Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

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TomatoTomahto
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by TomatoTomahto »

JPH wrote: Sat Aug 26, 2017 7:22 am
pondering wrote: Fri Aug 25, 2017 8:08 pm Whatever backup method you choose, please schedule a restore at least every six months, of at least some of your data.
Why?
Pretty much for the same reason my whole-house generator runs a test every week. You don't want to find that there's a system failure when you need it the most.
I get the FI part but not the RE part of FIRE.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by pondering »

I've been in IT for over 20 years and it is important to verify that what you think is working is actually working. As systems change the processes that work will stop working after changes.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by jebmke »

pondering wrote: Sat Aug 26, 2017 7:51 am I've been in IT for over 20 years and it is important to verify that what you think is working is actually working. As systems change the processes that work will stop working after changes.
Sometimes they don't even work from the beginning.
jebmke wrote: Sat Aug 19, 2017 4:43 pm
Mudpuppy wrote: Sat Aug 19, 2017 4:27 pm Also, test your backup device. The only good backup is the tested backup. Make sure you can pull data off the backup system if needed.
Many years ago I was the controller for an electronics firm. Our engineering department had a VAX cluster that they used for various purposes including firmware development for some of the products. The cluster was backed up religiously every night. The head of engineering took the prior night's tapes home and then swapped them the next day. Weekly, Iron Mountain would come by and retrieve one or more of the tapes for storage offsite.

On a whim, I asked them if they ever had to recover a system from the offsite backup (the offsite storage was not cheap at the time). "Do you even know if it is there?" I asked. "Well, we assume it is but we should check."

They retrieved the last full backup and discovered that despite the system logs, the files never made the trip from the hard disk to the tape. For two years they had been shipping blank tapes to Iron Mountain.

Fortunately they had everything on the disks still - including archive software code that was required to be retained for some kind of product certification (FM, I think).
Don't trust me, look it up. https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions-and-publications
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by bostondan »

I've been using CrashPlan for nearly 10 years. I'm disappointed that they are going away, but I don't believe they made any promise to us to never change. Businesses frequently pivot. It's just the way things are. I'm only slightly annoyed because I recommended them to so many people, so now they might think I gave bad advice.

I managed to do an annual renewal for a family plan just last month, so I'll have until 7/2018 on Small Business, then I'll get unlimited backup for 5 computers for $12.50/month until 7/2019. I know people are freaking out that were on month-to-month, but for me this is hardly a sudden change. I'll have approximately two years to figure it out. The 75% discount should really give most people at least a year to figure out an alternative. I don't think the competitors beat the price taking into account the discount.

By the time 7/2019 comes around, who knows what I'll be doing for backup. That's a long time from now. Maybe I wouldn't have even been using CrashPlan anymore by that time because something better comes out.

Ultimately, this is why I use more than one backup method. You can't rely on any single backup method to be foolproof.
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amd2135
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by amd2135 »

amd2135 wrote: Thu Aug 24, 2017 11:34 am
bertilak wrote: Thu Aug 24, 2017 9:51 am NEXT QUESTION!

So, if one goes with CrashPlan Pro for business, what new features might one take advantage of?
200 - 400 kilobit per second restores, no mailed disk drive option and total apathy from support.

Crashplan business did not come through for us.
Now that I have more time for a larger reply-

Despite the above problems I continued to use Crashplan for local, personal backups. For cloud backups I switched to Backblaze after the business Crashplan incident. No complaints there, I recommend them.

Comments on the built-in Windows "File History" feature
Windows 10 comes with "File History" for backups. Their legacy backup software is still around as well but I've had trouble with it in the past. Windows 10 has also crippled the volume snapshot feature for "previous versions" in W10 in favor of "File History".

I gave File History a try on two machines and ran into numerous issues. The viewer for recovering files showed that it had appeared to lose entire drives, but I could search for them- odd. Its copy of my Dropbox folder was spiraling out of control with a multitude of versioned copies of unchanged files. Then it silently "forgot" to back up my OneDrive folder and other random files it should have copied. Some folders with long file names were understandably excluded, but were never copied after shortening them and forcing a manual backup.

Needless to say I won't be bothering with it.

Bvckup 2
As of today I'm using Bvckup 2 instead of Crashplan for local backups. I purchased three licenses to mirror files from my file server and two client machines to an attached backup drive.

Pros:
  • Much faster. Less RAM and CPU usage. Important on a Core 2 Duo laptop (file server) that's being given more and more responsibility.
  • Deleted files are archived for a configurable time before they are automatically purged.
  • Crashplan uses a proprietary format. That makes it reliant on their software for restores among other issues. Bvckup 2 mirrors files as they are.
  • Due to the mirroring style of backup, it's friendlier for Backblaze on the file server to sync them to the cloud.
Cons:
  • No versioning. Fortunately Backblaze and my safe deposit box backups both provide a form of versioning. I think that combination will be sufficient for my purposes.
  • Requires that I give the client machines direct visibility to the backup drive over the network. A veneer of isolation against crypto malware is thus removed.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by Mudpuppy »

JPH wrote: Sat Aug 26, 2017 7:22 am
pondering wrote: Fri Aug 25, 2017 8:08 pm Whatever backup method you choose, please schedule a restore at least every six months, of at least some of your data.
Why?
The only good backup is the backup that you've tested and know you can restore from. If you don't test that you can restore from the backup, then you don't know if the backup is proverbially spinning its wheels and not actually saving your data. There are countless IT stories about people losing data because they had a wonderful backup policy, but they never tested the restore functionality to be sure the backups were actually working properly.

You don't have to do a full restore to test that restoring works. A full restore can be cost-prohibitive with cloud-based backup services that charge based on the amount of data downloaded. But you should randomly select several files on a regular basis and make sure than you can restore them. With an external drive backup drive, you can take the drive to another system and test if you can open the files there.

I'd also add that you should also have either: (a) an offline backup that's regularly updated (e.g. a rotation of external drives) and/or (b) a backup service that supports versioning and retention of old versions. This protects you against ransomware, which encrypts your files. If you only have a single connected external drive as a backup solution, the malware can encrypt that too. And if your backup service does not support versioning, then it'll overwrite the backup file with the encrypted file the next time it runs. But if you have an offline backup and/or versioning support in the backup service, you can restore the earlier version of the files (the way they were before the ransomware hit). You might lose a few hours or days of work, but that's better than losing everything.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by jebmke »

Excellent summary. I'd add a couple of things.

Prove to yourself you can restore to a second machine without referring to the first machine. This requires having good instructions for yourself somewhere you can reach them

If you have an encrypted backup system - whether it is on your own hardware or in the cloud -- make sure that the key is accessible from alternate hardware. Don't just store it in a Keepass folder that is only on your computer that is being backed up.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by drwtsn32 »

I love CrashPlan. It had nice multi-tiered retention settings, deduplication, friend-to-friend backup, etc. My Family subscription lasts until late 2019, but I'm looking at alternatives. I will probably stick with CrashPlan Pro for my main machine that has most data, but I can't justify the cost per computer for my other systems. (I had 7 computers being backed up by the Family plan - most of them back up only 10GB or so.)

Out of the ones I've tried so far, CloudBerry Backup is my favorite. You buy the software and then get your own cloud storage account with whatever provider you want. The only recurring fee is from whatever cloud storage provider you choose.

CloudBerry Backup supports many important things: VSS, block level backups, compression, encryption, backup sets with independent schedules, multiple destinations (local and cloud), etc. I wish it supported dedupe and had more flexible retention options like CrashPlan though. With CloudBerry you can keep X versions and tell it to never remove deleted files, but that's about it. I can't have it keep X versions for the past week, Y versions for the past month, Z versions for the past year, etc. I loved that about CrashPlan.

CloudBerry support has been good and it's also a multiplatform solution. In my case I need support for both Windows and Linux.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by tm3 »

My experience suggests that losing Crashplan may be a blessing in disguise.

I subscribed to Crashplan for a couple of years. All went well until I transitioned to a new computer and could not get Crashplan to operate, so I started going round and round with their customer service. It was easily the worst customer service experience that I have ever had with a software product, and after a couple of weeks of back and forth and never getting things to work I cancelled.

I am very happy that I never got into a data restoration situation, as I have serious doubts that it could have been done expeditiously if at all.
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TomatoTomahto
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by TomatoTomahto »

tm3 wrote: Sat Aug 26, 2017 1:42 pm My experience suggests that losing Crashplan may be a blessing in disguise.

I subscribed to Crashplan for a couple of years. All went well until I transitioned to a new computer and could not get Crashplan to operate, so I started going round and round with their customer service. It was easily the worst customer service experience that I have ever had with a software product, and after a couple of weeks of back and forth and never getting things to work I cancelled.

I am very happy that I never got into a data restoration situation, as I have serious doubts that it could have been done expeditiously if at all.
I had a hard drive fail once, and migrated to a new computer twice. Crashplan worked well on all three occasions. YMMV.
I get the FI part but not the RE part of FIRE.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by drwtsn32 »

tm3 wrote: Sat Aug 26, 2017 1:42 pm My experience suggests that losing Crashplan may be a blessing in disguise.

I subscribed to Crashplan for a couple of years. All went well until I transitioned to a new computer and could not get Crashplan to operate, so I started going round and round with their customer service. It was easily the worst customer service experience that I have ever had with a software product, and after a couple of weeks of back and forth and never getting things to work I cancelled.

I am very happy that I never got into a data restoration situation, as I have serious doubts that it could have been done expeditiously if at all.
I've never had a problem with this scenario. When I get a new computer, I'd copy all the data to it from my old computer, install CrashPlan, and then tell it I want to "adopt" the old computer's backup. Worked great every time....
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CrashPlan ends, what's next?

Post by BogleMelon »

[Post merged into here, see below. --admin LadyGeek]

Now that CrashPlan is coming to an end. What is the next backup system you are looking into?
- Blackblaze (recommended by thewirecutter)
- Carbonite (recommend by CrashPlan with a decent discount for their users for the first year)
- Other?
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by tm3 »

drwtsn32 wrote: Sat Aug 26, 2017 4:16 pm
tm3 wrote: Sat Aug 26, 2017 1:42 pm My experience suggests that losing Crashplan may be a blessing in disguise.

I subscribed to Crashplan for a couple of years. All went well until I transitioned to a new computer and could not get Crashplan to operate, so I started going round and round with their customer service. It was easily the worst customer service experience that I have ever had with a software product, and after a couple of weeks of back and forth and never getting things to work I cancelled.

I am very happy that I never got into a data restoration situation, as I have serious doubts that it could have been done expeditiously if at all.
I've never had a problem with this scenario. When I get a new computer, I'd copy all the data to it from my old computer, install CrashPlan, and then tell it I want to "adopt" the old computer's backup. Worked great every time....
That is how I started off, but, the newly installed CrashPlan would not open -- thus began the merry go round of climbing up the tiers of CrashPlan customer support, and never reaching a resolution.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by LadyGeek »

I merged BogleMelon's post into here, which is a similar discussion.
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ResearchMed
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Re: CrashPlan ends, what's next?

Post by ResearchMed »

BogleMelon wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 10:50 am Now that CrashPlan is coming to an end. What is the next backup system you are looking into?
- Blackblaze (recommended by thewirecutter)
- Carbonite (recommend by CrashPlan with a decent discount for their users for the first year)
- Other?
I've used Carbonite, including when I did indeed have a catastrophic crash and *needed* that backup.

The "short version" of this report is: "Carbonite WORKS" and has great customer service.
Backblaze? I'm surprised they are still in business... read link to my real time report.
As I concluded then: "Our final evaluation of Backblaze is "THANK GOODNESS FOR CARBONITE"."

Entirely as a coincidence, just prior to the crash, I decided to give BlackBlaze a try, and might have considered using both as a redundancy, given I was then dealing with business records, and didn't want to risk not being up to date on the physical back up drive "here".

So... I had both services to compare, although I hadn't expected the recovery comparison...

The Carbonite recovery went fine, except for a "date" peculiarity depending upon how one restores (online or with a physical drive).

However... :shock: as the Backblaze files were restored... I happened to open one, and then another, and then another... and they were all... EMPTY.
Backblaze insisted that was impossible.

Worse, whereas Carbonite has an active and usually impressively competent phone service... Backblaze only used email/messaging. And they promise a reply within 24 hours (!?).
Even "more worse", a query about how a previous response "didn't work"... that also took another 24 hours....
(It also took quite a few "24 hour cycles" to get them to understand that I really did expect my money back. I'd had the service for a very short time, and then it didn't work at all, anyway.)

I logged my "real time comparison" here somewhere (on BH) without knowing what was going to happen.

Here is the BH report, from 2014:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=136887&p=2034898&h ... e#p2034898

RM
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by jebmke »

Looking at their web page, I didn't find much technical information available. Maybe I missed it.
Don't trust me, look it up. https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions-and-publications
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by Mudpuppy »

jebmke wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 11:50 am Looking at their web page, I didn't find much technical information available. Maybe I missed it.
Whose webpage? We've got several companies being discussed in both the original thread and merged thread.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by jebmke »

Mudpuppy wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 12:45 pm
jebmke wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 11:50 am Looking at their web page, I didn't find much technical information available. Maybe I missed it.
Whose webpage? We've got several companies being discussed in both the original thread and merged thread.
Carbonite - just following the post above. I was looking for info on whether they maintain versions indefinitely.

I did notice that they use 128bit encryption - how strong is that and do they store the key on their site or can you retain it locally without having a key on their site?
Don't trust me, look it up. https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions-and-publications
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by Ricola »

Why no mention of IDrive, they are rated number 1 by a few online reviews. According to them IDrive does everything you could imagine and are offering 70 -90% first-year discounts. I tried them but spent way too much time trying to get it to work. Ended up uninstalling, but they don't have a way to cancel your account in the settings. On the forum, some folks were saying they were still being charged and could not cancel their account, even to the point that iDrive was getting their other banks cards to charge against. I sent a few emails stating that I cancelled my account, but I still don't have a confirmation that my account is cancelled. If they charge my card next year I will need to dispute the charge with my the card company. So now I will have to be on the lookout. All of the features it has would have been nice, but it just would not work correctly. Also as it added revisions it kept upping the space usage, pretty soon you will need to increase your plan. So deceptive, yet these reviews online give it glowing reviews...maybe they are getting paid off.

Have been using Mozy for many years with no problems, but their fees are not competitive. Was thinking of going to Backblaze, but I still need some assurances from user experiences.
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Re: CrashPlan ends, what's next?

Post by KarenC »

ResearchMed wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 11:08 am However... :shock: as the Backblaze files were restored... I happened to open one, and then another, and then another... and they were all... EMPTY.
Backblaze insisted that was impossible.
Had you perhaps run into this issue?
Unzipping restores with the built in Windows unzip utility can cause empty, invalid or 0KB files.
https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/art ... store-Win-
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by drwtsn32 »

jebmke wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 12:53 pm I did notice that they use 128bit encryption - how strong is that and do they store the key on their site or can you retain it locally without having a key on their site?
Strength of 128-bit encryption depends on algorithm used. If it's AES encryption it'd be fine.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by jebmke »

drwtsn32 wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 1:43 pm
jebmke wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 12:53 pm I did notice that they use 128bit encryption - how strong is that and do they store the key on their site or can you retain it locally without having a key on their site?
Strength of 128-bit encryption depends on algorithm used. If it's AES encryption it'd be fine.
Thanks. Looks like they delete files after 30-days so no robust versioning. This is a deal breaker for me. Their web site is pretty thin on technical information.
Don't trust me, look it up. https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions-and-publications
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by mrc »

TomatoTomahto wrote: Sat Aug 26, 2017 7:27 am
JPH wrote: Sat Aug 26, 2017 7:22 am
pondering wrote: Fri Aug 25, 2017 8:08 pm Whatever backup method you choose, please schedule a restore at least every six months, of at least some of your data.
Why?
Pretty much for the same reason my whole-house generator runs a test every week. You don't want to find that there's a system failure when you need it the most.
This thread (and some of the criticisms of backblaze) encouraged me to run a test restore. I did. The file checksums in the files exploded from the download ZIP file are identical to the original files on my hard drive. I have the backblaze and a couple other passwords written down and stored in a safe place. I feel OK with backblaze + TimeMachine.
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Re: CrashPlan ends, what's next?

Post by ResearchMed »

KarenC wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 1:14 pm
ResearchMed wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 11:08 am However... :shock: as the Backblaze files were restored... I happened to open one, and then another, and then another... and they were all... EMPTY.
Backblaze insisted that was impossible.
Had you perhaps run into this issue?
Unzipping restores with the built in Windows unzip utility can cause empty, invalid or 0KB files.
https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/art ... store-Win-
Well, that would certainly be interesting IF that was the problem... because Backblaze was 100% unhelpful (on an every 24+hours communication schedule for even the shortest query) and they *insisted* that it could not be happening.
Why wouldn't *they* tell me about this possibility, or at least point to the link - their own link!? (Plus a workaround...)

Meanwhile, Carbonite was a dream in terms of customer service, and the backup worked, both by a FedEx'd drive (with the problematic file dates) and online.

Their online upload has gotten *much* faster, by the way.

Thanks.

RM
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Re: CrashPlan ends, what's next?

Post by Mudpuppy »

ResearchMed wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 3:29 pm Well, that would certainly be interesting IF that was the problem... because Backblaze was 100% unhelpful (on an every 24+hours communication schedule for even the shortest query) and they *insisted* that it could not be happening.
Why wouldn't *they* tell me about this possibility, or at least point to the link - their own link!? (Plus a workaround...)
The article was created in 2016. I believe you said your incident was in 2014. They may not have known about the issue at the time or they knew it was happening but not how to fix it back then. Eventually, they tracked it down and made a help page about it. Not being able to track down the solution to a problem until months or years later happens. IT people are not wizards.
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Re: CrashPlan ends, what's next?

Post by ResearchMed »

Mudpuppy wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 3:42 pm
ResearchMed wrote: Sun Aug 27, 2017 3:29 pm Well, that would certainly be interesting IF that was the problem... because Backblaze was 100% unhelpful (on an every 24+hours communication schedule for even the shortest query) and they *insisted* that it could not be happening.
Why wouldn't *they* tell me about this possibility, or at least point to the link - their own link!? (Plus a workaround...)
The article was created in 2016. I believe you said your incident was in 2014. They may not have known about the issue at the time or they knew it was happening but not how to fix it back then. Eventually, they tracked it down and made a help page about it. Not being able to track down the solution to a problem until months or years later happens. IT people are not wizards.
Yes, it's certainly true they aren't wizards.

The part that I especially disliked was when they kept telling me it was "impossible" for that to happen, regardless of the reason.
It *kept* happening.

:annoyed

If they paid attention to what clients said they were experiencing, they might be able to identify problems sooner...

RM
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by sco »

JPH wrote: Sat Aug 26, 2017 7:22 am
pondering wrote: Fri Aug 25, 2017 8:08 pm Whatever backup method you choose, please schedule a restore at least every six months, of at least some of your data.
Why?
Because most people (including governments and large companies), don't find out that their backups aren't doing what they believe until they try to restore... Guess when they typically try to restore?
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by takeshi »

For those considering a separate front end & cloud backend solution:
takeshi wrote: Wed Aug 23, 2017 7:51 am Currently testing out using Cloudberry paired with Backblaze B2.
takeshi wrote: Fri Aug 25, 2017 8:05 pm
Pacific wrote: Thu Aug 24, 2017 5:44 pm Can Backblaze back up to the cloud and locally (external hard drive or flash drive) at the same time?
Cloudberry allows this as does Arq (mentioned above). There are probably other backup apps that can as well.
Ok, with Cloudberry (Mac) I was constantly running into issues with it stalling on certain files. Transfer speed dropped to 0 and CPU was pegged with fans blasting until I killed the job. As far as I could tell the files in question were not open nor were there any permissions issues. I've lost count of how many times I have had to restart my first test job. Switched to Arq and I haven't had any of these problems. First test job is still running smoothly. I have not been testing either app for local backups but it is an option with them.

Not sure how much lag there is with B2's billing but I have uploaded a bit less than 200GB in testing so far and it is currently estimating 8 cents. Note that while they bill $0.005 per GB/month for storage, they bill $0.02 per GB downloaded. I think it is mentioned above but an Arq license is $50.
Last edited by takeshi on Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:43 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by BogleMelon »

takeshi wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:31 am Note that while they bill $0.005 per GB/month they bill $0.02 per download. I think it is mentioned above but an Arq license is $50.
What per download exactly means? is it per file? or per occurrence? say my 1TB hard desk crashed, and I needed to restore it, how would they bill?
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by takeshi »

Sorry, you caught me in the middle of writing my post and it has been clarified.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by BogleMelon »

takeshi wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:44 am Sorry, you caught me in the middle of writing my post and it has been clarified.
I am still confused. So they charge $50 one time licence fee plus $0.005/GB uploaded plus $0.02 per download (restoring occurrence)?
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by Mudpuppy »

BogleMelon wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:48 am
takeshi wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:44 am Sorry, you caught me in the middle of writing my post and it has been clarified.
I am still confused. So they charge $50 one time licence fee plus $0.005/GB uploaded plus $0.02 per download (restoring occurrence)?
Arq and Backblaze are two separate entities. It's a two party solution: a front end client ($50 for Arq) and a back end storage system (per GB uploaded/stored or downloaded for Backblaze).
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by BogleMelon »

Mudpuppy wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 10:49 am
BogleMelon wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:48 am
takeshi wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:44 am Sorry, you caught me in the middle of writing my post and it has been clarified.
I am still confused. So they charge $50 one time licence fee plus $0.005/GB uploaded plus $0.02 per download (restoring occurrence)?
Arq and Backblaze are two separate entities. It's a two party solution: a front end client ($50 for Arq) and a back end storage system (per GB uploaded/stored or downloaded for Backblaze).
That is not right. Backblaze is monthly service
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Ketawa
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by Ketawa »

BogleMelon wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 11:06 am
Mudpuppy wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 10:49 am
BogleMelon wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:48 am
takeshi wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:44 am Sorry, you caught me in the middle of writing my post and it has been clarified.
I am still confused. So they charge $50 one time licence fee plus $0.005/GB uploaded plus $0.02 per download (restoring occurrence)?
Arq and Backblaze are two separate entities. It's a two party solution: a front end client ($50 for Arq) and a back end storage system (per GB uploaded/stored or downloaded for Backblaze).
That is not right. Backblaze is monthly service
Backblaze B2 is a separate service from regular Backblaze. B2 is a cloud storage competitor, similar to Amazon S3. You pay Arq to provide the backup client with configuration/options to create a backup file system that can be stored locally, on a NAS, in the cloud, etc. Then you pay Backblaze B2 (or a similar service) a monthly cost based on the amount of data you have stored, how much you upload, how much you download.

I set up regular Backblaze for a trial this weekend but was underwhelmed with the configuration options and default settings, so I'm planning to give Arq a spin.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by BogleMelon »

Ketawa wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 11:25 am
BogleMelon wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 11:06 am
Mudpuppy wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 10:49 am
BogleMelon wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:48 am
takeshi wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 9:44 am Sorry, you caught me in the middle of writing my post and it has been clarified.
I am still confused. So they charge $50 one time licence fee plus $0.005/GB uploaded plus $0.02 per download (restoring occurrence)?
Arq and Backblaze are two separate entities. It's a two party solution: a front end client ($50 for Arq) and a back end storage system (per GB uploaded/stored or downloaded for Backblaze).
That is not right. Backblaze is monthly service
Backblaze B2 is a separate service from regular Backblaze. B2 is a cloud storage competitor, similar to Amazon S3. You pay Arq to provide the backup client with configuration/options to create a backup file system that can be stored locally, on a NAS, in the cloud, etc. Then you pay Backblaze B2 (or a similar service) a monthly cost based on the amount of data you have stored, how much you upload, how much you download.

I set up regular Backblaze for a trial this weekend but was underwhelmed with the configuration options and default settings, so I'm planning to give Arq a spin.
Aha! Got it! thanks for explaining that..
I am testing Backblaze along with Carbonite too. I hated Carbonite so far.
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Ketawa
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by Ketawa »

Ketawa wrote: Tue Aug 29, 2017 11:25 amI set up regular Backblaze for a trial this weekend but was underwhelmed with the configuration options and default settings, so I'm planning to give Arq a spin.
I'm trying Arq and might have it back up to a local hard drive for a while. I like it a lot better than Backblaze, which is just too dumbed down for me. I also don't like Backblaze's 30 day maximum file history. In the meantime, taking up CrashPlan on a 75% discount for the Small Business plan seems like a no brainer, as I only have one computer, my backup is less than 5 TB, and I get to keep all my old file versions. That will get me to February 2019, and by then, hopefully the marketplace for online backup will improve.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by BogleMelon »

Should i have to own a business to be allowed to buy CrashPlan Business subscription?
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by bertilak »

BogleMelon wrote: Mon Sep 04, 2017 7:23 am Should i have to own a business to be allowed to buy CrashPlan Business subscription?
Nope. Unless you want to be ale to manage multiple users from one control panel I don't think there is much difference between the home version (now discontinued) and the business (aka pro) version.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by bobbyrab »

After much research, I have come to the conclusion that the best solution for me, both from a security and economic perspective is Arq 5 backup software coupled with Backblaze's B2 cloud repository.
Remember - the tortoise DID beat the hare.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by onourway »

bobbyrab wrote: Mon Sep 04, 2017 9:15 am After much research, I have come to the conclusion that the best solution for me, both from a security and economic perspective is Arq 5 backup software coupled with Backblaze's B2 cloud repository.
One thing to consider when you are using a pay-per-GB plan is that any de-duplication or replicate data issues can end up costing you a lot of extra money. I was on such a plan before I moved to Crashplan, and what sometimes happened was that I re-organized my file structure and the data was then treated as new and re-uploaded. This should not happen with good backup software, but the onus of monitoring it now falls on you. Make sure that you are 100% confident in the ability of your backup software to perform block-level backups of all your file types, including all version history, or else your backup set will grow rapidly in size over the years.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by BogleMelon »

I noticed that ARQ is not running in the background, that means it doesn't continuously backup the data! am I missing something here?
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by Ketawa »

BogleMelon wrote: Mon Sep 04, 2017 11:01 am I noticed that ARQ is not running in the background, that means it doesn't continuously backup the data! am I missing something here?
The Arq application itself is just a front end to ArqAgent, which is continuously running in the background. ArqAgent should be visible in Task Manager. There is no tray icon.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by ReedMan »

The Wirecutter used to recommend Crashplan, but since this change, Backblaze is the new consumer leader, according to them. Here's the article .
http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-o ... p-service/

And here's an article on Tidbits from the same author, http://tidbits.com/article/17412

The people who got screwed are those who had multiple computers (me) and/or high storage needs (also me).

I'm hoping a combo solution will be the right one for me. It also may be the cheaper than what I was paying at Crashplan, so this may be a blessing in disguise.

I was backing up 4 computers(1 is my dad's), roughly 5TB of Data. Crashplan Family used to cost roughly $12/mo (prepaid yearly). Migrating to Crashplan Pro would cost $10/mo for the first year, and $40/mo for following years.

But roughly 4.7 TB is 1 desktop + connect drives (Plex server, old backups, etc). I'm going to put that on Backblaze for $4/mo (when you prepay 2 years), plus Arq+B2 storage for the remaining 3 computers, about 300GB. It's hard to estimate how much that'll be, but I'm guessing roughly $2/mo. .

Online backups are still going to be a last resort. I have Time Machine and Windows Backup on all machines, plus clone backups on most, including my large-ish media server. I do need to get better about testing the backups though.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by Saving$ »

Any updates on this thread? What are the suggestions for a Luddite?

I have 57 GB of data, and could get that down to under 50 GB if needed, all on one computer. My current backup plan is an approx monthly manual copy of the content of my computer to a separate hard drive kept in a safe. It has the last 2-3 months backups and about one backup for each year prior to that. That drive has about 10 years worth of copies on it. I also copy the content of my computer to another hard drive twice per year, and keep that one off site.

In the past I posted about this, and it's taken me a bit of reading to understand the difference between backups, versioning, and syncing. Also I am VERY leery (scared actually) to put any data online. I was ready to try Crashplan based on the recommendations here, when I learned they no longer offer the home option.

PC Mag has a list of services and lists I-Drive and SOS-Online as excellent. The description seems to indicate I-Drive would work like an encrypted, backup with up to 10 versions, and concurrently be like a synced cloud drive, so I would have access to 100% of my personal files online even if travelling with my work computer. Is this really safe? Can the encryption be trusted? Would you keep your tax returns and other sensitive data on a service like this?
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by bertilak »

Saving$ wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:32 pm Any updates on this thread? What are the suggestions for a Luddite?

I have 57 GB of data, and could get that down to under 50 GB if needed, all on one computer. My current backup plan is an approx monthly manual copy of the content of my computer to a separate hard drive kept in a safe. It has the last 2-3 months backups and about one backup for each year prior to that. That drive has about 10 years worth of copies on it. I also copy the content of my computer to another hard drive twice per year, and keep that one off site.

In the past I posted about this, and it's taken me a bit of reading to understand the difference between backups, versioning, and syncing. Also I am VERY leery (scared actually) to put any data online. I was ready to try Crashplan based on the recommendations here, when I learned they no longer offer the home option.

PC Mag has a list of services and lists I-Drive and SOS-Online as excellent. The description seems to indicate I-Drive would work like an encrypted, backup with up to 10 versions, and concurrently be like a synced cloud drive, so I would have access to 100% of my personal files online even if travelling with my work computer. Is this really safe? Can the encryption be trusted? Would you keep your tax returns and other sensitive data on a service like this?
CrashPlan's small business (aka CrashPlan PRO) does the job -- no need for CrashPlan Home.

If you don't want to put any data online, CrashPlan can use an attached hard drive as a target backup destination, or even a hard drive on another computer anywhere in the world that is also running CrashPlan.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by Jeff Albertson »

Saving$ wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2017 11:32 pm PC Mag has a list of services and lists I-Drive and SOS-Online as excellent. The description seems to indicate I-Drive would work like an encrypted, backup with up to 10 versions, and concurrently be like a synced cloud drive, so I would have access to 100% of my personal files online even if travelling with my work computer. Is this really safe? Can the encryption be trusted? Would you keep your tax returns and other sensitive data on a service like this?
Read the comments on the PCMag reviews. The i-drive review listed a number of negative comments -
https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2 ... qus_thread
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by tuningfork »

bertilak wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2017 7:07 am If you don't want to put any data online, CrashPlan can use an attached hard drive as a target backup destination, or even a hard drive on another computer anywhere in the world that is also running CrashPlan.
Backing up to another computer is only available in Crashplan for Home, which is being discontinued. Crashplan for Business only backs up to the cloud or to a locally attached storage device.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by bertilak »

tuningfork wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2017 5:45 pm
bertilak wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2017 7:07 am If you don't want to put any data online, CrashPlan can use an attached hard drive as a target backup destination, or even a hard drive on another computer anywhere in the world that is also running CrashPlan.
Backing up to another computer is only available in Crashplan for Home, which is being discontinued. Crashplan for Business only backs up to the cloud or to a locally attached storage device.
Not completely true. It is supported but the other computer must be running under your account. No more "friends." That capability was lost. Here is a configuration dialog from my CrashPlan PRO. Note the "Computers" category.

Image

With some careful configuration you can use a shared folder, although that is not officially supported. I backup to both the CrashPlan cloud and to a shared folder on a USB drive attached to my wireless router.
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tuningfork
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by tuningfork »

bertilak wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2017 7:17 pm
tuningfork wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2017 5:45 pm Backing up to another computer is only available in Crashplan for Home, which is being discontinued. Crashplan for Business only backs up to the cloud or to a locally attached storage device.
Not completely true. It is supported but the other computer must be running under your account. No more "friends." That capability was lost. Here is a configuration dialog from my CrashPlan PRO. Note the "Computers" category.
That's interesting. On the page to upgrade from Home to Small Business, it says "CrashPlan for Small Business does not support computer-to-computer backups. Click here for more information." And if you click on that link, it says:
CrashPlan for Small Business does not support computer-to-computer backups, including:

Backing up to another computer you own
Backing up to a friend's computer
Then it goes on to describe how to convert your computer-to-computer backup to a local folder backup so you don't lose it.

Wondering if the software hasn't been upgraded, err, downgraded yet, or if the policy has changed and they haven't updated the web site.
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Re: Crashplan for Home ending service late 2018

Post by bertilak »

Hmm. Well, I haven't actually tried it so maybe they left the configuration dialog in by mistake and the actual support isn't there.
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