I stopped using CrashPlan because of the outrageous hogging memory issues, and I'm still pissed off about that, but I thought it only right that I post again and say that I just purchased a 1yr family plan subscription to CrashPlan, using the 50% discount offer described for past carbonite users described
here (looks like it doesn't care what email you put in by the way).
The main reason I came back to crash plan is that for this price ($50 for first year, $120 normal yearly price) you can configure something like 10 pcs to have their files backed up online. While the memory hogging is a serious problem for my primary pc, which i will have to go try to solve by messing with the java settings, this was simply too good an offer not to jump on for backing up the other spare pcs/laptops in my house, and offering the space for my immediate family.
Put another way, I'm not at all convinced that CrashPlan is the right solution for someone with a single PC with tons of files to backup, but if you have a bunch of PCs with a small number of files, it seems like an excellent deal and from what I read you are unlikely to run into the memory hogging issues if you have small backup file sets.
So CrashPlan seems ideal for putting on every computer in the family to make sure that it backs up working documents, etc. For example I've been keeping the books for the building on a laptop which has no other purpose than to keep the books.. I'm not going to pay backblaze $60/year just to keep 5 files backed up online. CrashPlan seems well suited for this.
(Though I will note that for such small file sets, I could get away with one of the free online backup services, or one of the low-volume backup services).
But anyway, although not perfect, I do think CrashPlan seems like a good solution for people with lots of PCs (or who can be responsible for setting up multiple PCs for their family members). And at $50 for a year, seems hard to go wrong.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong about this.. (
NO I AM NOT WRONG).
One VERY important note for people setting up backups of multiple family PCs:
*ALL* computers are forced to have the SAME encryption password and account access(!). This means that anyone on any of these PCs could access the backed up files of any of the other PCs.This feels like a major security risk to me, though I suppose it's useful in keeping people from sharing a family plan with non-family members. But you should know that this fact may severely limit the usefulness of the family plan.
Very uncool.
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