What companies offer backing up your computer data onto a server?

Crashplan is good, though it takes a very long time to do it from home (i.e. a month). They can also send you a hard drive to copy to and send back. Much faster, but then you have to mail a hard drive, which is “risky”.

I was thinking of the services that you pay a monthly fee and everything backs up regularly as you create it. I once talked to a company like that and it was so long ago I don’t remember the name of it.

Crashplan does it daily, and you can pay monthly or yearly. Once all of your data is backed up, it only synchronizes new files.

I have used Mozy, Crashplan, Carbonite, and Backblaze.

Mozy is a non starter now. It used to be unlimited storage and that is now gone.

Crashplan is actually pretty good but the app is a cluncky JAVA app that isn’t really friendly on slower computers.

Carbinite is probably the worst out of any I have ever used. The app is horrible and actually getting your files back is hit and miss. I would actually call it a scam or utter incompetence

Backblaze is my current favorite. Great apps, never had a problem restoring. And cheap for unlimited storage.

One nice thing about Crashplan is that you don’t even need to use their servers. You can just install the software on both machines that you own and it will back-up. No need to pay. I use it to back-up my moms computer to a spare server I have in my kitchen. So depending on your needs it might be cheaper to just have a off-site server somewhere with the hard drives configured as a RAID and have everyone back up to that.

@johnpowell @Quakwatch Thanks!

I am a little confused, because when I read backblaze’s website it looks like it is only for Apple products. Os that the case? Also, Crashplan talks about hard drves and saving to other computers. I don’t get that. I thought the servce saves to a server?

Forgive my ignorance, but any further explanation you can give is very much appreciated. I really don’t understand this sort of stuff well.

Backblaze works with Mac OS and Windows. But the guys that started it are ex-engineers at Apple. A linux client is in the works.

Crashplan can do two things. One is that it works just like all the other providers where it backs up to their servers for a monthly fee.

The other thing it does and it does and it does this for free is it makes it so you can back-up one computer to another computer. Or you could back-up 20 computers to one computer if you wanted. This never hits their server.

So say you have a work computer in the office and a PC at home you can have it shoot off any new or modified files on the work PC and it will get backed up on your home PC. You just need to make sure you have the space to store the files on your home PC.

It seems like a odd thing to build into a product where they want you to buy storage space from them. But they did it and it works well.

But, like I said, I use it so my moms computer is constantly backed-up to my computer. I have a lot of storage space and run daily snapshots of her back-ups so if needed I could easily roll her computer back to where it was at midnight for any of the last 30 days.

Something else I thought I should add about the computer to computer thing I do with my mom and crashplan. Her files are encrypted before they are stored on my computer. They are just a bunch of gibberish text files that I can do nothing with. For them to be usable she would need to restore them through the Crashplan Application since that holds the encryption key.

I used Carbonite. ETPro recommended it to me. It’s like, $60 a year. It uploads your stuff automatically when your computer is inactive. It is SO reassuring.