I use crashplan backup between a few family members.

Everyone has unlimited data, backup between us all.

FREE

IcI:

 

Foo: I use Backblaze which works well for me. Gave Crashplan a trial but stuck with Backblaze. 

 

Why did you choose to stay with Backblaze?

 

 

 

Any Carbonite users out there?

 

Backblaze pretty much backs up 'everything' and you select the folders you want to omit rather than what to include. Seems to have good backup speeds and yearly cost is low.

Having said that, haven't yet had to restore a large number of files yet, maybe I should do a test.

I decided to use CrashPlan and make use of the unlimited space more. I'm also using CrashPlan to backup to a variety of external disks.

I have family members back up their photos and files to my computer using BitTorrent Sync. I'm considering having them use CrashPlan, but with BT Sync it's plain files that are easy to access. BT Sync is pretty reliable, but not perfect.

I backup files on my workstations and VMs to my server which copies the files to a separate NAS each night. I currently run Crashplan but I'm in the process of replacing it with Duplicati (canary version) backing up to Google Drive. I also take a snapshot of my VM images once a month and copy them to Gdrive using rclone which has built in encryption. I've been pretty happy with Duplicati so far, I managed to corrupt the local database and it managed to repair itself using the files on Gdrive.

So, Crashplan, anyone have any idea how long it would take to send them a 4GB file ? Have fibre so speed here shouldn't be a problem.

Also saw somewhere, was it here ? they have servers in Australia, does that actually help with speed ?

Also, something about a 250MB limit for downloading via web, does that affect anything, you can use a desktop app instead ?

Also also, you can select individual folders / files / whatever you like to upload ?

And your stuff stays where it is, non of this stupid moving stuff too special Crashplan folders for uploading ?

Thanks

timmmay:  ...What's your favorite software to do backups to local disks? Incremental backups are essential IMHO, ...

rb99:

 

So, Crashplan, anyone have any idea how long it would take to send them a 4GB file ? Have fibre so speed here shouldn't be a problem.

 

Also saw somewhere, was it here ? they have servers in Australia, does that actually help with speed ?

 

Also, something about a 250MB limit for downloading via web, does that affect anything, you can use a desktop app instead ?

 

Also also, you can select individual folders / files / whatever you like to upload ?

 

And your stuff stays where it is, non of this stupid moving stuff too special Crashplan folders for uploading ?

 

Thanks

 

Servers in Australia. Select whatever you want to send at the drive/folder or file level. Files stay where they are. You can create backup sets and multiple destinations. For example my RAW image files go to the cloud and one offsite disk, my general backups go to the cloud and another internal disk, my backups folder goes only to an internal backup disk, etc. It's pretty flexible.

I have 20Mbps fiber, it gets between 10 and 17Mbps most of the time. Not sure how long it takes, but it's pretty quick.

With about 3TB to back up, crashplan spends most of its time synchronizing block information. The external drives have to be connected the whole time that it does that, PC not shut down or rebooted or even hibernated. So for my gaming PC in the bedroom its useless since I only have the ext drives on when I am not sleeping since they make noise.

Thanks Timmmay, your answers are what I was hoping for, very useful info. Am getting quite tempted now.

Richms, does synchronizing blocks mean its checking for changes to see what needs to be updated ? can't that be scheduled - I thought it could backup continuously OR be set to certain times, like when you're not sleeping. Or am I just talking rubbish.

rb99:

 

Thanks Timmmay, your answers are what I was hoping for, very useful info. Am getting quite tempted now.

 

Richms, does synchronizing blocks mean its checking for changes to see what needs to be updated ? can't that be scheduled - I thought it could backup continuously OR be set to certain times, like when you're not sleeping. Or am I just talking rubbish.

 

There's a period you can set (defaults to 3 days I think) where it scans the drive again and catches anything it's missed, and in the process it does tend to look like its backing everything up again but it will read reading the files on their servers and comparing it to yours.

There is some sync overhead with external disks, but it doesn't do that with the cloud service - at least not often.

One of the things CrashPlan does is de-duplication at the block level. That means if you have two copies of a file, or identical blocks, it only uses the storage once. I tested that, it works fine. For the feature it keeps the hash of each block in memory as it needs to compare it quickly when it does a backup. That's why RAM usage goes up with storage.

I'm not going to back up massive bulk files with CrashPlan, just ones that need to go to multiple destinations. For example instead of the 2TB of customer photos I'll back up a 200MB jpeg version, and keep the raws in my hard disk backup system.

Thanks people, guess all I need to do now is to give it a try and then, maybe decide what exactly to backup. Most of my stuff is backup, but to external HDDs and another PC in the house, I guess its a good idea to finally do some off site stuff, family photos first probably......

...though maybe I should get that Creators update done first.

I think its transfering the details of those blocks of the files, which because my internet is crap just takes so long, but its more the fact they have designed the process to not be able to be stopped/started that is the most annoying thing.

I also think they use it as a method of stopping people putting too much up onto their service. That and the problem where the service will silently crash and restart all the time effectivly doing nothing till you give it some commands to let it use more memory to do its thing are also really shadey.

Check its backing up. Drop a brand new file in the middle of your stuff and check that it can be restored a week or so later. If not, then investigate whats gone wrong. It really is not a set up and leave platform like they would have you believe.

richms:

 

I think its transfering the details of those blocks of the files, which because my internet is crap just takes so long, but its more the fact they have designed the process to not be able to be stopped/started that is the most annoying thing.

 

I also think they use it as a method of stopping people putting too much up onto their service. That and the problem where the service will silently crash and restart all the time effectivly doing nothing till you give it some commands to let it use more memory to do its thing are also really shadey.

 

Check its backing up. Drop a brand new file in the middle of your stuff and check that it can be restored a week or so later. If not, then investigate whats gone wrong. It really is not a set up and leave platform like they would have you believe.

 

Sounds like something to keep an eye on, but is it likely to be more of a problem than the other options (Backblaze etc) ? It doesn't seem to have a dubious reputation, though its unlikely to be perfect.