saved files by dragging items from your Trunk on the upper window, down to your local computer on the lower window. You can also click on the files individually and then click on the Download button.

This service is capable of backing up multiple versions of the same file, placing these in archive in case they are needed in the future. ElephantDrive keeps saved versions of each file for the last 30 days for the Personal plan, and 1 year for the Family plan users. This feature, however, is not available for Lite plan (the free plan).

ElephantDrive also makes it easy to share files with others. Simply browse through your Trunk drive, highlight the specific file, then click Share. You can opt to protect your shared file by nominating a password that all recipients should enter in order to view the file.

Remote Access

It’s possible to access your data or recover files even if you’re using a computer that does not have ElephantDrive installed on it. Simply log on to the ElephantDrive site from any web browser and access your account. From here you can browse through your Trunk drive, download backed up files, and upload new ones.

One downside to ElephantDrive is that it currently doesn’t offer mobile apps for smartphone users. This is a feature most other online backup services support already, providing users even more convenient options for backing up and accessing files.

Customer Support

Customer support, or to be more precise, the lack of it, is one area where ElephantDrive really fails to deliver. They only offer email support; no phone or live chat support is provided. While the site does offer comprehensive videos, tutorials, and forums on how to perform backups and restore files, nothing beats having someone to directly communicate with if things don’t work as expected.

I’ve also read customer reviews that cite issues with the timeliness of the email responses. In the absence of phone and chat support, the least the company should do is ensure that the one customer service channel they offer is excellent. One customer even said this of ElephantDrive’s technical support: “They’re not interested in responding to problems.”

Bottom Line of this ElephantDrive Review:

While ElephantDrive has gotten generally good feedback in many of the reviews we’ve come across, the thing is, we can’t find a single one that’s brimming with excitement and praise for this backup solution. In an industry where there are already more than a handful of service providers all aiming to gain the trust of users, ElephantDrive ranks among those in the middle of the pack that are good enough but don’t really stand out in any way.

Small businesses and the more tech-savvy consumers, however, could maximize ElephantDrive’s advanced customization settings and enterprise-level features available in its business plan, making it more suitable for these types of users.

ElephantDrive does come with standard backup features that would be good enough for the average users and at prices that are competitive with similar services. But we’d like to see options for mobile apps, better customer support options, and a removal of the file size limits before we can call it a truly bang for the buck service for the home consumer.

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