CrashPlan - Opinion

[Soloam]

Hello all, I what to have a secure backup offsite, and I'm considering CrashPlan! My main problem is that a small search online is full with people complaining that the service failled when they need it the most, at restauration. Problems that simply can't happen in a service like this... Deleted Files, Missing Folders and Files, Contant Crashes.... Not to mention speed (but that is the less of my conserns, I prefere to wait one month to get my backup, that losing it for good).

So what is you personal experience? I keep making off site backups to external drives, but I would like to have a more automatic solution... just to be safe...

Thank you all

 

[mrichardson03]

What quantity of data? Much past a TB or two, cloud backup starts to get expensive.

 

[Soloam]

CrashPlan is unlimeted space, so the value will not change... in my case I would say that I would upload arround 1TB-2TB

 

[mrichardson03]

I've had good luck running Duplicity in a jail, but I don't backup everything to the cloud. I do nightly backups to S3 Infrequent Access of family photos, important documents and the like, and do monthly backups to Seagate Archive drives in an eSATA dock of everything else. For the quantity of data that I'd want to backup, reliable cloud storage is simply too expensive. I like Duplicity because it doesn't care much about the storage backend (could be a SFTP server, could be S3, etc). If I wanted to back everything up to the cloud, I'd probably use that and Backblaze B2. Back of the napkin math says you'd be paying around $10 a month for that.

 

[Nick2253]

CrashPlan is unlimeted space, so the value will not change... in my case I would say that I would upload arround 1TB-2TB

The value changes compared to other services.

If you only are backing up a few hundred GB, than there are definitely cheaper options, if not better options, than CrashPlan. In your case, at 1-2TB, unlimited cloud storage is going to be much more cost effective.

My main problem is that a small search online is full with people complaining that the service failled when they need it the most, at restauration.

Don't forget that people generally take to the internet to voice complaints, not compliments. Every cloud service provider has complaints, sometimes driven from service problems, and sometimes it's driven from user problems.

This is a pretty good summary of the many cloud backup providers: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2288745,00.asp

I would also recommend that periodic tests of your backups be part of your regular routine (quarterly if not monthly). If you get in the habit of checking your backups, no matter what service you choose, you'll know what needs to be done when the times comes, instead of guessing, and you'll have the confidence that your data is actually there.