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Help me choose an online backup service

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mouser:
Another thing that really sucks about CrashPlan is the upload speed.. I'm regularly topping out at 30k/s.

Which is just further evidence that CrashPlan is probably best suited for people who have a bunch of computers to back up, but with very little data on each.

JavaJones:
I too continue to use CrashPlan, but remain frustrated with its high memory use and some other issues. The compelling factors in my case are different than mouser's. Unlike him I am in fact dealing with *lots* of data, over 2TB at this point. So I clearly need an unlimited service. That eliminates a number of options off the bat, and makes many others cost-prohibitive. This large data set causes 2 additional problems that further limit the field of options. First, in order to successfully backup 2TB of data "online", you need to either spend literally months uploading at a theoretical maximum speed (which as mouser points out, and we all know besides, is never realized in practice), or you need to have a physical drive sent to you to "seed" the backup. The latter option dramatically speeds the process and is essentially critical when dealing with more than 100-200GB of data, let alone 2TB+. On the other end of that issue, with *restore*, you likewise need a company that provides the service of sending you a recovery drive in the event of a failure, because who wants to be *downloading* 2TB of data to restore? So again this significantly limits my options. Thus any recommendation I could ever make about any service - CrashPlan or otherwise - must take these constraints into account and is therefore based on my particular needs which I grant are not necessarily common to many others.

Bottom line: if you have "big data", CrashPlan may be one of the few viable options, though it is far from ideal unfortunately. Personally I would hope to see truly native client versions of their backup engine in the future, with Qt-based cross-platform UI. This could accomplish similar cross-platform coherence while achieving much lower memory use (I believe) and higher efficiency.

P.S. Dunno if it has already been referenced or not, but here's a Wikipedia table of online backup options which can potentially narrow your options quickly when you're researching: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_backup_services

- Oshyan

rgdot:
I know this is not adding anything to the discussion but.........uploading, downloading that much goes over the caps of (even) business accounts here, several times over in almost all cases. If you ask me online backup loses its practicality when it goes over 1 (yes just 1) GB.

JavaJones:
I've been backing up my 2+TB of data online for more than a year now, so it's certainly possible. It wouldn't be without the "seeding" option though, which is why CrashPlan is one of the few workable services for my needs. Once the initial large data volume is seeded, even though I generate a lot of data regularly (5-25GB/wk, mostly photos), I can keep up just fine.

However I'm fortunate to have a broadband service with no data cap, and I've chosen it carefully in part for that reason. I know not everyone has the option, but sometimes if you research a bit there is indeed a possibility. A great example is Comcast regular consumer service is capped at 250GB, but the business class service is *not*. There is of course a price difference, but it's not near as bad as you might think.

- Oshyan

f0dder:
Another thing that really sucks about CrashPlan is the upload speed.. I'm regularly topping out at 30k/s.-mouser (October 30, 2012, 07:07 PM)
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That's so slow it's pretty near useless. Have you tried contacting them about it?

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