I got an email today from Code42...aka Crashplan that they are changing their business model and getting out of the home consumer market place for data backup. I can upgrade to one of their business solutions, but the fee nearly doubles in the long term. They are also offering to move me over to a competitor, Carbonite. So, what does the forum like for a 24x7x365 backup solution. I have 448 bit encryption and a nearly 20 character password on my Crashplan account. I'm looking for something with Crashplan's capabilities or better for about the same price.
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Here's a review on Tom's Guide of other services.

Don't know how any bitty bits Carbonite is, but the password length isn't limited to any short string, mine is 20 characters completely random.

I have fortunately never needed a full restore, as it would take a long time to download at any speed, but it is a seemingly reliable additional layer behind my local backup.

I especially like that I can access my files from any other device, making it function effectively like a virtual drive for me as well.

There are many threads on this question but I have no idea how to find them. Older threads are pruned. You may want to try an advanced search.

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:
There are many threads on this question but I have no idea how to find them. Older threads are pruned. You may want to try an advanced search.

Or a Ouija Board.

quote:

Originally posted by Fenris:

quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:
There are many threads on this question but I have no idea how to find them. Older threads are pruned. You may want to try an advanced search.

Or a Ouija Board.

There was a thread recently on the subject.

I pulled only two recommendations from the discussion for further consideration. Unfortunarely, Code 42 was one of the two.

But the other one, Acronis True Image was highly thought of.

And as i was writing this, i thought to look for the thread via my name. Here is the thread in question.

Interesting that Rey mentioned my previous thread on the topic. Personally I'm just not there yet on cloud based backups. I run all my backups via Acronis True Image 2017 to a Seagate 4TB backup drive sitting on my network. That setup will suffice until I install a 4TB NAS on my network, which will in turn be backed up regularly to that re-purposed 4TB drive. That provides three layers of files, totally under my control, which should be sufficient for now.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:
Personally I'm just not there yet on cloud based backups.

So... you pull your backup drive and store it off-site somewhere when you're not there?

I'm not a fan of most things cloud, but I'm happy to use Carbonite knowing that if my house burns to the ground, all of my data (including a couple TBs worth of photos) will be preserved.

Cuts way down on the "irreplaceable" list.

-Rob

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:
Personally I'm just not there yet on cloud based backups.

So... you pull your backup drive and store it off-site somewhere when you're not there?

I'm not a fan of most things cloud, but I'm happy to use Carbonite knowing that if my house burns to the ground, all of my data (including a couple TBs worth of photos) will be preserved.

Cuts way down on the "irreplaceable" list.

-Rob

I have been known to simply unplug the backup drive and put it in my gun safe if we're gone for an extended period of time, so it would have some protection against fire. But when you really stop and consider the higher probability risks to your data, they come from failed hard drives and the like. That I'm covered for. If my house burns completely to the ground and my gun safe goes with it, I've got enormous challenges beyond data recover to deal with.

I'm not saying cloud based backup services don't offer value, I'm just suggesting that not every final backup solution needs to include one.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:
Personally I'm just not there yet on cloud based backups.

So... you pull your backup drive and store it off-site somewhere when you're not there?

I'm not a fan of most things cloud, but I'm happy to use Carbonite knowing that if my house burns to the ground, all of my data (including a couple TBs worth of photos) will be preserved.

Cuts way down on the "irreplaceable" list.

-Rob

I have been known to simply unplug the backup drive and put it in my gun safe if we're gone for an extended period of time, so it would have some protection against fire. But when you really stop and consider the higher probability risks to your data, they come from failed hard drives and the like. That I'm covered for. If my house burns completely to the ground and my gun safe goes with it, I've got enormous challenges beyond data recover to deal with.

I'm not saying cloud based backup services don't offer value, I'm just suggesting that not every final backup solution needs to include one.

Personally, I'd rather be more proactive than "if my house burns down, it'll be bad, so who cares if it's even worse."

Cloud backup isn't absolutely necessary, but if you have absolutely anything of value on your computer, some kind of off-site backup should be, given how easy it is to do these days.

If my house ever burns down, I'll be really upset. It'll be hard to deal with. But at least I'll know I haven't lost:

The tens of thousands of pictures and many hours of video I've taken of my wife and kids and interesting places I've gone.

Scanned backups of legal documents, tax documents, receipts for things that may have been destroyed in the fire, etc.

Contact information for family and friends.

Some of that stuff may be physically stored off-site, for example in a safe deposit box. Some of it may already be in a service that is effectively cloud backup (e.g., if all your "address book" information is stored in Google Contacts or iCloud Contacts, or if you keep some important documents in DropBox).

Personally, I'm forgetful and I procrastinate. It's nice knowing that a few minutes to hours after I put something on my computer, it's automatically backed up off-site without my doing anything. (I have REALLY fast internet, so even when I dump a 64 GB memory card of pictures on my computer, it gets uploaded pretty quickly.)

You can NOT rely on one of anything in backup.
Regardless of who you use.
Heed this advice:
3-2-1 Rule

I have a 3TBx2 NAS system on my etwork that the PCs all back up to. The two hard-drives in it are mirrors of each other. I have a small set of files with financial and other important records that I regularly copy to a flash drive, which is then taken to swap with another flash drive which is stored off site in a safety deposit box. Pictures get back up to an external hard drive that gets put in the SDB about twice a year as well (usually before/after a vacation where we've taken a bunch of pictures. It requires a bit of effort to do that on my part, but basically I just remember to do one of those parts each time I go into the bank. The NAS is also in the best protected part of the house from a storm/fire standpoint.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
You can NOT rely on one of anything in backup.
Regardless of who you use.
Heed this advice:
3-2-1 Rule

Huge proponent of the 3-2-1 rule here. I keep a local NAS that runs a pair of mirrored drives, and then a cloud copy of important files.

I was also a proponent of Crashplan. I'm looking for alternatives now, including Crashplan's Enterprise solutions.

The 3-2-1 rule also applied to types of backups. You don't need or want 3 copies of a corrupted proprietary backup container/file, so I wouldn't make 3 copies of a Crashplan backup. Need 2 distinct types of backups.

quote:

Or a Ouija Board.

....pending new release: Quija iBoard

quote:

Originally posted by barndg00:
I have a 3TBx2 NAS system on my etwork that the PCs all back up to. The two hard-drives in it are mirrors of each other. I have a small set of files with financial and other important records that I regularly copy to a flash drive, which is then taken to swap with another flash drive which is stored off site in a safety deposit box. Pictures get back up to an external hard drive that gets put in the SDB about twice a year as well (usually before/after a vacation where we've taken a bunch of pictures. It requires a bit of effort to do that on my part, but basically I just remember to do one of those parts each time I go into the bank. The NAS is also in the best protected part of the house from a storm/fire standpoint.

I had one of those! It uses a proprietary data storage system, so you don't have to worry about someone stealing your data. Only problem is...if the electronics in the case that contains the hard drives goes south, then so does your data! If you ask me how I know, you better be prepared for a lot of NSFW language.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
You can NOT rely on one of anything in backup.
Regardless of who you use.
Heed this advice:
3-2-1 Rule

I'll have (1) and (2) covered in the next 30 days when I get my NAS installed, configured, and backed up. (3), or offsite storage isn't going to happen until I get with my brother and work out a setup where we backup to storage media at each others homes.

The 3-2-1 method is of course the best solution, but considering the percentage of people who have little to no backup of their data at all, three layers of local data is going to work for me 'for now'.

Ummm... I not that computer savvy. I just copied my whole personal directory onto my Google Drive.

Well not my stash of nude square dancing porn. There are some things that should be kept private.

quote:

Originally posted by Fenris:
Ummm... I not that computer savvy. I just copied my whole personal directory onto my Google Drive.

Well not my stash of nude square dancing porn. There are some things that should be kept private.

Amazon S3 can be cheap storage in the cloud, especially to mirror a local backup.

How many of you have tested your backups with a restore? Might get surprised.

TimeMachine to Netgear ReadyNas for me, and I've restored a laptop image from there to a VMware Fusion virtual machine. Don't have a S3 sync for that yet, but S3 makes for a fine mirror for pics, documents.

i-drive

 
My third layer (a pair of 4TB drives) gets rotated monthly to my safe deposit box. Each one has a bootable volume, and two other data volumes.