CNET Editors' review
Instead of mucking around with removable media, Crashplan offers up a distinct alternative. Banking on ubiquitous high-speed Internet access and more than one computer per household, this service allows you to back up your entire computer to as many discreet locations as you can manage. This includes Crashplan's servers, a second PC of yours, or even your friend's computer.
Designed for PCs and Macs, Crashplan's backups are encrypted before they're sent out. The backup process runs effortlessly in the background over a high-speed network, but we wouldn't recommend it to anyone still on a dial-up modem. The simple and intuitive interface makes preference changes easy, whether you're adding or dropping files from the backup process or choosing a new backup location.
The benefit of off-site safety and security could potentially save you thousands of dollars, as anyone who has had to salvage a fire-damaged hard drive knows. Crashplan charges 10 cents per gigabyte per month to use their servers, but the company discourages this option. Given the ever-dropping cost of memory and storage drives, Crashplan may not be the wave of the future, but it's nice to have a choice for backing up essential files other than shelling out for yet another hard drive.
Publisher's Description
From Code 42 Software:
Only CrashPlan offers local and online backup that's automatic, secure and cross-platform. Whether you need to back up one laptop at home or up to 10 for the family, CrashPlan delivers multi-destination protection that maximizes convenience, flexibility and rapid restores. It's free to back up locally and to friends and family, and it's just a few dollars a month for unlimited online backup with a CrashPlan Central subscription. Unlimited online backup. Individual Unlimited Plan as low as $3.00/month. Family Unlimited Plan as low as $6/month.
What's new in this version:
- Faster Data De-duplication - In this release we have increased the speed of CrashPlan's data de-duplication. Backups to CrashPlan Central and other destinations should be noticeably faster.
- Compression / Data De-duplication for CrashPlan Central - Backups to CrashPlan Central always use full data de-duplication and compression. You can, however, change these settings for b... See all new features
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All versions:
3.5 starsout of 15 votes
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Current version:
3.0 starsout of 2 votes
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My rating:
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Results 1-2 of 2
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"Worth the effort to set it up correctly...."
Version: CrashPlan 3.0.3
Pros
- Backing up to the companies servers provide great offsite protection and the ability to retrieve data from mobile clients.
- Offsite backups encrypted prior to transmission.
- Local backup option to get the initial backup performed.
- Great solution for family members who would not backup at all....set this up and it just happens for them!
- File versioning and more!Cons
- Without using this tool to perform a local backup, this might seem slow...but the whole point to backup your system without seeing a degradation in performance and NOT to blast your connection with a fast backup.
Summary
Please don't think of this as equal to backing up locally...it is MUCH more than that.
It brings the home user in the enterprise backup world with the ability to keep important data offsite.
Think about it....wouldn't you rather know that your data is safely offsite if something bad happened to your computer...or God forbid...you house!
This solution is definitely going on my 'recommend to family' list....much easier than trying to provide 'tech support' and teach them how to properly back up their systems.
AND..with the ability to use a client on IOS devices, I can access a current file from my backup from ANYWHERE, like Dropbox without the storage limitations! -
"Product does not work, customer service is poor."
Version: CrashPlan 3.0.3
Pros
Great--if only it worked as it claims to.
Cons
S u p e r s l o w . . . 38 GB in 11 days!
Summary
I started my free trial 11 days ago with 150 GB to upload. I have set all settings according to the company's recommendations & left my computer running 24/7. Yet in these 11 days it has only uploaded 38 GB & tells me it has 21.4 days to go.
This is the reply I got from tech support:
Unfortunately there is no way for us to be able to predict what your speeds to our servers will be. There are too many variables for us to be able to give any sort of "normal" amount of time to back up data. But from looking at your account it does appear that you have modified the settings to optimize the upload speed and you have been constantly uploading at this time. Since you have modified those settings, there is nothing else that we can do from our end to increase your speeds.
Have a great day,
~Michael
He then marked my request as "solved".
I have a strong feeling that only the people that work there are writing the highly rated reviews seen here and putting "thumbs down" on the low rated ones. After all, how would it not be helpful to hear about other people's issues when you are considering a purchase?
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