# May Have to Ditch CrashPlan - No Restores 4 Days a Month



## raindog308 (Nov 3, 2014)

I've been a happy CrashPlan user for some years.  I never did a big restore, but periodically have done small restores and all worked well.  I like their setup and the ability to prioritize some directories, connectivity seems fine, and in general the service has worked well.  I have 6TB backed up there...certainly more than needed in one sense, but they say unlimited, so I back everything up.

 

But recently I learned something rather shocking.

 

I was traveling and wanted to grab a file from home.  They tout the "access your stuff using our app or on the web" feature, so I went to do a web restore and got various errors about timeouts.

 

A lot of back-and-forth in tickets later, I learned the following:

 

- there is a "deep maintenance" that runs every 28 days

- during this maintenance, you can't do restores

- for a 6TB archive (like mine), the deep maintenance can run up to 4 days

 

In other words, there's a 4-day window every month where I can't do restores.  If I had some sort of catastrophic data loss at the beginning of that window, this would really suck - particularly as the restore itself is likely to proceed over many days (redownloading everything), so I could be without my data for quite a while.

 

Kind of a bummer...so I'm thinking about other backup services.  Unfortunately they all seem to offer per-GB/per-TB pricing that adds up to a ton more than I pay with CrashPlan, or they only support Windows/Mac (everything I backup lives on a central Linux file server).  I could roll my own on VPSes (which would still be more significantly more than I pay with CP), though this seems like a self-maintenance headache.

 

(BTW, yes, I could reduce by 6TB certainly - probably only 500GB is core personal data (pictures, home video, documents, etc.) but ideally I'd back it all up...the rest are movies, music, etc. that would be tedious to replace.)


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## TruvisT (Nov 3, 2014)

Carbonite? (not used them in awhile. Work with some businesses that use them and seem happy).

There is also another provider less common which I will try and find. they had options like CrashPlan.


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## KuJoe (Nov 3, 2014)

Use CrashPlan for secondary or tertiary backups. I backup to my NAS, then to 2 different VPSs, then to CrashPlan so CrashPlan is my last line of backups in case everything else fails horribly. I also use CrashPlan Free to backup from all of our home computers to the same VPS that syncs with CrashPlan+ so I only pay for one computer and the VPS has a much faster port than my home network so restores and backups are much faster.


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## KuJoe (Nov 3, 2014)

Oh, and I would recommend a Synology for syncing.  (Can't edit my previous post on mobile.)


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## raindog308 (Nov 3, 2014)

That is not a bad idea.  My concern with NAS solutions (other than homemade/FreeNAS/etc.) has always been what happens when the mobo dies.

I had a ReadyNAS that died after about 7 years of service, and the only way to get the data back was to buy another (long since out of production) ReadyNAS of the same model.  The manufacturer had switched from SPARC to some other chip so the disks were not importable to the newer models, etc. - possibly just a shortcoming of that vendor, but ever since I've been leery of putting my fate in proprietary hands.  But a FreeNAS/homemade Linux/etc. with the staging/tiering you suggest is an interesting model. 

I was just hoping to avoid 6TB for my data + another 6-12TB+ for backup, growing both over time, etc.


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## drmike (Nov 3, 2014)

Crashplan sounds unusable where one has TB's of data in there.  Definitely not acceptable situation.

Time to shop for alternative.


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## KuJoe (Nov 3, 2014)

If the motherboard dies, restore from CrashPlan.  Synology has an app for CrashPlan (and multiple other options like Amazon's Glacier).


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## zed (Nov 3, 2014)

Not sure you're going to find any solution for terabytes of backup data that isn't going to require either biggish cash or a fair amount of elbow grease.


I can't even fathom having 6tb of data to backup, much less using a cloud^wbutt service.


KuJoe's methodology is pretty similar to mine [for maybe half a tb of important stuff]. The internet itself is my backup for music/movies/tv 


If I may ask, what was crashplan charging for 6tb of storage/access?


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## KuJoe (Nov 3, 2014)

@zed the CrashPlan+ plan is $3.69/month.


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## Steven F (Nov 3, 2014)

KuJoe said:


> Oh, and I would recommend a Synology for syncing.  (Can't edit my previous post on mobile.)


Just setup a new Synology to replace our old IOMega. It's 4 x 4 TB in RAID 5. I have to admit, the user panel is pretty nice and intuitive. I personally don't like the whole desktop-type-site, but it's great for people that aren't that techy.


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## iWF-Jacob (Nov 3, 2014)

@KuJoe -- I too use Crashplan in a similar fashion. I have a plain and simple external HDD which constantly backs up via Crashplan. I then also have a local NAS which backs everything up daily. Crasplan+ would be the tertiary plan. Always best to have multiple backup sets!


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## KuJoe (Nov 3, 2014)

My backup configuration:


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## Setsura (Nov 3, 2014)

I use Backblaze for my secondary backips besides my own NAS. I think they are pretty good, "unlimited" for 5USD a month. I have about 12TiB backed up there, and I've gotten no complaints nor any throttling. I've only done a large backup restore once, but it was about 1.3TiB and I had no issue downloading it all from them.

If you're interested you can use this and it gives you a month free, and me one month free if you actually buy it: https://secure.backblaze.com/r/007wru

If you want a regular link that is here: https://www.backblaze.com/


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## raindog308 (Nov 3, 2014)

KuJoe said:


> My backup configuration:


I thought I was the only guy who made visios of my home network.

KuJoe, you continue to be my hero.


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## ellisluk (Nov 4, 2014)

Hey Raindog,

Have you heard of Druva inSync?

1. I've seen Crashplan's Enterprise customers expressing the same sentiments 

2. At Druva, they understand how important access to data is, when you need it..and hence the 7 9's and 11 9's. Never worry about backup restores, you can do it any time.

3. The inSync is platform agnostic and also offers solutions for mobile 

4. There's a Group edition of inSync for customers wanting to use it on-premise which is free for 15 users and 200 GB storage.

5. Pricing is straight forward, and from source data with global deduplication 

 

Might be worth looking into?


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## KuJoe (Nov 4, 2014)

@ellisluk rule of thumb is if you need to call for pricing then it's not a budget solution. That pricing looks to be a few hundred times more expensive than CrashPlan.


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## ellisluk (Nov 4, 2014)

@KuJoe got a bit zoned in on the maintenance window issue - they're great at being available! But you're right, it's more an enterprise solution (aka SMB to enterprise budget) for endpoint backup.

Wouldn't we all love to have a grand budget?


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## zed (Nov 4, 2014)

I dunno man, at $4/mo i might just deal with those 4 days/month of unavailability  Figure out what part of that 6tb you'd actually need in a dr and run another backup set of just that to your in-laws house across [email protected]


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