CrashPlan

I was using the older version of CrashPlan for a few months and I REALLY enjoy it's wide array of options. CrashPlan allows you to backup to a local folder/drive, a trusted computer over WAN, or their own cloud service. However, the company launched their CrashPlan+ service which auto-upgraded my version and now MANY of the free features are locked as a paid service. You can no longer specify the backup time and frequency as it is automatically determined by CrashPlan. This means you can no longer guarantee a time that your files will back up. My CrashPlan+ now insists that it wants to backup at 2AM and if the PC isn't on at that time it waits until the next 2AM. ha!

Too bad they locked the free features. I'll be moving on to something else.

I have been test Crashplan for a little while and have had a few problems, mainly it simply keeps crashing on me. Have tried it on various systems and it either ends up crashing or using so much ram the system becomes unresponsive. Looks like a cool program but have not even been able to get it to run reliably enough to write a review of it.

I started using Carbonite's online backup. It works well if you don't have a lot to back up. I have over 400GB's of data I'm trying to backup up. The upload speed is restricted to around 25Kbps. So it will take a very long time to get one backup complete. I found Crashplan thanks to Evernote. I have it setup on a computer at my fathers shop in another city and have all my computers backing up to it. It works wonderfully. They offer backups to their own servers for a fee. They are pretty competitive in price to the others.

This is the only serious online backup contender that lets you back up to your own storage (and your friend's storage!). It is also the only one that will back up all your files. Other software will skip files larger than 4GB without telling you.

I wish CrashPlan would provide more information about what it's doing, and give me more control over it as well. It also puts a list of your files in CrashPlan's program directory, so if you're backing up an encrypted TrueCrypt volume, your security will be cracked wide open. BAD.

So, it appears to me that all backup solutions on the market are fatally flawed in at least one way.

I am picky about not just backup, but also data integrity. I have thoroughly used or examined MANY other backup solutions, and CrashPlan is far superior to any of the others. The price is good because it's free. They have some pay services too, if you need them, and they are much cheaper than any of the competition. Their software is so flexible, I can use it any of my computers, and on any of my friend's computers, with Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. I can backup to my friends, and they can backup to me, so theft, fire, or other disaster won't affect my data. All of that is FREE! Seriously, go ahead, waste your time trying out all the others, and then try this one last. You'll be glad you finally tried CrashPlan.

I also recommend using QuickPar to ensure that the data on your computer doesn't get corrupted. Google for "silent data corruption" to find out how bad the problem is. Nobody knows they're losing data constantly because the data loss is silent. QuickPar can detect the corruption, and fix it for you. It's saved my butt a million times. The best backup in the world will just backup the corrupted files. You need QuickPar to protect your data, because no backup software, not even CrashPlan, can know whether your files are corrupted on your own computer. They just backup whatever data you have, and they have no way to know whether the data is good or not.

I tried a lot of different online backup solutions. Crashplan is by far the best. Awesome customer support. The software works great and has a lot of useful options. The fact that it works on all platforms is paramount to me. Pricing for their online storage is extremely cheap and secure. Extremely happy with their service and product - totally recommended.

Switched from Carbonite to Crashplan a couple months ago and could not be happier. The amount of options they give you is amazing. I have it set up to back up all my computers locally and remotely to my home server and then use their online storage option to back up ALL my computers for only $100 a year (unlimited). Also runs on many different operating systems which was a must since I run Linux and Windows. Have tested the restore feature and everything works.