[Macworld]

Post your comments for CrashPlan+: Reliable cloud backup and online storage here

[spectral7]

I would advise having a local Crashplan drive so it backs up to Cloud and local drive at same time.
You only need to restore from CP central when things go really bad ie. in total loss situations Theft/Fire etc.

[bawilliamson]

What kind of broadband service (home? work?) do you have that would allow uploading 490 GB (!) of data in four days without penalty?!! Most of us living in the real world do not have that kind of access ever.

[AndrewRodney]

bawilliamson, on 16 May 2012 - 05:47 AM, said:

What kind of broadband service (home? work?) do you have that would allow uploading 490 GB (!) of data in four days without penalty?!! Most of us living in the real world do not have that kind of access ever.

Must be pretty damn fast. That said, I’ve used CrashPlan + and recently decided to upload my images and Lightroom catalog, about 400 gigs. Took about 8 days non stop using a Comcast Cable. I just hooked the drive to a Macbook Pro figuring it would use the least energy resources over the week. No issues. In the end, saving the money on their optional drive service and the number of days that would take, I’m pleased that this all worked even if it took 8 days to do so.

[darkelf]

i've been using CrashPlan PROe at my office for some time, and just switched my home computers from Mozy to CrashPlan+. super easy to set up, works flawlessly.

its also worth noting that you can download the CrashPlan+ software for free and backup to a local hard drive, or if you have a friend who has a lot of disk and is also running CrashPlan, backup to them.

[rjmorita]

400 GB in 8 days is very, very fast. It would have easily taken me a couple of months. I've been using Backblaze for the cloud backup and pretty happy with it. I'd love to see a comparison article on CrashPlan vs Backblaze.

[lujocycle]

My wife and I have used CrashPlan for about a year, and one of the most important daily usability features of it is that you can control the percentage of your CPU that CrashPlan uses, as well as the amount of bandwidth. We used Carbonite previously and both of us saw huge performance hits on our computers as Carbonite routinely raced away using huge percentages of the CPU cycles, slowing everything else on the computer to a crawl. It was so bad we often found ourselves pausing Carbonite when we needed to do work so we wouldn't be interrupted. The backed up files on Carbonite didn't often work when accessed via the iOS app or the web, giving us little confidence about the integrity of our data on Carbonite. Neither of us have had a problem since using CrashPlan. There are a number of online backup options out there, and Carbonite seems to be the most popular (best marketed), but our experience is that there are other options that work much better! Thanks for looking at these--backup is important!

[ambiguo42]

I've been using Crashplan+ Unlimited for the last year, and I couldn't be happier. I have 1TB of data backed up to their servers, although it took months to accomplish that. Backups were kind of painful when I had only 1Mb upstream, but are much better now that I have 3Mb up/ service.

For $125, you can send a drive full of data to Crashplan and "seed" your initial backup to save time. They will return your drive to you and spare you from having to upload hundreds of GB.

Regarding encryption, you can also specify your own private encryption key. I did this, and it encrypts the data locally before transmission. Crashplan cannot decrypt the files for you in this case, but it is
incredibly secure.

Crashplan also allows you to backup to other computers you own and computers of "friends" across the Internet; this feature is free, no subscription required. I have other computers in my household backing up to one centralized system. I also host off-site backups for a few family members with some of my extra storage space.

The software itself is very full-featured, and is very flexible for custom configurations. Many configuration options are locked down in free mode, but they are all available to subscribers. My favorite option is to create multiple backup sets. You can set different destinations for different sets, and customize backup frequency and prioritization between sets.

Overall, I've evaluated multiple online backup solutions, and Crashplan is an easy winner. Although I wish they'd offer a small amount of cloud storage for free ala Mozy, Crashplan's other free options are very attractive. My only complaint is that the Crashplan software is Java-based for multi-platform support, and tends to be a little slow when scrolling and loading menus. The Java-based engine is also pretty memory intensive; it's using 385 MB RAM on my Mac. This isn't a big deal with my 8GB of RAM, but users with older Macs should be aware of this.

Verdict: BUY. $50 a year is pretty cheap insurance. Everyone should have backups, especially off-site ones.

[BradPDX]

I can see this as a good offsite solution for files, but it still appears that it cannot do a "system restore" like Time Machine can do from a local drive. I've needed that feature more than once when a hard drive went bad, and was able to get my Macs back up and running in short order.

Can Crashplan do anything to preserve all of that data and organization, such settings, passwords, etc.? For me, that is where a full local backup (TM or SuperDuper!, for example) really shines.

[nunoferreira]

That 250MB download limit stopped me from using my credit card and subscribe for one year of CrashPlan+ Unlimited. Not a good choice when you have more than 2 TB of data to recover.

[RobertArmstrongJr]

nunoferreira, on 16 May 2012 - 01:24 PM, said:

That 250MB download limit stopped me from using my credit card and subscribe for one year of CrashPlan+ Unlimited. Not a good choice when you have more than 2 TB of data to recover.

Not sure why you feel there is a limit. I use Crashplan + for a long time and it backs up very large videos greater than 2 GB's without issue, also backs up my TV shows and that folder is greater than 12 GB. I shave yet to find any file that Crashplan cannot handle.

[dellnor]

I recently subscribed to Crash Plan. Works just fine until you require technical support. They supply NONE. If you call, they tell you so, and website indicates online support not available. If you think you will never need technical support, use Crash Plan. If not, look elsewhere. Other vendors do.

[darkelf]

dellnor, on 16 May 2012 - 07:06 PM, said:

I recently subscribed to Crash Plan. Works just fine until you require technical support. They supply NONE. If you call, they tell you so, and website indicates online support not available. If you think you will never need technical support, use Crash Plan. If not, look elsewhere. Other vendors do.

I don't know what you were asking for, but CrashPlan certainly does provide technical support. http://support.crashplan.com/

[edcroteau]

rjmorita, on 16 May 2012 - 07:20 AM, said:

400 GB in 8 days is very, very fast. It would have easily taken me a couple of months. I've been using Backblaze for the cloud backup and pretty happy with it. I'd love to see a comparison article on CrashPlan vs Backblaze.

We switched from Backblaze (much easier to use) to Crashplan+ (much more powerful). Most important is the ability to backup many drives to both the cloud (CrashPlan servers) and local hard drives (a drive attached to a co-workers machine or a NAS for instance). Much more control over the backup with Crashplan+ although definitely a bit harder to setup. Finally, if you have multiple computers on Backblaze they are $5 each / month whereas for $12 / month I have a lot of different computers at home and work all backed up to the cloud and locally. Hope that helps.