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Code42 Says Crashplan Backup Service Will Discontinue All Personal Backup Plans (crashplan.com)
Reader amxcoder writes: Code42, the company behind the popular Crashplan online backup service has announced that will be discontinuing all of its personal and family backup plan offerings to focus on business backup service plans only. In the letter sent to existing personal plan customers, it says that next year will be the cutoff date for personal plans and all existing personal plan holders will have to upgrade their subscriptions to more expensive business plans or leave for another provider after current subscription runs out. Crashplan personal and family services were one of the best (and most affordable) options available for online backup, providing features that other rivals do not, including backup options for cloud, external local drives, and to other friends/family member's drives (trusted offsite). Looking at Carbonite services (who Code42 is recommending existing personal subscribers switch to), does not offer many of the options and features in their backup software, including multiple backup sets, unlimited deleted file retention, the trusted offsite options and any type of 'family subscription' offerings. Here is a statement from the Code42 CEO Joe Payne.
I use them for personal backup... this is the first I've heard of this! I just went and searched my email and didn't find anything.
This is definitely a shame! One of the things I liked most about their service is that it was easy to setup with black/white lists on what to back up. I really only wanted a backup for my photography hobby... everything else is backed up fine via Time Machine (and I rotate a drive offsite). Crashplan dealt well with this.
Anyway - nothing to do about it now. I'll start shopping around...
Do you constantly backup to one of the external drives and keep one offsite? And swap them every few hours? If not you don't know what you are talking about. Offsite backup is required.
If I need my old files, I will file a FOIA request with he NSA.
You might want to do some due diligence and see whether it makes sense to move your cloud backups elsewhere - or at least set up an account with a second backup provider. Businesses don't retrench for no reason - these guys may be in trouble.
#DeleteChrome
I mean, I understand your sentiment. But this seems like a company exiting a business the right way. Notifying and giving customers ample time to find a replacement. Would you rather they just shut their business down and put up a "fuck you" landing page? Further, what is your suggestion for Joe and Jane User for their backup solution? Here are the requirements: 1) Little to no computer knowledge needed. 2) Replicated off-site. 3) 5-10$/month 4) Hands-off backup.
A solution that meets your average user's needs is not possible without "the cloud"
It took me several months to backup my data to CrashPlan - now it's back to square one...
Call me an old fart, but the more I read, the less I'm trusting this cloud thing.
Cloud was not a requirement of the Home product. CPP offered computer to computer backups, across the network as well as local copies to drives. This change by the company eliminates the free model and removes the ability to even retrieve your data from the program after the Oct 2018 date, unless of course you pay for their services through the small business or Carbonite solutions.
The message I got said that I had until 09/28/2018... which is plenty of time to figure something out. But 5x the price... ouch! The Carbonite side is a little bit better... ~2x more than what I was paying but with less functionality. :`( Well at least I've got time to think about it.
It's nice that they point to another backup solution but as far as I can see, they don't support Linux... just like Backblaze. So... where does that leave me?
Because if I have a house fire or robbery, I don't want to lose all of my photos and videos. I can "offsite" my backup to work or a friend's house, but honestly it's worth the $100/year to not need to do that. "The cloud" is also great because when I set up a friend or family member's computer, I point it at my basement server. When they drop the computer, it gets stolen, or even if it just gets crapped up/ransomed - no biggie, my free tech support just got much simpler.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I didn't hear about this till it showed up in slashdot, then found it in my email. I converted my yearly pre-paid account to monthly after the new year because of the lack of deals. My account renewed on the 15th of this month and in the notification email, it states, I will have an extra 60 days to move my data, but my new subscription expiration date is 9/15/2017.
I will no longer advocate for my employers to use this as a backup solution.
I agree - I'm sad to see them go, but it's really hard to draw the "don't trust the cloud" conclusion from this: I paid them money, they provided a service. They haven't lost my data, and they are committing to continue providing the promised service through the end of my contract with them.
Crashplan is not "the cloud". It's backup software that has "cloud" storage as one element. You can use it for free without cloud storage, or you can pay them to host your backups. This is no different than open source solutions, but as usual you are at the mercy of the company who makes and supports the software. Anyway, I have a year to find another solution so it's not exactly an emergency. Worst case I could just rsync (or similar) the crashplan directory on my server to any provider that supports rsync. Suggestions?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
As one option. The other option is using their relatively inexpensive SMB service that does.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Looks like Crashplan is going to screw Linux users as Carbonite does not support Linux as far as I can tell. I have 2TB of stuff backed up to Crashplan. That took me MONTHS to complete.
Hmm... to me, the best thing about CrashPlan was the client. It would let me backup machine-to-mahcine, to a local drive, to a network drive, or to Crashplan Cloud -- all seamlessly from the same interface. I understand that the only thing they're eliminating is the cloud for home users product... but it seem from their site that they're also eliminating access to the client unless you have a Small Business account with a login to download the new ones.
Really, I bought their cloud product mostly because their client was good and their price was reasonable. Anyone know of a good and well-supported cross-platform client that lets you do machine-to-machine, NAS and cloud backups that maybe uses something like S3 or Glacier?
Welcome to cloud backup... I'm in the same boat :(
The email is unclear, but will we also lose the ability to back up peer to peer? It seems so. Might be time to investigate a bittorrent solution to push my backup to several friends' computers and vice versa.
Received a couple of notices. Not happy. I need to evaluate something for my dad and something for myself.
One of the features I liked was knowing if something catastrophic occurs they would get a drive to me. Granted I use dual time machine drives, but still.
So now to find another service that does that. Or pay them their $120 and sync data to one system. Which is probably what I will do. But not for my dad, put him on carbonite or something that uses S3 as a backend.
I hope their business customers using the home service hands them a little hell.
Really? You must have been paying a very low price for Crashplan Home if their Business plan is 5x for you.
I was paying $5 a month, and under the new plan, would be paying $10. That's still a lot better than with Mozy and its high per-gig pricing, and pretty close to Carbonite (which has inferior features, esp. with its lack of Linux support). For my backup needs, Amazon S3 storage would also cost about $10 a month (with bring-your-own backup software), and Backblaze B2 would be about $2.50 a month. For either of those, I would need something like Arq or Duplicati to do the backups, and wouldn't have much in the way of customer service.
I am still weighing my options, but I may well sign up for Crashplan Business, if it looks like the company is doing OK financially.
Why are they pushing Carbonite? Their page selling the small business product (https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/business/compare/) still points out some of the major failings of Carbonite - which is why I switched a few years ago in the first place. Linux support, my own passphrase for the backup, automatic support for other file types... Small business fits me pretty well still, and the price isn't bad, but I'm still going to look around for something else. The fact that they are pushing a competitor one one side & pointing out their flaws on another smells of larger business problems to me. Bye Code42!
Be Excellent To Each Other
I assure you, I back up all the seconds!
What if you got a hosting plan somewhere with a huge drive and just set up a cron job with rsync once a week?
I mean what's so difficult about scheduling an automatic backup to their own NAS or heaven forbid- a USB attached external HDD?
2) Replicated off-site.
A USB Solution/NAS does you no good when your house burns down, gets flooded, computer gets stolen, etc.
When they terminate my contract, they will delete all my data. I am sure it is in the terms and conditions, but I don't think that they have a way for me to download or transfer my years of backups. Does anyone know how I can download all my data or move them to another provider?
is your $100 per year still worth it when the company providing the (LOL) 'service' goes tits up on you, and tells you "we DGAF about your data, get it or don't, not our problem anymore" and you end up having to store it locally anyway?
Ah, there's the disconnect. I'm already storing it locally. Crashplan is the backup of my backup. Frankly, it would be very annoying to download multiple TB in the event of a hard drive failure. Crashplan could go out of business tomorrow and I still have two copies of the data.
then go to your bank and get a safety deposit box,
I have one for important paperwork. I could easily fit a drive in it, but frankly that is a major PITA. Banks are only open when I would otherwise be at work, and I'm simply not disciplined enough to manually run backups. Even if I were, $100 per year is worth not having to do that.
If you want to complain about 'convenience' then get a 1TB USB drive and use that for a 'local' backup copy.
I have a basement server that is a backup target for all of my devices. Crashplan is the backup to THAT.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I wouldn't recommend Crash plan for business unless there's an IT person on site. Too many interruptions that a regular office person isn't going to notice. I get emailed updates when the computers don't backup after so many days and need to investigate. Most times, the service needs to be manually restarted and works again for a while. Other times, you need the secret menu to run advanced commands that restart things differently. When I needed to call someone, the hold time was 52 minutes and then was offered a call back. No callback. Another time, I got a callback, but only for someone to take the issue down and someone else was supposed to call me. They never did. On more than one occasion, the server picked for backup shits the bed. I have to contact Crash plan to tell them their server is fucked. After some time, they report it's confirmed and under going maintenance. Wait another day and still not fixed. Contact them again, and says maintenance didn't go well and then did something to use another server. By the end of it, it hadn't backed up in 9 days and took 4 days to resolve after reporting issue. I don't think their stuff is robust and unless you constantly verify, you could be in a situation where you find your backed up data very old.
Further, what is your suggestion for Joe and Jane User for their backup solution? Here are the requirements: 1) Little to no computer knowledge needed. 2) Replicated off-site. 3) 5-10$/month 4) Hands-off backup.
A solution that meets your average user's needs is not possible without "the cloud"
Have you considered this can't be delivered as priced? There's a reason Code42 is dropping personal backups and making people take pricier business plans if they want to stay. Support costs for individual accounts of people with "little to no computer knowledge" might be part of that. Those costs would be lower if a business IT employee is handling that, on an account with a higher-priced plan.
I recently switched to Arq backup (https://www.arqbackup.com/) and have been very happy with how it works. It is cloud service agnostic, and allows you to backup to your own server as well.
I'm looking into CloudBerry and using a storage provider like Amazon Glacier. One time purchase of the software plus storage costs.
Because they think Linux users can make their own storage out of mud and sticks.
rsync -mud -sticks
Yup, someone else gets my $100, and I'll be thankful that I switched to FIOS :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I have mod points I was thinking of using. But I'll just state it here.
You are being an ass, a giant ignorant ass, who can't see beyond your own little dome. People who are smarter and more experienced than you have their reasons for backing up to the cloud. As one guy showed you, his cloud backup is the backup of his local backup.
You should learn a lesson here, and just stop posting in this thread. Nothing you have said was worth arguing for on your part, or replying to on our part. We have lost time feeding a troll who wasn't worth the effort.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Nearly 15 years ago I built a P2P torrent-style anonymized backup program, based on Reed-Solomon EC. At the time, disk sizes and internet speeds were against it.
Now, I'm wondering if I should resurrect it. Any interest in a open-source, cross-platform P2P backup program?
I already have a nice Synology NAS with RAID that I backup all PC's to already. However, if you know anything about backup, the 3-2-1 rule requires an OFFSITE backup copy in case of local disaster, hardware theft or damage. You obviously don't know as much as you wish. I get the cloud is ugly, and I don't rely on it either for most stuff. But as an offsite backup of backups, it the only way to do it in real time. Otherwise, you are swapping HDD's and driving them all over creation, which isn't feasable except on a weekly or monthly timeline. I can't afford to lose a month of data without MAJOR headache.
With Crashplan, the software used it's data deduplication/compression/versioning information to create local backups to NAS drive on a continual REAL-TIME basis. And at the same time, uploaded all new/modified files in REAL-TIME to the cloud in case the local backup became "unavailable". This is why cloud backup is important.
You can trust some cloud-based backups, for example these guys meticulously back up everything, and never throw anything away.
I am a freelancer, and thus work from home and run my own programming business. Keeping all current and past/present projects and all data/files associated with them backed up and not lose them forever is part of my responsibility. I very much appreciate files being backed up every couple minutes along with history versioning.
I just checked, and it seems that their Crashplan's business plans cost 10$/per device (unlimited storage). If I'm not overseeing anything, I think I'll be simply switching to that, because I've only had great experiences with them.
Am I missing something?
From what I can see, Crashplan's Pro offering costs 10$/device/month, which is not THAT much more expensive than the personal plan was.
They should release the peer-to-peer feature free and possibly open-source that part. It's the thing CrashPlan does best, which is make several easy and automatic duplicates of backups across several machines.
Kriston
OK? What in my post contradicts that?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I renewed my service days before this announcement and Code42 refused to refund my purchase. Changing the TOS with no notice and no chance to opt out should make Code42 vulnerable to a class action suit.