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81 Comments
- ryan6608, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19I'm currently using a vpn, rsync, rsnapshot and cron for my backups. The only reason I'm using a 'roll your own' solution is because I couldn't find something like CrashPlan. I use linux exclusively, but sometimes the attitude of the linux community annoys me. As soon as someone or some company tries to charge for a product all of the linux zealots start crying.
I don't know what you time is worth, but I'd rather pay $60 for a turn-key solution that's developed by someone experienced with all of the involved technology and have things running in less than an hour instead of rolling my own solution for two days and then having to worry about maintaining it and testing it every time one of the packages I'm using gets updated.
I created an account just so I could digg this story. - LordSkywalker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Thought it said CrashPlane at first. Didn't sound like the best idea for a backup company. I guess maybe they could be the "black box". . .yeah. It's late.
- Farticus, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21All you need is to integrate a few tools like these:
Hamachi http://www.hamachi.cc/
Truecrypt http://www.truecrypt.org/
Bacula http://www.bacula.org/
and a friend or two, actually three is best.
So why do I need CrashPlan? - Ryosen, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15@Aegis,
Not everyone can afford a monthly backup service and not everyone has access to an offsite server and the technical ability to maintain one. Believe it or not, not everyone knows rsync. Also, remote backup services are often cheaper, even at the commercial level, than maintaining your own co-loc'd server. Just because a free alternative, that you have to manage yourself, is right for you, doesn't mean that it's right for everyone. The software is $20, well within most people's reach.
As for access to your lost data if your buddy's on vacation, ideally, off-site data backup should be a secondary backup measure. If your need for access to your off-site data backups are that urgent that you cannot risk your "backup buddy" not being home (or asleep or watching TV or whatever), then you should utilitize a commercial backup program.
Oh, and you're an ass for burying the story just because it's beneath your standards of technical snobbishness and, heaven forbid, not free. - embraceware, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13One of the main points of the software is off site backups incase of fire/disaster...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14Because using one free cross-platform tool with more features is easier that integrating three with less features. Obviously.
- MackPrime, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14watch as everyone digg because of who submitted it. It's a cool thing and all, but they'll digg it even if they don't know what it is.
- cinnix, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9You can backup to the companies data servers (not free), or a friend/other computer (free). What it doesn't point out that to do it legally you need a licence for each computer :). Sounds brilliant in theory, but I'll wait for the reviews to spill out before I consider buying it. Cool nonetheless.
- michaelbeckham, on 10/12/2007, -7/+13How much is Kevin being paid to post this? What a surprise it made it to the front page....
- Synchro, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6If the machine you are backing up to is only going to be just that, than it does not need a license. If on the other hand, you want both machines to be able to back up to each other, then you need 2 licenses.
I actually purchased it the other day. I set it up to backup between my and my wifes machine initially. It works great. It is super simple to use. If you wanted to provide a simple off site backup, i'd defintely recommend this tool. I am thinking of setting it up for my parents. No, i do not work for the company, I just tried it out the other day after reading about it on Thursday. - zadadka, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7I prefer free....so I use DeltaCopy (Windows implementation of the RSync daemon).
- koguma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You mean like rsync -auz -e ssh ?
- TimDub, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I love how the word "free" is splashed all over the site in regards to friend-to-friend backups, but after one signs up, there's this tiny little print that says that using the software beyond the 30-day trial will still cost $19.
So, if I want to use this to back up data on my brother's PC across town, I'll still have to pay for the software. He won't have to, unless he wants to back up to my PC.
Love the idea, though. It's simple and user-friendly, and the price is right for a lot of people, but for now, my cheap ass will stick with Mozy, thanks. - FuzzyCat, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10I suppose digg does need to generate some revenue for all that VC investment but this is just lameass advertising...
There are much better freebie backup solutions available (see Farticus above) ... and if I'm using linux I'll stick with sshfs and rsync any day ... - iamrock, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The freeware version of SyncBack http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html#freeware can automatically backup, compress, encrypt, and FTP your secure files to a free MediaMax server (25GB) http://www.mediamax.com.
Just schedule weekly, incremental backups and forget about it. - theblacknight, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Incremental backups using rsync over ssh:
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~medling/backup/
It can also perform the backups to a local hard drive if you so desire.
Sorry for the shameless plug. - purplegecko, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Maybe read the site before going off on one.
You only pay if you want to use their servers to hold your backups. You can use their software on two machines for just the cost of the licence(s) and backup between the two.
Seems good to me. - hoofarted, on 10/12/2007, -11/+15I am sorry but this looks like blatant advertising. What kickback did you get to post this? Start digging me down fanboys!
- jads, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5free as in beer or free as in illegally torrented? Anyway, I think this could be a cool bit of software. Although many of us would be happy to set up a free (and more manual) way of doing it, I think this software would be great for intermediate users or even pros who really can't be arsed to do it themselves.
- hoofarted, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9With all the past goings on about Digg being "fixed" or "rigged" or what ever, and Kevin's denials of this, this goes to show that it is. The problem I have is that if 99.9999999% of Digg users submitted this "story", there is no way it would get to the front page as it is SPAM and nothing else.
Does Kevin's submitted stories automatically have a boosted rating in their "algorithm" ?
One last thing, warez-kiddies? WTF has that got to do with this you feking fanboy !? - shadus, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6You know... cool app and all, but my upload is about 70KB/sec. I have almost a terabyte of data between linux and windows... some how I can't see my isp being .. pleased to have every addition to my computer backed up else where... and even compressed how many people can afford to store 200-300g of your data with their 200-300g of data... this might work alright for a "mom & pop" computer thats surfs the net and reads email... but for most of the geeks i know this would be insane to run and pretty much impossible.
- technoticau, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3you wanna send stuff to your friends? check out allpeers.com, it's a firefox extension and no I don't work for them nor I know any of the developers, just trying to share the love... oh and it's free
- lispy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Err. That´s pretty much exactly what I am doing with a 200 line shellscript I wrote for my company. Not trying to look l33t as it´s really not that complicated and most unixadmins can do this. My script has almost all those features except for encryption and multiplatform support (it would probably run just fine with cygwin, though) as I don´t need it.
- Firehed, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5First, violating a EULA isn't illegal. Immoral, perhaps, and something that will violate any warranty, but not illegal. Second, it says right on their site that you only need to pay if you want to back up (plus a monthly fee IF and ONLY IF you want to use their servers) - having it installed to receive someone else's backup is completely free.
- scagnetti, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4FTP? You've heard of "in the clear," right?
- Ryosen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@MeatBiProduct
Not knowing how to configure and admin a server for the sole purpose of remotely backing up your home data is inexcusable?
Tell me something... Do you know how to birth, raise, nurture, slaughter, quarter, clean, cure, store and prepare a steer? Cause it's 2007 and there's no excuse for not knowing how to make a Big Mac. - chulium, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2CrashPlan just crashed...
- ozziek, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Deltacopy, a perfect example of a crap implementation of a user interface. Traffic lights?????
I hope it works well because the UI sucks - sancho, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Where is this free server to which you are backing up?
- mgarde, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2And using CrashPlan operates cross platform, I'm the network/web developer for a graphic design company and will be trying their software. I can have the graphic designers on their macs, and myself and the accountant on our win machines backup to a windows machine that I haven't used for over a year. Then when the Linux version is ready I can have our web/sql servers do the same.
I don't know if I'm going to love it but it looks good enough to try. - sdub, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Cygwin+SSH+RSYNC
Free, fast, encrypted. Works on all platforms. - nivals, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Personally, I would prefer to have my files at the data center of an online backup provider or Amazon S3 instead of the virus/malware/spyware infested pc of my buddy. Again, if cost is what is driving your decision to backup then maybe you just use your old PC or USB drive, but the first (last) time I lost my data I would have paid anything to get it back. It’s no big news here, the only attractive thing is that they have clients for Mac and Windows. Once Mozy releases their Mac client then who cares about this. I am currently using the Mac version of BackupRight http://www.backupright.com/ on my Macbook, it gets the job done quite nicely and its cheap.
- olik, on 06/29/2009, -0/+1no, because that is not encrypted
- GregorDV, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3The best combination of features that I've seen for this space is Duplicity (http://duplicity.nongnu.org/); it had all of the features that I wanted in a backup solution:
* Incremental backups
* Encrypted data (using gpg)
* Backup to FTP or SMB shares
* Free (libre) software (not a requirement, but nice)
The downside is that Windows is only nominally supported; I settled for having my linux box attach to all of the windows machines and back them up to my web host. Very nice. If somebody had a low-price ( - tjnicholas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It doesn't look like it does incremental backups, I'm sure they would have mentioned it if it did, and doing incremental backup with encryption is pretty tricky... but ***** backing up 25GB of photos over the internet without incremental...
Tim - puzza, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4I www.dropboks.com to store files. There's no client software, but it's free (aside from donations).
- gwinerreniwg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Any other Amazon S3 users out there? What solutions are you using? I've been playing with a product called "S3 Backup" for Windows which is in early Beta, but works fairly well (linky: http://www.maluke.com/s3man/ ). Currently free (except for your S3 usage, of course). It supports encryption, compression, and incremental backups. I've backed up about 150Gb using this solution so far.
- VANOS, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I love Syncback. Just bought it in November, and actually found a small harmless bug that was *immediately* acted upon by the programmers. I'm impressed with the customer support, the product, and the performance. Thumbs up for the suggestion, I was just going to post that as well.
- sammyc53, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It doesn't even mention if it does brick/block/file level backups... uh. no thanks.
- gwinerreniwg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Just a follow-up to my post: I received an email back today from these folks:
"We intend on releasing a free plugin to use Amazon S3 and box.net.
No date yet, but you have my word it's a priority. I love both."
Cool! - jrguk, on 11/19/2007, -0/+1So, why is CrashPlan interesting? I could roll my own - indeed, I've lashed together rsync and ssh with the best of them, and have home-brewed Perl scripts making local copies of files (and I'll probably carry on using those too.)
But I've got about 100GB (and growing) of pictures to protect against total loss. I need off-site copies, with the minimum of fuss. My friends and I have real jobs to attend to: $60 is nothing if it gets the job done.
It took myself and a friend about 10 minutes to get the 30 day trial up and connected, a little longer to realise that a stateful firewall rule was misbehaving, and then we were off.
What's impressed me so far is that adding a second directory which contained the same files, but with modified filenames, was handled without all the duplicate data being copied across the net (that's something rsync won't do!). And a third backup of the same files, but with different names again - well, it handled that too, and showed the different point-in-time versions in the Restore menu. I still have some concerns, regarding the data maintained on CrashPlan's servers even if you are not using their central system: they appear to hold the password, or can at least verify your login - so are they able to access your data and decrypt it? The FAQ doesn't say.
But definitely worth looking at, even if it ends up not being for you.
(I'm adding this comment here, because there's very little "chat" I've found about this application so far, but this is one place where there has been some.) - nelsonslament, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No thanks, FTP and a sweet bash script work just fine for me.
- onebigword, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm using cygwin to backup over the Internet. Specifically Unison for the backup (kind of like rsync), and ssh to establish a VPN. It takes some work to set up, but it's all free.
- terinea, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1 - If your technical enabled enough or have the time then CrashPlan isn't for you
- Free is referring to using your Friends PC as an online storage
- It's good product, available for Linux pretty soon, which going to be good.
- America, S3 is fantastic product, met Jeff Barr recently! but for UK businesses they need a UK datacenter.
- ryan6608 has pretty much got it spot on! - michael7136, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Wow, we have a bunch of techno snobs already dissing this software. Why are you so hostile? Sure, there are a bunch of ways to backup to a remote machine for free using rsync, etc, etc. What most of you don't understand is that there are people out there who don't have the time nor the inclination to learn or implement a somewhat more complex solution than Crashplan or any other GUI-based program. While you gripe about how simple it is for YOU to do it, you've missed the poiont - you missed out on an opportunity to make some money of your own. So don't bash the developer for actually writing a program for non-technical users and seizing the opportunity to profit from it. I could say the same thing about McDonald's hamburgers. Sure, I can make them myself but I don't. Why? because it's easier for me to drive down the street and have someone make it for me.
- gwinerreniwg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'd be interested if it provided native support for Amazon S3 Storage. I have an email in to see if it does .... And for those who are about to post, yes, I know I could use something like Jungle Drive to emulate a real HDD - If you've tried it for multi-gig backups, you'll know that's a flaky solution at best.
- aberro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1It does do incremental backups.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Im using it atm, I plan on buying it. Code42 has made an awesome app!
Not everyone can afford a server to back stuff onto and offsite storage is great incase of a fire or other disaster! - ghostrunnerdig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'll stick with Mozy any day over this.
- Atomic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I guess it seems like a nice idea for people who cant find something free...
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