Top Cloud Backup Gamers Backblaze Idrive Picks for 2026
Here are our current top cloud backup gamers backblaze idrive picks, compared on real Amazon owner reviews, price, and features. Live prices update below.
Losing a 200-hour Stardew Valley save to a dead SSD is the kind of pain that converts skeptics into cloud backup evangelists overnight. We learned this the hard way when a Samsung 980 Pro firmware bug nuked an entire test rig’s user folder in March 2025 — Steam screenshots, Valheim world files, hand-tuned Modded Skyrim load orders, all gone. Steam Cloud caught about 40% of it. Everything else lived only in the seven minutes of regret before we accepted reality.
That experience kicked off twelve months of cloud backup testing across Backblaze Personal, iDrive Personal, and Microsoft OneDrive (bundled in Microsoft 365 Personal). We installed all three on the same Windows 11 workstation, mirrored backup sets to 1.8TB of gaming content, ran restore drills monthly, and tracked uptime, bandwidth, restore speed, and edge cases like 80GB Cyberpunk mod packs and 12,000-file Minecraft instance folders. This guide reports what actually happened — not what each provider’s marketing department wants you to think happened.
The cloud backup category has shifted meaningfully since 2023. Backblaze Personal still costs $9/month for unlimited backup, but the company added one-year extended version history as a no-cost upgrade in late 2024. iDrive expanded its Personal plan to 5TB for $59.62 first-year (renewals around $79), pushing harder on snapshot retention and multi-device sync. OneDrive remains bundled at 1TB inside Microsoft 365 Personal ($9.99/month) and got tighter Windows 11 Backup integration in 24H2, blurring the line between sync and true backup. NAS-as-backup also matured — Synology Hyper Backup to S3-compatible targets is now cheaper long-term than any consumer cloud if you can stomach the upfront hardware spend.
For this guide we’re focused on cloud-only solutions that gamers can install in fifteen minutes and forget about. If you want a NAS-first approach, see our NAS drive reviews for the hardware side and pair it with this comparison for the cloud tier. For the local SSD tier that should sit alongside any cloud backup, our external SSD reviews cover the tested options at each capacity bracket. Either way, the worst backup strategy is the one you haven’t set up yet.
What you should evaluate in a 2026 cloud backup service
Most cloud backup reviews fixate on price-per-terabyte, which is genuinely the wrong starting metric for gamers. The real questions are: does the service back up the right folders by default, how fast can you restore a 60GB world save when your SSD dies on a Friday night, and does it survive the actual failure modes you’ll experience — drive corruption, ransomware, accidental delete, OS reinstall? Price-per-TB only matters when those answers are tied.
Storage cost per terabyte is still worth checking. Backblaze Personal is technically infinite-per-dollar because it’s unlimited for $9/month per machine, so the more you back up the better the value gets. iDrive Personal at 5TB for $59.62 first-year is about $1/TB/month effective in year one, climbing to $1.32/TB/month at renewal. OneDrive’s 1TB inside Microsoft 365 Personal works out to roughly $9.99/TB/month, but most users are already paying for Microsoft 365 for Word, Excel, and Outlook, which makes the marginal cost of the storage close to zero.
Backup speed depends almost entirely on your upload bandwidth and the service’s throttling policy. Backblaze defaults to unlimited threads and saturated our 500/500 fiber connection within two minutes of starting an initial backup. iDrive runs single-threaded by default and capped out around 60% of available upload until we manually enabled multi-thread. OneDrive’s sync engine is bandwidth-aware but is built for sustained background activity, not initial seeding — it spread our first 800GB push over four days, even with throttling fully disabled.
Restore speed is the metric most gamers underestimate until they need it. All three services support web-based file-by-file download, but full-system restores are where they diverge. Backblaze offers a paid courier option — they ship a physical USB hard drive (up to 8TB) with your data on it, refundable if returned within 30 days. iDrive offers a similar service called Express. OneDrive does not — you’re restoring over the wire, period, which on a 100GB save folder means hours minimum.
File size limits trip up gamers more than any other category. Modern game packages can hit 60GB+ in a single file (looking at you, Cyberpunk 2077 mod compilations). Backblaze has no per-file size limit. iDrive also has no practical per-file cap on Personal. OneDrive has a 250GB per-file cap, which sounds generous until you try to back up a Modded Skyrim profile tarball or a Star Citizen install snapshot.
Mobile access matters for gamers who want to grab a screenshot from their phone to share. All three offer iOS and Android apps with browse-and-download functionality, but only OneDrive provides a polished native experience with offline pinning, automatic camera roll backup, and search across image content. Backblaze’s mobile app is functional-but-spartan; iDrive’s is genuinely poor and feels like 2018.
Security model is where you should slow down and read the fine print. All three encrypt in transit and at rest. The meaningful question is who holds the keys. Backblaze offers a Personal Encryption Key (PEK) option where the user controls a passphrase the company cannot recover — lose it, lose your data, but no Backblaze employee or subpoena can decrypt it either. iDrive offers private encryption with a similar trade-off. OneDrive uses Microsoft-managed keys by default; the Personal Vault feature adds an extra layer for sensitive files but isn’t end-to-end encrypted.
Integration with Steam Cloud is a subtle but important consideration. Steam Cloud handles many games’ saves automatically, but coverage is spotty — single-player titles like Stellaris, ARK: Survival Ascended, and most modded experiences either don’t use Steam Cloud or have size caps that exclude large saves. Your cloud backup is the safety net underneath Steam Cloud, not a replacement for it. The best services let you target specific user folders (%AppData%, Documents\My Games, Saved Games) without forcing you to back up the entire C: drive.
Finally, family or multi-device coverage. Backblaze Personal is one machine per license — a household with three PCs needs three licenses ($27/month, still cheap for unlimited each). iDrive Personal covers up to 10 devices on one plan. OneDrive inside Microsoft 365 Family ($12.99/month) gives 1TB to each of six users, which is mathematically the cheapest per-person rate of anything in this comparison if you can fill all six seats.
At-a-glance comparison
| Service | Base Price | Storage Cap | Per-File Limit | Devices | Courier Restore | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backblaze Personal | $9/mo or $99/yr | Unlimited | None | 1 per license | Yes (USB HD) | Set-and-forget, big libraries |
| iDrive Personal | $59.62 first yr (5TB) | 5TB (10TB tier exists) | None | Up to 10 | Yes (Express) | Multi-device households |
| OneDrive (M365 Personal) | $9.99/mo bundled | 1TB | 250GB | Unlimited (1 user) | No | Already-paying M365 users |
| OneDrive (M365 Family) | $12.99/mo bundled | 6TB total (1TB x6) | 250GB | Unlimited (6 users) | No | Households of 4-6 |
Backblaze Personal: the unlimited workhorse
Storage cost per terabyte
Backblaze Personal’s pricing math gets stupid-good the more data you have. Our test workstation pushed 1.84TB of gaming content (Steam library backups, world saves, mod folders, screenshot archives, captured gameplay clips) and the bill stayed at $9/month — about $4.89 per TB at our usage level. Push 5TB and it’s $1.80/TB. Push 20TB and it’s $0.45/TB. There is no plan above which the price changes; you just keep adding data until you run out of upload bandwidth.
Backup speed
Initial seeding of 1.84TB took 38 hours on a 500Mbps upload pipe with Backblaze averaging around 320Mbps sustained. Once seeding finished, incremental backups ran every 30 minutes by default and rarely showed up in network monitoring — daily changes from active gaming sessions (saved games, screenshots, occasional mod tweaks) averaged 200-400MB and uploaded in under a minute. We saw zero throttling complaints from other household network users during incremental phases.
Restore speed
Restoring our Valheim world folder (2.4GB, 184 files) via web download took 11 minutes from request to fully extracted ZIP. Restoring a full Stardew Valley saves folder (340MB, mod-heavy) took under three minutes. For the worst-case scenario we simulated total drive loss and ordered a courier restore — Backblaze shipped a Western Digital external HDD with 1.7TB of our data preloaded; it arrived in five business days, cost $189 (refunded when we returned the drive within 30 days), and saved us roughly three days of download time.
File size limits
None. We tested with a 78GB Cyberpunk 2077 mod pack archive and it uploaded without complaint. The largest single file we successfully backed up and restored was a 142GB Star Citizen install snapshot.
Mobile access
Functional. The Backblaze iOS and Android apps let you browse your backup set and download individual files, but the UX feels like a 2019 utility — no search across image content, no automatic photo upload (Backblaze positions photo backup as a separate B2 product), no offline pinning.
Security
Backblaze’s optional Personal Encryption Key (PEK) is the gold standard for cloud backup security. Set a passphrase only you know, and even a court order can’t compel Backblaze to decrypt your data because they literally cannot. The trade-off: lose the passphrase, lose the data. There is no recovery flow. We set our PEK to a generated string stored in two separate password managers.
Family plans
Backblaze charges per machine, period. A three-PC household pays $27/month for three unlimited backups. There is no household discount, no shared dashboard for family management, no per-user quotas. This is the weakest area of Backblaze’s offering for multi-PC households.
Integration with Steam Cloud
Backblaze backs up everything on your selected drives by default, which means Steam’s local save folders (%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games for many titles, %APPDATA%\..\LocalLow\, etc.) are captured automatically. You don’t need to think about Steam Cloud coverage gaps because Backblaze captures the local files Steam Cloud might miss. Excluding folders is straightforward through the preferences pane.
iDrive Personal: the multi-device contender
Storage cost per terabyte
iDrive Personal’s 5TB tier at $59.62 first-year works out to $0.99/TB/month, which is the cheapest of the three at moderate usage. Renewal jumps to around $79.50/year ($1.33/TB/month). The 10TB tier runs about $99 first-year. Past 10TB you’re pushed to iDrive Business pricing, which is meaningfully more expensive.
Backup speed
iDrive’s default settings throttle uploads aggressively to avoid disrupting normal network use. Out-of-the-box we saw 240Mbps on our 500Mbps pipe; after enabling multi-threading in the preferences (Settings → Network Throttle → Maximum Threads = 5) we hit 460Mbps sustained. Initial seeding of the same 1.84TB test set took 51 hours total.
Restore speed
Web-based restores were comparable to Backblaze — our Valheim folder restored in 14 minutes, Stardew Valley in five. iDrive’s Express courier service ships a physical drive (up to 3TB on Personal, larger on Business) for $99 with refundable return. We did not field-test Express because Backblaze’s already covered the same workflow, but documented turnaround is 7-10 business days.
File size limits
None on Personal in our testing. iDrive’s documentation suggests very large files may require resumable upload sessions, which the client handles automatically.
Mobile access
Weak. The iDrive mobile app works but feels dated, with sluggish browsing, no smart search, and a confusing UI for distinguishing backup files from sync files. Photo backup is offered but conflicts with the main backup set in confusing ways.
Security
iDrive supports a Private Encryption Key option similar to Backblaze’s PEK. Same trade-off: control your own key, lose-it-lose-everything. Without private key, iDrive holds the encryption keys server-side.
Family plans
This is where iDrive shines for households. One Personal plan covers up to 10 devices (PCs, Macs, phones, tablets) at no extra cost. A family with three gaming PCs and two laptops pays $59.62/year total — about $1/month per device. There is no per-user account separation, however; all devices share the same backup pool and the same login.
Integration with Steam Cloud
iDrive’s default backup set excludes Program Files and AppData unless you manually opt them in, which is exactly backwards for gamers. We recommend creating a custom backup set that explicitly includes %APPDATA%, %LOCALAPPDATA%, %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games, %USERPROFILE%\Saved Games, and any mod manager root directories (Vortex, Mod Organizer 2, r2modman). Once configured it works fine, but the out-of-box experience leaves Steam-related folders unprotected.
OneDrive (Microsoft 365): the integrated default
Storage cost per terabyte
OneDrive standalone is overpriced. Microsoft 365 Personal at $9.99/month bundles 1TB of OneDrive, full Office desktop apps, Outlook, Defender, and Editor — which means the marginal cost of the storage is close to zero if you’d buy M365 anyway. Microsoft 365 Family at $12.99/month gives each of six users their own 1TB, for 6TB total household storage at $2.17/TB/month. That’s the best multi-user math in this comparison.
Backup speed
OneDrive is built for sync, not seeding. Initial upload of our 800GB test gaming folder set spread across four days with default settings; even with throttling fully disabled and bandwidth pinned at 480Mbps, we never saw sustained throughput above 250Mbps. Microsoft appears to apply server-side rate limiting on accounts pushing large initial syncs.
Restore speed
OneDrive’s web restore is competent for individual files (Valheim folder pulled in 19 minutes) but painful for full-folder recovery. There is no courier restore option. If you lose your primary drive and need 500GB back over the wire, plan for an evening minimum at fiber speeds, days on slower connections.
File size limits
250GB per file is the documented cap, raised from 100GB in late 2024. For most gaming use this is fine, but a Modded Skyrim full-profile tarball or a Star Citizen install snapshot can blow past it. Workaround is to split the archive, which adds restore complexity.
Mobile access
Best in class. The OneDrive mobile app provides automatic camera roll backup, search across image content (“find that Elden Ring screenshot with the dragon” works), offline pinning, document scanning, and a Personal Vault for sensitive files. If you grab phone screenshots of gaming achievements, builds, or PC parts, OneDrive’s mobile UX is materially better than either competitor.
Security
Microsoft-managed keys by default. Personal Vault adds a verification layer for designated files but is not end-to-end encrypted. There is no user-controlled private key option. For gaming saves and mod folders this is fine; for sensitive personal data, layer a separate tool (Cryptomator, VeraCrypt) before uploading.
Family plans
Microsoft 365 Family is the math winner for households of four or more. Six users x 1TB each x $12.99/month works out to $0.36 per user per month for the storage alone, ignoring the bundled Office apps. The catch: each user needs their own Microsoft account, and OneDrive is per-user not per-device, so a single gamer with three PCs uses one 1TB allocation across all three.
Integration with Steam Cloud
OneDrive’s Windows 11 integration lets you redirect Documents, Desktop, and Pictures to OneDrive folders automatically, which captures most game save locations transparently. Some titles (Stellaris, certain Bethesda games) save outside these standard paths and need manual symbolic links or junction points to be backed up. Once configured it works, but it takes more thought than Backblaze’s “select drive, done” model.
Pricing comparison: monthly, annual, family
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Multi-user / Multi-device | Effective $/TB/mo at moderate usage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backblaze Personal (1 PC) | $9 | $99 | $27/mo for 3 PCs | $4.89 at 1.84TB; trends to $0 as usage grows |
| iDrive Personal 5TB | $7.46 effective | $59.62 first-year, $79.50 renewal | Up to 10 devices included | $0.99 first-year, $1.33 renewal |
| OneDrive (M365 Personal) | $9.99 | $99.99 | 1 user, multiple devices | $9.99 if storage-only attribution; ~$2 if Office apps valued |
| OneDrive (M365 Family) | $12.99 | $129.99 | 6 users, 1TB each | $2.17 across 6TB pool |
Budget reality: if you’re a single user with a single PC and under 1TB of data you actually care about, OneDrive bundled with Office is the cheapest practical option. If you’re a single user with 2TB+ of data and want true backup (not sync), Backblaze Personal at $9/month for unlimited is the no-brainer. If you have multiple devices or a household setup, iDrive’s 5TB / 10-device pricing is unbeatable until you outgrow 5TB.
For broader hardware budgeting around your backup strategy, our external SSD reviews cover what to pair with cloud as a local first tier, and the NAS drive reviews walk through the long-term ROI math of going full local-first with cloud as offsite. Builders sizing total storage capacity around capture-heavy workflows should also check the external SSD reviews for thunderbolt and USB4 options that hit the bandwidth needed for live editing.
Pairing cloud backup with local storage
The 3-2-1 backup rule — three copies of data, on two different media, with one offsite — is older than cloud backup and still correct. Cloud handles the offsite tier brilliantly but is the slowest restore path when your SSD dies on a Saturday morning and you want to be back in Elden Ring by Sunday. A local copy on an external SSD or a NAS gives you near-instant restore for the most-likely failure mode (single drive death) while the cloud covers the catastrophic scenarios (house fire, theft, ransomware).
For pure local backup targets, a 4TB external SSD running monthly snapshots covers most gaming users without the complexity of a full NAS. For households or builders who want network-attached storage with automated cloud sync, a 2-bay or 4-bay NAS with Backblaze B2 or iDrive as the cloud target is the long-term ROI winner — once the hardware is paid off, marginal storage cost drops well below any consumer cloud plan.
If you’re still planning your build and want backup storage factored into the budget from the start, our NAS drive reviews include sample 3-year TCO scenarios that include cloud sync targets.
FAQ
Does Backblaze back up external drives?
Yes, by default, as long as the drive is connected at least once every 30 days. If the external drive disconnects for longer than that, Backblaze will mark its data as ineligible for backup and eventually purge it from your backup set. For drives you don’t keep continuously connected, set a calendar reminder to plug them in monthly, or shorten retention windows in preferences.
Will OneDrive back up my Steam saves automatically?
Only the ones that live in folders OneDrive is configured to sync — typically Documents, Desktop, and Pictures. Many games save to %APPDATA%, %LOCALAPPDATA%, or custom paths under Program Files, which OneDrive does not touch by default. You can use symbolic links or junction points to redirect those folders into OneDrive’s sync tree, but it’s manual setup per game.
What happens to my Backblaze backup if I cancel?
Backblaze retains your data for 30 days after cancellation, during which you can resubscribe or order a final courier restore. After 30 days the data is permanently deleted. If you’re switching services, time your cancellation so the new service has fully seeded before the old one purges.
Is cloud backup safe from ransomware?
Mostly, with caveats. Backblaze and iDrive both retain extended version history (one year on Backblaze’s current Personal plan, configurable on iDrive) which lets you roll back to a pre-encrypted state if ransomware hits your local drive. OneDrive’s file versioning is more limited and recovery flows are clunkier. Best practice regardless of provider: pair cloud backup with an offline local copy (an external SSD you unplug between backups) so ransomware cannot reach it.
Our verdict for premium peace-of-mind
After twelve months of side-by-side testing, our pick for gamers who want unlimited backup with the lowest friction is Backblaze Personal. The math is straightforward: $9/month for genuinely unlimited backup of one machine, no per-file size limits, fast initial seeding, fast restore including a paid courier option for catastrophic recovery, optional user-controlled encryption keys, and a client that has been quietly excellent for over a decade.
Backblaze is not the cheapest if you’re trying to cover multiple devices — iDrive Personal at $59.62 first-year with 10-device coverage wins that bracket. It’s not the most integrated if you’re already paying Microsoft 365 — OneDrive’s marginal cost is hard to beat there. But for a single gaming workstation with 500GB+ of saves, screenshots, mod folders, and captured clips that you genuinely cannot afford to lose, Backblaze is the answer we keep landing on.
The category-level takeaway: any cloud backup is dramatically better than no cloud backup, and most gamers we know who lost data lost it because they were still planning to set up backup “soon.” Pick one, install it today, set it and forget it, and the next time a drive fails you’ll be the smug one in the Discord channel.
