Total Drive Review: Cheap Encrypted Cloud Backup, With Small Print Worth Reading

Total Drive is the cloud storage and backup product from Total Security Ltd, the publisher of TotalAV. It arrived in 2024 with a simple pitch: a lot of encrypted space for very little money in year one. This review explains what you get, what "end-to-end encrypted" means in Total Drive's own small print, how the pricing works after the introductory year, and how it compares with the services most people already pay for.

What Total Drive is

Total Drive backs up and syncs files from Windows, Android and Apple devices to Total Security's cloud, with browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Opera and Safari. Files are encrypted on the device with AES-256 before upload, travel over TLS and sit encrypted on the servers. You can restore deleted files, roll back to earlier versions, share single files or whole folders with a link and revoke that access later, and organise storage with folders and tags. There is a "large file upload" allowance subject to platform limits.

It is positioned as backup first, collaboration second. There is no document editing, no office suite integration and no team features. Think of it as a vault for photos, documents and video rather than a Google Drive replacement.

The encryption claim, read carefully

Total Drive's marketing says "end-to-end encrypted". The footnote on the same page says that file content is encrypted and that "metadata such as file names and folder structures may not be encrypted". That is an honest disclosure and an important one. It means the service can see what your files are called and how they are organised, even if it cannot read their contents, and it is not the zero-knowledge model where the provider holds no key at all. For most people backing up family photos that is fine. For anyone storing sensitive documents, a true zero-knowledge option such as pCloud's Crypto folder is a different class of product; our pCloud vs Google Drive comparison explains the distinction.

Storage and price

Total Security does not print a storage figure on the pricing page, which is unusual. At the time of writing the plan is sold as Total Drive Standard at an introductory $19 for the first year and a regular rate of $99 a year, and the storage attached to that offer has varied: reviewers in early 2026 saw a 10 TB plan, while more recent promotions show 500 GB for the $19 year. The checkout page states the capacity for the offer you are being sold; read it before you pay. Monthly, quarterly and biannual billing exist, all plans auto-renew, and introductory pricing is for first-time customers only.

Refunds follow the publisher's standard rule: 30 days on annual and biannual plans, 14 days on monthly, quarterly and add-ons, and the subscription must be fully terminated in the dashboard, not just set to non-renewing.

Get Total Drive at the introductory price

How it compares

Per gigabyte in year one, Total Drive is the cheapest thing on the table. At the regular $99 rate it is roughly level with Google One and pCloud, both of which have longer track records, published capacities and, in pCloud's case, lifetime pricing that removes the renewal question entirely. See pCloud Family vs Google One vs iCloud if a household plan is what you are after.

User experience and reputation

The apps are simple and the initial backup is a two-click job. The Google Play listing sits around 3.7 stars across several thousand reviews, and the pattern in the negative ones is consistent: not the software, but renewal charges the user did not expect and cancellation they found hard to locate. That matches every Total Security product. The fix is the same each time: find the subscription in the account dashboard, switch off auto-renew on the day you buy, and keep the confirmation email.

Who should buy it

• Buy if you want an inexpensive first year of encrypted backup for photos and documents, you are not relying on it for sensitive files, and you will manage the renewal.
• Buy pCloud instead if you want zero-knowledge encryption or a lifetime plan; see backing up photos outside Google and Apple.
• Skip if you already pay for Google One or iCloud+ and your devices live in that ecosystem. A second cloud rarely gets used.

Verdict

Total Drive is a capable, no-frills encrypted backup with a very cheap first year and an ordinary second one. Its encryption is real but not zero-knowledge, and its publisher's auto-renewal habits are the main thing to manage. Buy the introductory year with auto-renew off, confirm the capacity at checkout, and treat it as a second copy of your photos rather than your only one.

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