Early last year I wrote a positive review of the online backup tool Mozy. Like a fool, I neglected to test its restore functionality, and a few months later when I suffered a hard drive crash and tried to restore 20+ gigs of data from my Mozy backup, I learned that Mozy can’t restore for shit.
After extensive testing of both backup and restore functionality, I decided to switch to CrashPlan for my online backups. Back in September, after having used it for several months, I gave CrashPlan a glowing review.
So, seven months later, would I still recommend CrashPlan? Yes. Hell yes.
CrashPlan has backed up my data quietly, reliably, and without fail. It hasn’t ever crashed or frozen and it doesn’t hog my system resources. Most of the time I don’t even remember it’s there. But most importantly, CrashPlan has saved my ass several times, and each time it’s worked so well that it almost makes me want to do stupid shit more often just so I can experience the pleasure of having my ass saved again. It works that well.
When I migrated from a PC to a Mac last year, I copied all my important data off the PC’s hard drive, then wiped it clean. At least, I thought I had copied all my important data. Naturally, as soon as I finished nuking the drive, I realized I had only copied one of my two partitions. A few clicks later, CrashPlan was happily restoring the lost files to my new Mac from the PC’s most recent backup. I didn’t lose a thing.
That’s been the story every time I’ve needed to restore something. Whether it’s a single file of just a few kilobytes or a whole directory containing several gigabytes, CrashPlan begins restoring the files instantly and only seems to be limited by the download speed of my Internet connection. Mozy’s painful, slow, unreliable restore process is nothing but a distant nightmare now.
CrashPlan and Mozy both make lots of big promises about how safe and secure your data will be and how easy it’ll be to restore in the event of a disaster; the difference is that CrashPlan actually keeps its word.
Comments
I give 100% support for that statement!
Ever since i started reading this blog, i have been a copycat on several issues found here… and that goes for CrashPlan as well.
I bought a 19.99$ crashplan license jan. 3. this year – that has proven to be the best spent money for a LONG time. I have had similar experiences with CrashPlan as Wonko have mentioned, and i will recomend it for anyone in the need of a reliable offsite backup solution. Now if only i could make it work together with Time Machine on my Macbook Pro :-p
Mac Support
Have you tested it thoroughly with Mac and PC? I just switched from a Windows Vista PC (Vista is a turd) to a MacBook Pro (Leapard). I’d love to have a good offsite backup.
Agreed
Another thanks here for suggesting Crashplan. I have used Mozy (horribly experience) and JungleDisk before Crashplan, and Crashplan offers by far the most seamless backup experience. My only worry is that Crashplan stores online backups at their own backup servers, which I do not know the reliability/secuirty of. Hopefully they will add S3 support soon.
Mac support and reliability
@Mike: I’ve used CrashPlan extensively on both PCs and Macs, and it works wonderfully on both.
@Will: I’m looking forward to the S3 support too. In the meantime though, you can always have CrashPlan back up to one of your own computers. That way you know your data is safe and secure.
Time Capsule
I have seriously been considering getting a time capsule from Apple. Crashplan might be a cheaper alternative.