![]() Then again, CrashPlan is free to set up when used as a destination only, so what it lacks in performance it makes up for in price. In my experience using a G4/533 tower with 1GB of RAM, the more clients you pointed at the backup Mac, the slower it got, until it took the CrashPlan GUI a full ten minutes to respond to a mouse click or drag. The client is written in Java, and on “older” Macs (G3 or G4 towers, PowerBooks, early iMacs, etc.) its speed ranges from merely poky to glacial, especially when using it to set up one of the aforementioned older machines as a destination for multiple CrashPlan clients. ![]() Nonetheless, there are a few drawbacks and things I’d like to see the Code 42 folks improve upon. This is something that Apple’s Time Machine has not yet mastered, and there is much weeping and wailing on Mac message boards about how to work around these large, constantly-changing files when using TM as your backup system. Why would you care about this? Well, if you use Entourage with its massive email database, or perhaps Parallels or VWWare Fusion along with a big honking virtual disk image, CrashPlan can create incremental versions of these files with only the changed portions of the file, saving you oodles of gigabytes of storage space each time a backup occurs. This is an area where the product really shines in comparison to a solution like the current version of Retrospect, whose tortuous “snapshot” restore process can make you wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to just recreate every file on your hard drive from scratch.Īnother really essential aspect of CrashPlan is that it does what developers refer to as “delta blocking,” meaning that when a file changes, only the changed bits are stored. The restore process is dead simple you simply navigate through a list of the backed-up files and check the one(s) you want to restore. You probably won’t need to mess with these anyway, but for power users it’s nice to know they’re there. Some of CrashPlan’s more esoteric settings. The CrashPlan client is very simple to set up, although I had to email the support folks for clarification on some of the more esoteric settings that are available. So even if you’re forced to con Mom & Dad into using their PC as your free backup destination, they won’t accidentally stumble upon all those half-naked Ana Paula Mancino pics in your iPhoto library. Even better–the backup files are compressed and encrypted in such a way that your files can’t be opened or viewed without using the CrashPlan client to restore them. Not only can you use your Mom’s PC as a backup destination, but thanks to CrashPlan’s ultra-friendly invitation options, you might not even need to call her to ask!īy setting up your backup in this way, you don’t have to pay monthly and/or per gigabyte fees to a service, plus you know exactly where your data resides and that no one other than your backup partner can access it without your knowledge. In fact, the Code 42 folks actually encourage this apparently they’re happy just selling you the client software, even though they do offer storage space at their data facility. While it most closely resembles offsite backup services like BackJack or Mozy, in that it moves data to a remote location as opposed to a local hard drive or tape backup, the real beauty of CrashPlan is that it allows you to choose the remote location, which can be any Macintosh, Windows or Linux computer that a) the owner of said computer (presumably a friend/family member/poker buddy) allows you to access, and b) has enough free space to back up your stuff. So I salute the Code 42 folks for having the chutzpah to tell it like it is when it came to bestowing a name on their ingenious backup software.ĬrashPlan is a powerful, inexpensive and easy to use backup solution that runs on Mac, Windows, and even Linux. Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Using the word “crash” in the name of a backup solution for your critical data is bound to bring on a serious case of bad karma. (storage is free if using a friend’s computer as the remote destination). Price: Standard version $20, Pro version $60 (client software only).įor remote data storage, up to 50GB for $5/month additional $0.10/month per GB of data over 50GB
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