A screenshot of CrashPlan +
In honor of World Backup Day, it seemed time to review another file backup service.
I’ve written posts on several backup services, including Dropbox, Mozy, and iDrive. Even the anti-virus program BullGuard has a back-up plan. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.
I personally prefer Dropbox because when I save to the folder, it’s automatically saved to both my MacBook and on the Dropbox folder on the PC. and, most important, it’s organized so I can easily access it again right away.
CrashPlan is the latest service that I’ve tried and has a twist that’s different than the ones I’ve reviewed previously. It allows easy backup for free on another, designated, computer. That can be a second home computer or a friend’s computer, or a work computer. Thus, restoring the files is then as simple as downloading the CrashPlan back-up files from the other computer onto a disk or portable drive and re-installing them.
There are three different levels to the service offered, as can be seen on this detailed chart.
The second level is CrashPlan+ which is $1.50 per month ($24.99 a year) and allows for 10 GB of storage online and continuous real-time back-up. CrashPlan Unlimited is the same except there are no limits on storage. It’s double the cost of the 10 GB version which works out to $3 per month. There are a number of different options for storage in both paid plans but both include backing up any external hard drives connected to the computer. A portable hard drive is also available as part of the restore service. The company promises to deliver one to your door with all your saved files for restoration in case of a crash.
I’ve been using CrashPlan + for about a month after receiving it free for review. Installation was simple and it didn’t slow down my MacBook’s operating system, a feature I appreciated since Mozy tended to to gum things up while it was saving files. (No doubt due to the fact my memory space is more limited on the MacBook than a desktop computer.)
CrashPlan+ is reasonably priced and the feature allowing several different kinds of back-ups is likely attractive to the paranoid, like me. The thought of a hard drive crash in which my data is lost, particularly any of my manuscripts or books, is that scary to me.
