External drives
Archival backup for drives at £6.99 per TB a month — backed up daily, kept while paid, recent files instant and older ones in up to 12 hours.
Any external drive can be added to a Mac’s backup: SSDs you carry, the photo archive under the desk, the drive you plug in twice a year. Drives carry the Archival tag in the app because that is what they are: a copy that is always there, priced for keeping rather than for speed.
Price
£6.99 per TB a month, billed by the drive’s whole terabytes (a “2 TB” drive is 2 TB). Monthly or yearly, with two months free when you pay yearly. Each drive is its own subscription line; add and remove drives independently of your Macs.
How drives are backed up
Drives are backed up once a day whenever they’re plugged in, rather than every hour. On the first backup, files you haven’t touched for 90 days go straight to archival storage; files you’ve changed recently stay quick to restore. When a file changes, the new version is uploaded whole.
Kept while paid
A drive doesn’t have to be connected to stay backed up. Unplug it, put it in a drawer, take it travelling — its backup stays exactly as it was (“Not seen for 16 days · kept while away”). When you plug it back in, Yester backs up the changes.
Restoring from a drive backup
Recent files restore instantly. Files that haven’t changed in 90 days or more live in archival storage and take up to 12 hours to arrive: Yester queues the restore, shows an estimate, and sends you a notification when it’s ready. Restoring a whole drive is queued the same way and arrives in one go.
Versions on drives
Drives don’t have a history plan of their own. Older versions of drive files are kept for as long as the longest Mac plan on your account — at least 90 days. The current state of every file is kept for as long as you pay for the drive.
Removing a drive
Remove a drive from the account page or from Devices & Plan in the app. Its subscription ends and the backup stays readable for 90 days, then it is deleted.