Currently I have a 5x2TB Raid 5 PC box that my gaming PC and HTPC back data up to. I feel the need to have a backup of that as well (house fire scenario)
What do you guys use when you have multiple terabytes of data you never want to lose?
I've got a review of CrashPlan coming soon. It has unlimited backup sizes. I'm currently backing up 750gb to it online; as long as you don't have bandwidth caps, it's pretty good. Once the initial massive backup is done, it goes incrementally so it's no big deal.
Oh, the other (really cool) feature of CrashPlan is that if other friends use it, you can each share backup space with one another. So, for example, I could offer you 500gb of space on my PC and vice versa. We can back up to each other (over the net) for free. It's all encrypted blobs, so no danger of peeping at your cock-mirror shots.
So, for example: Their crashplan+ unlimited plan, I would install their software on my NAS/Server and it would continuosly back it up that data for $50/year? That sounds dirt cheap for some reason.
Yep, that's right. It is dirt cheap, and so far in my testing, it's been solid. I'll have a full review up soon. If you want to get an account and do some friend-to-friend testing, I'm down.
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KwitkoSheriff of Banning (Retired)By the thing near the stuffIcrontian
I use CrashPlan at home and work. For home use, it's awesome. Set it and forget it. For work, it does file-level backup well, but it's not as robust as other solutions. But so far it's been great.
I use Crashplan as well. Ran into a Java issue initially that kept causing it to crash. Email support was right on it within a day when I submitted a ticket. Had me going again in a matter of minutes with a quick step-by-step. Like Brian said, after that initial upload, the incrementals are fast.
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KwitkoSheriff of Banning (Retired)By the thing near the stuffIcrontian
midga"There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi(> ^.(> O_o)>Icrontian
edited October 2012
The friends backups looks interesting, but I don't see it working well for people who have a whole lot of data. You'd be stuffing your friends' drives with your crap, sorta like using their garage for temporary storage while you move but then never clearing it out. That seems like it's targeted to people with a fairly small digital footprint, and/or have a single techy person in the family.
I could be reading into that entirely wrong, though.
Feck.... I'm so installing CrashPlan on my fiancee's laptop. She has all her photos and whatnot on there and hasn't backed up in months (or possibly years).
I use the Qnap TS-259-Pro+ and Acronis. I toss the Acronis images on to S3 once in a while. I still backup locally like this to a fast nas because if I do eat it, I need to recover quickly. So if that's something that you need to consider, you may want to do it locally but still take advantage of cloud services when it makes sense.
I've been using BackBlaze, which has a similar unlimited-space plan for back-ups, but I've run into an issue. I've now reformatted my system, and been using my back-up over on Backblaze to get stuff that I realize I forgot. It will likely be months before I'm confident that there is nothing on there from my past install that I don't need anymore, and I can't afford the space to just download everything on there to my new build. Fine and dandy, except it means I can't back up my current system because I would have to either overwrite the back-up it has now, losing all the info from the old build, or pay an addition fee to have a 'second system' backed up with them.
Would I have this same issue with CrashPlan?
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KwitkoSheriff of Banning (Retired)By the thing near the stuffIcrontian
When you reinstall CrashPlan, there is an "adopt" feature that applies the same configuration to the new host and picks up backups where they left off before format/loss/theft. HOWEVER, their documentation specifically says that you should restore your files before using the adopt feature. From the CrashPlan wiki:
Because the files in the backup archive are not on the new computer or drive, CrashPlan identifies them as missing and treats them as deleted files. These deleted files are retained according to your Delete files retention settings.
Of course, by default, CrashPlan is set to never remove deleted files from your backups. If you have changed that, however, you could end up with files being removed after an adopt.
I've used CrashPlan before and I plan to set it up again. The only thing I couldn't figure out while I was using it was how to back the stuff up that my system was storing from another system.
What I wanted to do was have my home server (which has the bulk of the storage) act as a backup location, then back all of that up to the remote CrashPlan, but I could never get that to work the right way.
I would imagine you just need to select your CrashPlan backup location as a backup source then configure your backups on that host to go to CrashPlan. Maybe they prevent you from doing that on purpose so you can't circumvent their per-computer licensing?
Comments
http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/compare.html
I could be reading into that entirely wrong, though.
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Really looking forward to this review @primesuspect
Would I have this same issue with CrashPlan?
What I wanted to do was have my home server (which has the bulk of the storage) act as a backup location, then back all of that up to the remote CrashPlan, but I could never get that to work the right way.