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Deduplication is a problem with CrashPlan on large datasets. You can disable it here.

https://support.code42.com/Cra...

It says "don't do it" every two lines but it sped up my backup speed by more than 10 times after a few TB.

Better yet, use a backup software that will do offsite backups automatically.

So, I did this with all of my movies, VHS, DVD, BluRay ect.. I ended up with a very large library of video on my computer. In my computer I used an Adaptec 5805 RAID controller with backup battery and 4 3TB WD Red HDD's to store all the data in a RAID 5. I am also running a PLEX Server to organize and add meta data to all of the video files as well as serve them to the HTPC and Roku 3 in my house. As for backup I purchased an account with Crash Plan.

With all of this I get a nice organized library for all my video files with meta data. The ability to stream them around my house and to my phone on the road. Data redundancy both local via the RAID 5 and remotely through crash plan.

• Total cost
• Raid Card: $250 (Yay Ebay! This card is $480 in newegg plus $120ish for the battery.)
• Hard drive cage with Hotswap bays: $40
• Server: Just used my gaming computer so $0 but would be $2.5k to rebuilt the computer but you don't need a computer that fast as a file server though it is a transcoding champ.
• HDDs: 4x $125 = $500
• Plex: Lifetime $75
• Crash Plan: $5/month
• Total: $945 + Computer + $5 a month

• • The initial backup took a really long time. (Almost 2 weeks.) Even with my 25mbps up stream so you may want to pop for the seeded backup option if your internet isn't very fast but it is limited to 1TB so it wouldn't have saved me too much time. I've been satisfied so far but I've been lucky and haven't needed the backup yet. Though I guess it's like insurance I pay for it but I don't ever want to use it.

At any time, a proper setup involves maintaining a minimum of three copies of any important data:
1) The copy you use.
2) Your local backup.
3) Your off-site backup.

How you choose to implement those can vary. For instance, if you have the cash, I think most of us would agree that maintaining separate RAID arrays for your in-use and local backups would be ideal. The reason you'd keep them separate is because of the all-important mantra: RAID is not the same as having a backup (you don't seem to be under this misconception, but it bears repeating, nonetheless). RAID can protect against certain forms of hard drive failure, meaning that you wouldn't even need to resort to using your backups in the case of those sorts of failure, but it does nothing to protect against your data being corrupted by the file system or deleted by an accidental action on your part.

If you don't have the money for RAID, you could start out by just putting your in-use and local backup copies on separate hard drives (which it sounds like you're already doing), the first of which backs up to the second. That'll work most of the time and in most cases, but it means that hard drive failures will be more of a threat and an inconvenience, since you'll have to be more reliant on your other copies being intact, given that you'll be suspending your use of the damaged copy while you replace the drive and restore the data to it.

In addition to your local copies, you should have an off-site backup in a location that is geographically removed from you, that way if natural disaster does its worst, you don't lose your data. CrashPlan is the one I use and is a good place to start, since it offers multiple options for backing up off-site, including a free option where you and a friend provide off-site backups for each other. Their for-pay options are reasonable in price (though they have more than doubled since I joined a few years back), offer unlimited storage, and provide the ability to set your own encryption key (i.e. keeps them from being able to pry into your data if they're served with a warrant).

So, at a minimum: a drive for your in-use copy, a drive for a local backup, and CrashPlan backups to a friend, all of which would only cost you as much as the hard drives involved.

Ideally, however, you'd also do something to protect against corrupted data or accidental deletions on your part, which means storing multiple versions of your backups, and doing so both locally and off-site. CrashPlan subscriptions all provide full versioning of anything you backup in perpetuity, so if your data becomes backed up in an incorrect state, you can rollback to a previous version easily. Even so, you should still have versioning stored locally in some form or fashion, that way you're not dependent on CrashPlan always being around and always working. If you're a Mac user, Time Machine can serve this purpose (it should be in addition to any other local backups mentioned above), and you can even backup your Time Machine data off-site if the off-site backup system you choose doesn't offer built-in versioning like CrashPlan does. I'm sure others can make some recommendations for Windows and Linux alternatives to Time Machine.

And yes, you should keep the tapes around, if only so that you can demonstrate ownership should any legal questions come up. But once you verify that the copies you've made are all correct and working, you can probably box them up and put them in an out-of-the-way spot in the attic where you'll never have to bother with them again.

S3? Yuck. Their pricing is horrendous. I'd suggest crashplan.

http://www.code42.com/crashplan/
http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/CrashPlan_Headless_Client

Although the synology forums are currently getting destroyed (guessing from this article).

This page has their three plans. One is free, but it assumes your backup locations are not Crashplan's systems (friends, family, other computers you control). That's probably the catch you're looking for; you have to come up with the backup location yourself. Being able to back up one system to CP's servers (unlimited quantity) is on the order of 5 a month; being able to back up 2-10 systems is on the order of 15.

You may also consider the encryption options to be a catch; as you note, the free plan has less encryption. On the other hand, the data is being stored somewhere you presumably trust. The plans that save to CP's systems have a couple of key management options, and in one they don't get the key (barring sneakiness, but if you're that worried about it you're likely going to rig it so what they're backing up is encrypted already).

Personally, I back up one system (my file server) to Crashplan, and most of my other ones to the file server. NOTE! This does not mean my other systems are getting backed up to Crashplan indirectly! If I want it backed up to Crashplan I have to copy it to the fileserver as a regular file. It just means that stuff on my laptop that I don't think is important enough to go offsite still gets automatically backed up to a different disk.

The CrashPlan seed drive is limited to a single 1TB drive and you can't add a seed to an existing backup without erasing what's already stored with them. After that, you're subject to the capped upload. (Technically not "capped" according to them, but they divide their total available bandwidth by the number of users and limit you to only your share, so it's effectively capped.)

A quick check at one service which lists such large amounts, you would be looking at almost $20k/year to keep a single offsite copy of that.

Crashplan comes in at $3.96/mo. for 20TB. Restores from your online data are free. You can supply your own key for encryption if you don't want to give them the ability to access your data.

They allow you to create your own 448-bit key. When you use your own key, Crashplan is unable to assist with the recovery, which implies that they do not have access to this key.

You can backup(encrypted) to a friends computer and not use CP stuff at all. Check out the Local and Offsite plan. https://www.code42.com/store/