3 copies
The original on your PC and two backups. One backup is not a backup – the first time you need it is the first time you find out it did not work.
Windows 10 and 11 · one-time licenses · no cloud of ours
The backup you will actually have when the drive dies.
Six small apps instead of one big suite: a mirror to an external drive, a versioned encrypted vault, a whole-PC image with a rescue stick, a two-way sync between your PCs, a duplicate finder, and a free monitor that tells you when any of them stopped. Buy once, keep your keys, restore without asking anyone.
- 3-2-1copies, media, off-site
- ~120 MB/srestore from USB 3
- $0for the monitor, forever
What do you need to protect?
How often does it change?
The 3-2-1 rule
Three copies, two kinds of media, one somewhere else
The rule is thirty years old and still the only one that survives every kind of disaster at once. Everything below is just tooling for it.
2 different media
For example the internal SSD, an external drive and a network share or cloud bucket. Two drives of the same batch fail alike.
1 off-site
One copy somewhere else: a drive at a relative’s, the office, or an encrypted bucket. Fire, flood and burglary take everything in one room.
Your PCoriginal
External drivecopy 2 · media 2
Off-sitecopy 3 · NAS or bucket
Apps
Six apps, each doing one thing well
Requirements: Windows 10 (21H2 or newer) or Windows 11, x64 or ARM64. Licenses are one-time, cover three PCs you own, and include updates for 12 months. Every paid app has a 30-day trial with all features.
Drift Mirror
$29Folder mirror to an external drive · v4.4.0 · 18 MB
Pick folders, pick a drive, and Mirror keeps an exact copy that updates every time the drive is plugged in – only the changed files are copied. Deleted files stay in a “trash” folder on the drive for 30 days, so a mistake at home is not a mistake on the backup.
- Runs when the drive appears, no schedule to set
- Copies only changed files (checksum compare)
- 30-day trash for deleted files
- Verifies the copy after writing
Drift Vault
$49Versioned, encrypted backup · v3.2.1 · 34 MB
Every version of every file, encrypted with your passphrase (AES-256), to an external drive, a network share or any S3-compatible bucket you rent. Open the vault and browse a folder as it was on any Tuesday last year. Deduplication keeps 50 versions in the space of two.
- Hourly snapshots, retention you set
- Browse any point in time
- Local drive, NAS or S3-compatible target
- Encrypted before it leaves the PC
Drift Image
$59Whole-PC image and rescue USB · v2.8.0 · 52 MB
A full image of Windows, programs and settings, plus a bootable rescue USB stick. When the SSD dies, you put a new one in, boot from the stick and are back where you were an hour later – not a week of reinstalling. Incremental images every night keep the window small.
- Full and incremental images
- Bootable rescue USB with the restore tool
- Restore to a different-sized drive
- Mount an image to pull single files
Drift Twin
$39Two-way sync between your PCs · v1.9.3 · 21 MB
Desktop and laptop with the same folders, over the local network, no cloud in the middle. Conflicts are kept as two files with a note, never silently overwritten. Works over Wi-Fi at home and over a VPN when travelling.
- Two-way sync over LAN or VPN
- Conflict copies, never silent overwrites
- Selective folders per PC
- Bandwidth limit for slow links
Drift Sweep
$19Duplicate finder and space map · v2.1.0 · 12 MB
Before you back up 800 GB, find the 300 GB of duplicates and the six forgotten video exports. Sweep maps the drive as a treemap, groups identical files by content and lets you keep one copy with a click.
- Treemap of every folder
- Byte-exact duplicate groups
- Safe delete to the Recycle Bin
- Ignore lists for system folders
Drift Pulse
FreeDrive health and backup monitor · v1.5.2 · 9 MB
Free. Sits in the tray, reads S.M.A.R.T. health for every drive and checks that Mirror, Vault and Image actually ran. One icon: green, amber, red. A backup that silently stopped in March is the most common disaster we see.
- S.M.A.R.T. health for internal and USB drives
- Watches the last run of each Drift app
- Tray icon and a monthly summary
- Free, no license needed
Home bundle: Mirror + Vault + Image for $99 instead of $137. Everything: all five paid apps for $149. Pulse is free either way.
What can go wrong
Eight ways to lose data, and what covers each
A backup plan is a list of disasters you have decided to survive. Tick the ones that would hurt; the ticks in the table tell you which apps you need.
| Scenario | Mirror | Vault | Image | Twin | Sweep | Pulse |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Accidentally deleted or overwrote a file | ● | ● | · | ● | · | · |
| Ransomware encrypted the PC | · | ● | ● | · | · | · |
| The SSD died | ● | ● | ● | · | · | · |
| Laptop stolen or lost | · | ● | · | ● | · | · |
| Fire, flood, burglary at home | · | ● | · | · | · | · |
| Windows update broke everything | · | · | ● | · | · | · |
| “Which of these 40,000 photos is the original?” | · | · | · | · | ● | · |
| Backup silently stopped months ago | · | · | · | · | · | ● |
Restore drill
Five things to do once a month
A backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a plan. The drill takes fifteen minutes; the Backup Day e-mail reminds you.
- 1
Pick one file you would miss
A tax return, a wedding photo. Find it in the backup without looking at the original. If you cannot find it in five minutes, the backup is badly organized.
- 2
Restore it to a new folder
Compare with the original – size, date, open it. Mirror, Vault and Image all restore to a folder of your choice.
- 3
Boot the rescue USB once
Not to restore, just to see the menu. Ten minutes now saves a panicked afternoon later. Do it after every major Windows release.
- 4
Check the off-site copy
When did it last update? Pulse shows the date; if it is older than a month, the off-site copy is not part of the plan anymore.
- 5
Write the date on the calendar
Backup Day is the first Friday of the month. That is what the reminder list is for.
Office
Downtown Minneapolis
Six people on the 23rd floor of a shared office on South 6th Street. Support by e-mail on business days, phone for license questions during office hours. Data-recovery questions welcome – even if you never bought anything.
- Address
- Drift Backup LLC
120 S 6th St, 23rd Floor
Minneapolis, MN 55402 - Hours
- Monday to Friday, 8 am to 5 pm Central Time
- hello@driftbackup.com
- Phone
- +1 (612) 405-8163
“Vault to a drive at the studio, Mirror to a drive at home, Pulse in the tray. The day a client’s card reader corrupted 2,000 RAW files, I had them back from the hourly snapshot before lunch.”
“Drift Image saved me a week when the laptop’s SSD failed. New drive, rescue stick, ninety minutes, everything back including the browser tabs.”
“The monthly reminder is what actually made the difference. Software I had; a habit I did not.”
Drift Backup LLC
120 S 6th St, 23rd Floor
Minneapolis, MN 55402, USA
FAQ
Before the first backup
- Do I need all six?
- No. Most homes run Mirror or Vault plus the free Pulse. Add Image if reinstalling Windows would cost you more than a day; add Twin if you work on two PCs; run Sweep once before the first big backup.
- Is there a cloud service?
- We do not run one. Vault can write to any S3-compatible storage you rent (or a NAS), encrypted before upload, so the provider sees only random bytes. You keep the keys; we never see the data.
- How long does a restore take?
- From a USB 3 drive, roughly 100–120 MB per second: 500 GB in about 75 minutes. Image restores a 250 GB system drive in 40–60 minutes. The plan builder above estimates it for your numbers.
- What about the free trial?
- 30 days with every feature, no card. After that Pulse stays free; the others ask for a key. Backups made during the trial remain readable forever – Vault archives can be opened with the free reader.
- Will it slow down my PC?
- Mirror and Vault run at low priority and pause when you are on battery or a game is full-screen. Image runs incrementals at night by default.
- What is Backup Day?
- A monthly e-mail on the first Friday: run the backup, check the light in Pulse, do one restore drill. It also carries release notes and the 3-2-1 checklist PDF. Only an e-mail address; one-click unsubscribe.
- Refunds?
- 30 days on every paid app, any reason – see the Refund Policy.
