Tell me about your online backup service
 

I've been using Crashplan for Home for years, but they just announced that as of today, they'll no longer be renewing plans because they plan to phase out the service. They'll be replacing it with a version targeted at small businesses which is 2x the cost. :( Before I commit to that, I wanted to find out what other people are using and if they've been happy with it. Any recommendations for me?

I have had BackBlaze for about a year and a half now. I have mixed feelings about them.

My hard drive failed last May and I was able to easily and very affordably get all my files back. I had to front the $189 to get the EHD but as long as I returned it within 30 days I got my money back. So essentially it only costed the $13 to ship it back and I received my refund within 2 days of the EHD arriving to them. They were also very quick with their responses (and I had many as I had to figure out how to get it to recognize a new hard drive with my old data). That part I was very satisfied with.

The part I'm not so sure about is that it BackBlaze said that my initial backup had been complete and everything was up to date as of xx date but I know that's not possible b/c I had literally just moved something like 40,000 files from an EHD to my computer. I went through the process to select which files I wanted to restore as if I had had another computer crash, just to see if I could select those files, and no, they were not available. So now I'm leery as to whether or not it's actually as up to date as it says it is.

I had actually been considering switching to CrashPlan but I hadn't taken the plunge b/c I didn't want to start the backup process all over again. I have A LOT of stuff backed up! Lol..

I saw this, too, Rach, and wanted to cry! Crash Plan has been sooo much better than Backblaze. They are recommending Carbonite, so that's probably what I'll switch to, but I hate the idea of spending another twenty billion hours backing up all my stuff.

My problem with Backblaze is that it went through my extensive EHD and backed up all the folders first but not the contents of the folders, so when I lost my EHD, I thought, "Yay! Everything is there!" but when I went to open them, I would only have one or two files within the folders. I lost SO MUCH STUFF that I thought was backed up. : ( Thank goodness I had all my photos backed up to an older EHD, or else I would have been devastated.

I've had a very positive experience with Backblaze. I have everything backed up and when my internal HD failed, they sent me an external drive with all my files on it and they restored perfectly.

I don't know how it chooses which files to back up (size, name, etc?) but I know it doesn't go in order so it jumps around and it's possible to have pieces of everything and nothing as a whole until it's completed finished backing up. And even then if you disconnect your EHD's after 30 days it starts to delete the older files. I wish it'd do each folder one at a time and move on to the next one AND that it'd had a longer time limit on it. I don't always leave my EHD's plugged in and don't want to have to worry about how long it's been since it was last connected to BackBlaze. I was fortunately just a few files away from being completely backed up when my internal hard drive crashed. What I did lose was what was on my desktop. Had I received pieces of kits/picture albums etc I would have been so disappointed and frustrated!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I didn't hear that about Crashplan... oh, man that stinks (I would like use a stronger word!) Our whole family is backed up onto Crashplan... they are one a few of that back up external servers. Shoot!!

I was just thinking about this today that I needed to do an online backup. So I'm happy this thread is happening lol

I haven't heard much about Carbonite but have heard about Backblaze and Crashplan.

So...I just started looking through the info on Carbonite to see if I wanted to switch. Their cheapest plan only backs up one drive, and I have 2 internal drives on my laptop. In addition, you can only get an EHD shipped to you (if you need to do a total restore) if you get their $150/year plan. I haven't looked through the Crashplan Small Business info yet, but it looks like Carbonite would cost me 3x what I think I was paying for Crashplan for Home. :( There's a 50% off offer, but I assume that only covers the first year.

After the first year discounts, Crashplan for Small Business is $10 per device, per month. Buried in one of the FAQs it says you don't actually have to be a small business to sign up. It doesn't offer an EHD service if you need to do a total restore, which is the one big drawback for me. I have about 700 GB backed up--I can't imagine how long it would take to get everything restored through the Internet! I keep a local copy of my backup, but it's often weeks out of date (weeks...if not more. That's why I need continuous online backup!)

I used Backblaze years ago and was surprised to find out that it only backed up the last 30 days. So your files from Day 31 are not backed up. I found this out when I was dealing with a crashed EHD. And so I switched to Crashplan. Is this still true?

If anyone is thinking about Backblaze, here's a referral link that will get you an extra month free (and me too!):

https://secure.backblaze.com/r/00aqkx

Krista, I *believe* the way it works is that as long as the drive (whether it's your internal hard drive or EHD's) is visible it will continually back up. If it is unplugged, or fails, after 30 days BackBlaze will delete files.

In my case, it took about 2 weeks to get my computer back with a new internal hard drive and every day BackBlaze would send me a missing drive alert. Once I got my computer back and instructed it to inherit the old information everything was good.

Also, when I ordered the restore drive from them (just to be sure I had everything off my computer) there was everything I had ever backed up with them from day 1 of starting my service plan with them (which was well over 30 days prior).

Maybe someone else can chime in who knows for sure or can explain it better than me but that's my understanding of it.

I decided to try the middle service of Carbonite like Crash Plan had recommended. I think maybe they are still connected because as soon as I downloaded the program, it said I was backed up.

What about Amazon and Google? Do they offer backup secvices?

As far as I know, what they offer is more the equivalent of Drop Box than a true backup.

I came across this review of 21 Online Backup Services. Maybe some of those are worth looking into. I've only read through about 8 of the linked in depth reports so far, but it's looking like my choice will end up coming down to whether I'm more concerned with files being kept longer than 30 days once deleted (in case I delete something accidentally and don't notice within 30 days) or being able to get an EHD with my files if I need a total restore. I'm leaning toward prioritizing the 1st and just making sure I'm better about keeping my local EHD backup up to date. Crashplan Home seems like the only one offering both for a reasonable price.

I'm 99% sure that I'm going to stick with Crashplan and pay the extra $$. There are several features that Crashplan has that makes it so much better than the other options for me.

- Crashplan saves deleted files forever unless you tell it not to. Backblaze and Carbonite save deleted files for 30 or 60 days.

- Crashplan keeps external hard drives in the backup forever unless you remove it. Backblaze and Carbonite will delete the EHD from the backup if it's disconnected for more than 30 or 60 days. I have several EHDs that I back up and there's no way that I would remember to connect each drive every month.

- I also like that you can back up to a local drive. I have an EHD that I connect periodically (usually every 4-6 weeks) and the same backup is on that drive that's in the cloud. If one of my hard drives fails, I can restore most of my files from my local backup and only will have to download anything that's recent.

I got that email from CrashPlan and was sad to have to start this process all over again. I had Carbonite years ago. I switched to CrashPlan on the recommendations of you ladies here at SSD. I have a Mac. At the time, I switched from Carbonite to CrashPlan because Carbonite would not back up an EHD on a Mac. I have no idea if that is still the case but my EHD is what I save all of everything to so that is really what I need backed up most! I'll be anxious to see what everybody here decides.

I've been using Amazon Drive and for the most part am happy with it. It's a little more hands-on, but I still think it's pretty reasonably priced. The changes they made were actually cheaper for me than the previous year, so I got a refund :) I don't use it for things like kits though. I'm still using the old upload format (from what I can tell, they created a new format, but never disabled the old one).

I plan to also keep Crashplan since it will only be a few more dollars a month. When I needed to recover things I lost, it was easy and I didn't have to worry about files I had to deleted. Also, the email I received said I would get 75% off for the next 12 months, so at least that will be a buffer period.

I'm planning to stick with Crashplan, too. It costs more than the "old" Crashplan, but all the alternatives I looked at that had similar features would end up in the same ballpark. (There are cheaper alternatives, but most of them have limitations that I don't like, like policies that they permanently delete files 30 days after you remove them from your HD. What if it's an accident and it takes you 6 weeks to realize?)

I decided to make 2 changes.
1) I'm going to be better about running my local backup weekly since there's no option to order files on an EHD.
2) I decided that my local backup should be independent of my online backup. Maybe it's paranoid, but I recently had a problem with my Crashplan backup that convinced me I don't want to risk having an error or mistake take both backups out simultaneously. For 24 hours my 700 GB backup suddenly showed as only 40 GB for both the cloud and EHD versions. It was right around when they announced all of this, so I worried that something had gone wrong and they'd lost my data. It was eventually corrected and nothing had been erased, but it was scary thinking I had no backup over a weekend when I was going to be traveling with my laptop and leaving it in a hotel.

That's exactly what happened to me with my back up on my laptop that was stolen earlier in the year.


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