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Not-so-mini review of CrashPlan backup software

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JavaJones:
Yes, Java. *sigh*

iDrive is still chugging along, doing... *OK*. It's better than CrashPlan... mostly. "Better enough". :D I *have* seen them fix one or two issues I had, for example with auto-update not working, so that's encouraging. And supposedly they're working on better change detection and stuff. So we'll see...

- Oshyan

4wd:
Yes, it's still chugging along here also on my main machine - I suppose I could have taken them up on the initial HDD load, (free for Australia also, which is good), but it wasn't really critical in my case.

It's definitely good to be able to back up everything to the one account: 3 PCs, 1 server, 2 Android tablets, 1 Android phone, and 1 Windows phone.
And be able to access anything, across all of them, from any device.

JavaJones:
Yes, the "universal backup and access" is indeed nice. I only have 1 PC and 1 Android device (plus Facebook), but that could easily grow. Nice to have a service that will accommodate that...

Honestly I think if they can gain more business and choose to invest the revenue in improving support and dev resources they could have a class-leading solution.

- Oshyan

jaden:
Thanks for the pointer to iDrive. I'm looking for an alternative to Crashplan.

I got the 4 year plan for the discount, with 2.9 TB on my machine and another 2 TB on my wife's, but I'm far from happy and the 4 years is nearly up. I'm not a fan of the excessive RAM use, but I really dislike how it starts the backup over from 0% after doing a version scan. It's taking forever on my 10Mbps upstream connection.

I also dislike how changing the backup set causes it to start over from scratch. A few weeks ago it was at around 95%, but after excluding my Chrome profile to speed things up, it started over and now I'm at 24%.

However, as you said, alternatives like BackBlaze aren't a viable option due to policies like only retaining deleted files for 30 days.

Using Amazon Glacier or Google Nearline is cost prohibitive, but they're getting there. I would love to see a service using Nearline with some deduplication and a lean client. I have nothing against Java per se, but CrashPlan clearly hasn't optimized their client for memory usage.

I'm thinking about trying iDrive but the discount expired and I know very little about them. For all of Crashplan's flaws, I was fairly confident they wouldn't be disappearing any time soon.

I've looked at SpiderOak's 5TB option for $279/year or $25/month. It's still pricey and not exclusively focused on backups, but the site says they store every version of your file.

I'd love to hear of other alternatives.

JavaJones:
Without the discount iDrive's choice of 1TB or 10TB doesn't really work, I feel. 10TB is both too much space *and* too expensive. And their sales team doesn't seem that interested in offering an in-between product. Since that deal is now expired, I don't know what other options you have for long-term affordable renewal. I can give you a referral code that will give you 50% off your first year, which makes 10TB $250, but that doesn't help you in subsequent years unfortunately. Here it is if you want it though:
https://www.idrive.com/?uid=S1B6C9L6O4

As to the issues you describe with CrashPlan, I think iDrive has some of its own, a few of which I've described in this thread. Its implementation of incremental backup seems similarly problematic for example (although it may in practice be better than your experience with CrashPlan). Also, with the amount of data you have, their "express" service is going to be a cost and time savings over almost any other service. Still, I'm afraid I can't *unreservedly* recommend iDrive. It is working acceptably for me, and I definitely like the memory use improvements, but there are still issues. Hopefully they will continue improving their client as I do think they have a ton of potential.

- Oshyan

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