Many of you read about my poor experience with the Carbonite online backup service. After that experience I was ready to throw in the towel on online backup and not think about it until the market got a little more mature. This plan was cut short when my already favorite home backup solution CrashPlan lowered their online CrashPlan Central prices and made all of their plans unlimited. What might have been $169.42 a year limited to 200GB could now be as low as $41.64 a year (3 year plan) for unlimited storage as well as introducing a new family plan for $60 a year (3 year plan) that will cover all the computers in your house. At these prices I had to give them a try and see if they were the solution I had long been looking for.
About CrashPlan
CrashPlan from Code 42 software is an always on backup solution that runs in the background either backing up according to a schedule you set or continuously if you have CrashPlan+. It can backup over your home network to another computer in your house, to an external hard drive like Apple’s Time Machine does or even to a friends computer over the Internet and is a free download for personal use (They have a Pro version for business).
I started using CrashPlan in 2007 and upgraded to CrashPlan+ in Feb. of 2008. Since then I’ve used CrashPlan to backup my laptop to my home server (a trusty Dell server with a 4TB RAID 5 array). I had carefully configured an opening in my home firewall as well which meant that even when I was in the office or on the road my laptop was backing up to my home server.
This was a near perfect solution for me. The CrashPlan client was easy to use, unobtrusive, straight forward in letting you choose what was being backed up with no hidden limitations (unlike what I discovered when using Carbonite). But all this time I had a gap in my backup strategy, what about my home server? With everything I had being backed up to my home server I wanted to make sure my home server was backed up offsite in case of fire or theft. Enter CrashPlan Central.
About CrashPlan Central
CrashPlan Central provides CrashPlan users a convenient option to backup their files online and they offer a free 30 day trial. It’s clear that the CrashPlan team takes pride in their datacenter which is where your data ultimately ends up with full details available on their site. While some of these details are clearly more than the average home user might need I find it very refreshing that they are so upfront in describing where and how your data will be stored. A lot of online backup companies seem to go out of their way to not tell you where your data will live and take a “just trust us” attitude when it comes to your data. The only company that comes close to this level of transparency is BackBlaze which is also upfront in describing where and how your data is stored including an interesting overview of the hardware BackBlaze uses.
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Going beyond their physical datacenter, CrashPlan Central also has some of the best data encryption options available. With three options you can choose to secure your private key with your account password, a specific password you choose or even replace your private key with one of your own. The easiest option is to just use your account password but keep in mind that this means that your private key is stored at CrashPlan. While you might trust them, if they were ever subpoenaed they may be required to hand over your data and private key. Choosing a private password is the best option to keeping your data and your private key private. Just don’t forget that password! If you loose it, you loose your data and the folks at CrashPlan have no way to recover it for you.
CrashPlan Central also offers online web access to your backed up files which is useful in a pinch although I found it easier to just install the CrashPlan client and restore files that way.
With regard to pricing, CrashPlan is a few dollars less than Carbonite or Mozy when comparing single computer costs. If however you choose a multi-year plan or the family plan option the cost savings are pretty significant. CrashPlan has a price comparison tool that when I checked it looked pretty accurate.
Evaluating CrashPlan Central
I started my evaluation of CrashPlan Central at 10 PM on August 27th, here are the details of my evaluation environment:
| Hardware: | Dual Core 3GHz Intel Pentium D with 8GB of RAM |
| OS: | Windows Server 2008 64-bit |
| Internet: |  |
| Backup Set: | 133.3 GB (Various files including, pictures, MP3’s, ISO images and Movies) |
I also have a Laptop running Windows 7 beta (which seems to run CrashPlan fine) and a Intel iMac running Mac OS 10.6 (just upgraded). Both are running CrashPlan to backup to my home server. I also have one friend who backs up to my system remotely. All of this backup activity is centered around my home server which is the same system I used to test CrashPlan Central with making it a pretty good stress test for anyone. My home network is a mix of WiFi (802.11 n/g) and Gigabit Ethernet. Ultimately I have about 2.5 TB of data I plan to backup but I wanted to start with a smaller set to experiment with.
Thankfully I have a pretty fast Internet connection but as I found with Carbonite the speed of your own connection is not all that matters. If your online backup provider chooses to throttle your connection like Carbonite and Mozy do then you are not going to get the full value of your fast Internet connection.
I configured CrashPlan to use up to 100% of my CPU when I was away and 20% when I was using my computer and left it running almost 100% of the time during my evaluation. Here is an overview of the activity I documented during my test:
| Date/Time | GB Completed |
|---|---|
| Aug. 27th | 0 |
| Aug. 28th | 9.8 GB |
| Aug. 29th | 20.1 GB |
| Aug. 30th | 30 GB |
| Aug. 31st | 44.8 GB |
| Sept. 1st | - not recorded - |
| Sept. 2nd | - not recorded - |
| Sept. 3rd | 85.3 GB |
| Sept. 4th | - not recorded - |
| Sept. 5th | 133.3 GB DONE! |
That’s right, in 10 days I backed up 133.3 GB or an average of about 14.9 GB a day! This is the same set of data that never finished backing up in the several months I had a Carbonite license. The entire time I watched my backup for any signs that CrashPlan was throttling my upload speed and could find none. I double checked to make sure that all of my files, no matter what the file type, were being backed up and could find no discrepancies. CrashPlan Central appeared to be extremely fast and accurate. Throughout the backup I continued to use my computer daily, as I normally would using programs like Word, Excel, Photoshop, Google Chrome, Firefox, Picasa, iTunes, Dreamweaver and even Intellij IDEA 8 to do some Grails development. My computer usage was not light.
The performance of CrashPlan Central, even while still heavily using my computer, appeared to be simply amazing and just as important not disruptive to whatever it was I was working on at the time.
The truth is however that my backup time could have been even faster had it not been for a few issues I encountered while testing CrashPlan.
Issues Encountered During the Evaluation
Tthere were a few hiccups during the evaluation that are worth mentioning. Before I decided to try CrashPlan Central I had already been backing up to a friends computer who was also running CrashPlan. When I added CrashPlan Central as a destination it added it to my list of backup destinations (CrashPlan supports multiple backup destinations). At first this didn’t seem to be an issue but when I started to backup extremely large files (one file was over 4GB) my backup ground to a halt.
I wrote to CrashPlan’s support team and in about 24 hours I received the following response from Renee:
“CrashPlan prioritizes destinations based on which destination will finish first. Say you’re backing up to both CrashPlan Central and a local hard drive. CrashPlan is smart enough to know that it will finish backing up to your local hard drive sooner than it will finish backing up to Central, so it will complete backup to the hard drive (assuming the drive is connected, mounted, etc.), then it will switch to backing up to Central.”
What this meant was because I was constantly producing files that needed to be backed up CrashPlan was delaying every 15 minute my backup to Central so it could back up to my friends computer. It could never finish that 4GB file in 15 minutes so it kept on restarting. Once I understood this behavior I configured CrashPlan to only backup changed files after 2 hours and my backup was flying along again.
The other issue I encountered during the evaluation was with the “analyzing” phase. If you should ever interrupt your backup while it’s backing up a file it will pick up where it left off. However before it does is must first analyze the file to check for changes before it resumes. If this file is particularly large this analysis can be extremely CPU intensive and does not obey the CPU limits in the settings. Indeed this was my first indication that something was wrong with my backup when my CPU would go to 100% for 15 minutes every 15 minutes.
Missing Features
While CrashPlan Central really did impress me there is always room for a few improvements, here is what I would change or add to CrashPlan given the chance:
- Better handling of large files when using multiple destinations.
- If CrashPlan always finished the current file it was working on before pausing one destination for another there would be less issues for users with multiple destinations.
- The ability to manage and have different backup selections by destination.
- My friends are generous, but not 2.5 TB generous. If I’m going to want to back up my entire system I’m going to have to stop backing up to them before I enlarge my backup set since you can only have one backup file selection for all your destinations.
- Application profiles.
- For the advanced user this isn’t really important but for home users it’s getting increasingly hard to keep track of where the applications you use keep their settings. For example being able to easily backup your web browser settings and bookmarks as well as easily restoring them without accidentally also backing up your cache files would be nice addition. I plan on describing how to optimize CrashPlan settings and backup file selections in a future article for those looking for some advice.
- Better online web access to files.
- CrashPlan does provide simple web access to your files but it’s pretty basic. A more functional online system for accessing your files with the ability to browse through their contents before downloading them or the ability to package up a set of files and download them as a single zip would transform their online web access from simple a tool you use in a pinch to one you might use everyday to get to your files when you are working remotely. Perhaps borrow a few features from the excellent folder synchronization tool, DropBox.
Product Support
While I had a few issues and questions during my evaluation it gave me a chance to interact with the CrashPlan support team. I generally got a response in about 2 to 3 days, the responses were always from the same person (Renee) who I started speaking with at the start. Her responses were never canned and always helpful. Most importantly they also generally resolved my problem or answered my question. While I would have liked a faster response to my questions this was another huge difference from my experience with Carbonite support. CrashPlan also has a pretty comprehensive set of online support options including a wiki and support forums.
Final Verdict
Before I finished this article I decided to purchase a CrashPlan Central 3 year family plan. The price, performance and ease of use just can’t be beat. Comparing my CrashPlan experience with my experience using Carbonite has been like night and day, CrashPlan Central is what online backup was meant to be – fast, trustworthy and unobtrusive.
If you had been waiting on the sidelines like I had looking for the right online backup solution, look no further than CrashPlan. With it’s ability to backup to just about any destination you choose it’s already one of the most flexible backup solutions available. Add online backup using CrashPlan Central backed by what seems like an fun and honest company and you have all your bases covered at a cost that won’t break the bank.
| Click here to download CrashPlan |
Great review!
We'll look into CPU usage on large files (Which by thew way, is still scheduled at idle CPU so it shouldn't have gotten in the way although we agree – shouldn't have went to 100% cpu solid like that)
Also – if you select more than 1 file, we do in fact zip them up and send them down to you.
Thanks Matthew! Ah ha! scheduled at idle explains why it wasn't too painful when it used 100% CPU (I was wondering) but it definitely used whatever it could get it's hands on which confused me because I thought I had it set on 20%. Maybe that is the ideal way to handle things when it's "analyzing". If you can minimize the times when a backup gets interrupted then I doubt many people will ever notice or be annoyed by it. Also, thanks for the tip on the zip file, I don't know how I missed that, i'll update my article to address that.
Nice review.
CAn you back up to two destinations? For example, could I have my laptop backup to my home server and CrashPlan Central?
Hi Brian, you sure can. In my setup I backup to a friend and also to CrashPlan Central (2 destinations) but you could just as easily have your laptop backup to your home server and CrashPlan Central as well.
Great review! I'm currently evaluating remote backup solutions (including crashplan). Your post has been very helpful.
Good review – thnx.
Hi Erik, great review and thanks for posting. Have you done a similar test with Backblaze? I'd be curious to know if you have, or if not, why you decided to choose CrashPlan over Backblaze.
Thanks!
PS: the info on carbonite was also great… I've currently "hit the Carbonite wall" on my uploads and have to find another solution that actually works to keep my files in sync with my off site backup.
hi erik thanx for this great review i am a photographer so i have been looking to back up all my data (pictures) from my RAID5 system i have mac laptop and so far i have been backing up on my raid 5 system got around 1 tb of work is it goin to be possible to back up all my work to crashplan central from my raid and my laptop how long will it take and whats the best package i can take from crashplan i am worried of theft fire and HDD failure any advice would be great i chosen crashplan after a research on mozy and carbonite deleting files after 30 days lets say i am away from home for more than 30 days they delite all files from raid 5 as is not a network is just storage raid5 dont know if i make any sence here
Jani, I recommend you look into the family plan, if you pay for 3 years of service in advance it comes out to something like 5 dollars a month, that's a great value just comparing that to the price of an external hard drive. I have a setup similar to yours with a laptop and a server with a 4TB RAID5 array and with the family plan I backup everything on all my systems to CrashPlan Central. I've got well over a TB backed up and I'm adding GB of data every week without any issues. If you have a lot of files to backup and are worried how long it's going to take you should check out the "seed your backup" (” target=”_blank”>http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/feature/see… option
cheers erik i seen the seed back up but i will have to send hard drive from london uk to usa if the hard drive suvives the jurney well i dont gthink i need family plan as i only have 1 system 1 laptop and the raid i am freelance photographer so my images are valiuable to me i am concerned about how big files can u upload like in carbonite 4gig is the max you can have per file and also if you dont conect ur external hard drive for 30 days they asume those files as delited so they delite them aswell i like to have something like a safe were you put your money and people dont think if u havent touched that money for 30 days you dont need them so is ok for them to dispose them lol i am not very technical so i was happy when i had thinks in film and i put the negsor transparencies in a saety box in a storage depot some were in town.
Hi Jani, I've backed up some really huge multi GB files to CrashPlan, with a number of them being larger than 4GB. Also you might want to check out http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/recipe/reta… which describes all the CrashPlan retention settings, no need to worry about any 30 day limit!
Hi,
I have been trying crash plan now and it is extremely slow and I frequently get message "Destination unavailable – not available" Is this just because so many people are using it? Am unwilling to pay after 30 day trial if this is how long it takes. I am not backing up to any other destination when I get this message. I periodically back up to time machine but would like to also back up outside my house.
Rick, see the reply from Renee below, she's great at getting to the bottom of any issue you might be having and helped me during my original review.
One thing I can speak to is that I've not noticed any performance or connection issues and I'm backing up a lot of stuff to CrashPlan. Good luck!
Hi Rick,
If you could send us an email from your CrashPlan account address and include your log files, we'll be able to help you with your issue. Instructions for sending your logs are here:
http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/how_to/send…
Thanks,
Renee Schaefer
CrashPlan Support
support@crashplan.com
I've been struggling with getting a refund from Carbonite since my post a couple of weeks ago. Their customer NO service continues to absolutely redefine incompetent and unhelpful. After waiting one hour to talk to someone, and after I explained my issues in great detail, the guy (Maurice) put me on hold and hung up on me. ARGH!
For anyone considering Carbonite, please please please choose someone else and save yourself the frustration. Also, for those wanting to confirm just how bad Carbonite's speeds are, they've gone so far as to now publish their capped speeds (sometime at the end of December they buried this on their site).
http://cp-carbonite.kb.net/display/4n/kb/article….
Here is a quote of the relevant information. I can tell you from experience they don't even achieve these rates. I ultimately gave up when my total backup was around 180 GB and my upload speeds were capped at 100 kbps.
Hopefully this helps someone avoid the same mistake I made.
<==========>
Our bandwidth policy is allocated into three tiers as shown below. This allows us to ensure that all users are able to backup their most important data as quickly as possible. Actual speeds may vary depending on your internet connection, your computer's configuration, other Internet-enabled software you may be running, and how often you use your computer. The current maximum upload speeds are as follows:
* The first 35GB of data can achieve upload speeds of up to 2 mbps (megabits per second).
* Between 35GB – 200GB of data can have the upload speeds reach up to 512 kbps (kilobits per second).
* 200GB or more of data can be uploaded at up to 100 kbps (kilobits per second).
<==========>
Hi:
Does Crashplan save previous versions of files & if so, for how long. I am concerned about having a corrupted file & then not being able to access a earlier version that is not corrupted.
Thanks.
Hi Louise, CrashPlan does save previous versions. The length of time and number of versions is entirely up to you (although you need a CrashPlan+ license). Read more on what CrashPlan can do here: http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/recipe/reta…
I really wanted to use Crashplan – I like the idea that I can both backup to friends+other computers and online service too.
At first – all was good; I tested Crashplan Central with 100+GB; performance was very good (like yours – all done in ~2 weeks), and I did a full restore of all my email; it all worked great.
Then, just before signing up to the full deal, I realized my backup is stuck, and the numbers are not consistent on my mapped drive (I know not officially supported).
What broke the deal was their support. I started interacting with their support to figure out what's happening. I had to REMIND their support I have an open ticket. At some point – I uploaded log file, and again reminded them to get an answer; the answer was "the developer is looking at it". Enough is enough.
Not professional. Nobody should nag support 4+ times. (BTW – I read your Carbonite support ordeal … hard to believe it can be worse … so pathetic …)
I am off to iDrive; superb performance and support from my limited test; let's see how it goes.
Less features, more expensive for all of my data – but I need a backup+support I can trust.
Hi Aviv, I'd like to know more about what went wrong and I'm sure my readers would like to know as well so they can trouble shoot or avoid the same issues you had. Can you share more details on what happened and how you noticed something was wrong? Thanks!
I can identify with the issue Aviv mentions with CP support when something goes into their engineering queue. When questions can be answered by the front-line support team, the response time is great and the reps are all really friendly and helpful. My own recent experience with a more complicated problem was that the issue goes into the engineering group to review the logs and sits for much longer without regular updates. I've been prompting for a response for about a week now without an update, and I intended to send in another 'reminder' today.
All in all I'm still quite happy with CrashPlan, but I can identify with the experience above re: troubleshooting complicated issues.
Turns out old backup archives created with Crashplan have a bug that can leave files unrestorable. Crashplan silently fixed this (no entry in the release notes), but old archives may have corrupted files. The only solution is to wipe the archive and start from scratch, and the only way to find out is to try a restore and see if it works.
More details at http://try-dot-ch.blogspot.com/2010/03/crashplan….
Hey Nik, I was pretty shocked to hear your report so I did a little digging and also spoke with the CrashPlan folks as well to try and get to the bottom of this for you. The CrashPlan folks got back to me quickly but they also told me they are going to try and get in touch with you to make it right, so keep a look out for a message from them.
Now, what I heard from the CrashPlan team is that new and existing CrashPlan customers do not have anything to worry about as this issue was fixed a while ago and that there is a continuous backup verification process going on so if some how you do have a messed up file in your backup, it will, or rather should have already fixed itself.
Just to be sure however I decided to restore all the files from a CrashPlan backup archive I had laying around that had been created a year ago from a computer I parted with in May and didn't have any file corruption issues. I'm going to try restoring some of my other backups and if I see any problems I'll let everyone know. If anyone else has seen this issue, please post your comments here to let us know.
Your note however made me think of a great blog post I had read recently from Joel Spolsky entitled "Let's stop talking about Backups" (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/12/14.ht… Joel makes a great point that if your data is important to you, you shouldn't be thinking about just backing up, but you need to be thinking (and testing!) your ability to restore. I know we all pay money to backup services like CrashPlan so that we don't have to think about that, but it's a good point. Until you have done at least one restore how do you know it really works? All to often we wait to test out backups on the day our hard drive dies and that's probably not the day to do our first test of our backup system if our data is really that important!
I posted this over at Nik's blog as well, but I think it's worth repeating here since I know a lot of people find this post who are considering CrashPlan.
============
Thanks for posting your experience… for a company who normally seems to be quite up-front about their shortcomings, the fact that they haven't publicized this is really surprising. It would seem to be in their best interest to do so. Much better that they tell everyone now vs. only telling people when they're in the nightmare scenario of wanting to restore their backup and finding out only then that it is corrupt.
It seems to me that CrashPlan knows this is an issue, they know that it only affects files stored on a certain location/server in their environment, and as a result, they must know which customers have backed up data to that location during the time that the bug was present. Why not just send a notification, with an apology, and instructions for correcting the issue?
Saying that it only affects .004% of the files backed up isn't adequate… what if that .004% was a priceless home video or unrecoverable family photos? I think we all realize that mistakes will happen and that's why we back up to more than one location, but dealing with unanticipated mistakes vs. those you know about and choose not to disclose are two very different things.
Sitting on the grenade and hoping it doesn't blow up just doesn't seem like an intelligent strategy here. If Nik's blog really captures all of the details as they occurred and there isn't any other part to the story, from all of my own experiences with CP (which have been truly great), I'm very surprised that this is how they've handled it.
I'm hoping that CP chooses to respond publicly as I still remain optimistic that this version of the story isn't entirely true and not as bad as it sounds. I'm willing to give them that much credit after my own great experiences with them, but from Nik's telling of the story, it's pretty bad.
Thanks for the great review! I’m considering CrashPlan for my family…one question I haven’t been able to find an answer to….
I have an external hard drive that has files on it which only exist on that drive…in other words they’re not also on my system. (Basically old Archives I might need someday but don’t need eating up space on my computer.) Can I back up those files to CrashPlan Central, or will it only sync with my computer’s files?
Hi Mark, thanks for your comments. The answer to your question is yes. I’ve got several systems that have external hard drives and I’ve set them to also backup to CrashPlan and I’ve even had to use those backups when I had an external drive fail on me last month.
if i were to set a network drive as a source, and at some point forgot to mount this network drive, the crashplan app obviously wouldn’t see the files anymore; but what would it do to my remote files (crashplan central, friends computer) from the net drive ?
when i mount the net drive would the CP app notice this, scan for changes and continue on as if nothing had happened ?
ultimately i want to be able to backup some mp3′s (about 10 gig) that may not always be available to the computer that the CP app is installed on.
would this be possible without issues?
thanks,
bill
Hey Bill, this is similar to how I’ve got my laptop set up, when i’m home it’s using an external drive that is also backed up to CrashPlan, when i’m on the road, it’s only backing up my local files, when I get back home it’s backing up everything when I plug in. I haven’t had any issues so far disconnecting or reconnecting my external disks and everything seems to be backing up correctly when I check the files on CrashPlan central. Good luck!
i started using carbonite briefly last november and found almost immediately that i did not like the interface, all the little icons, the files it chose to backup and not backup by default, etc. i immediately switched to backblaze and so far have been very happy with it but have really had it do nothing more than backing up it’s default set of files (which is pretty close to most everything i would want backed up). the more i read about crashplan+, the more it seems it might fit me better but wading through the various reviews it’s tough to compare at present without doing more research than i have time for at present. is there a particular review or site you could point me to that you found to be particularly good comparing the two?
Hi, i’ve not spent much time with Backblaze as a user but have been impressed with their technology on the backend, if you haven’t read about their custom storage pod architecture it’s a great read. That said, I’ve been a happy CrashPlan+ user for a number of years now and it has never let me down. Perhaps it’s time for me to do a comparison review? I’ll have to think about that and see if I can find the time
Woud love to see you compare between crashplan and backblaze. Hesitating between those two. Would there be speed issues for European customers?
Erik:
Great review with lots of good details. I referenced your review in my latest review of CrashPlan. This is definitely one of the more unique backup services out there – allowing people to use other people’s computers as a backup.
I’m going to try their free plan to see how well it backs up my data to a second computer I have in my office. I also have a second hard drive in my primary computer that I use as a backup as well. I should be able to use CrashPlan to backup to my second hard drive as well, correct?
I would switch to a paid CrashPlan plan but I’m currently with Carbonite and haven’t had any issues so I don’t want to move to another service – at this point anyway – but if the free CrashPlan let’s me backup to a second computer and my second hard drive, that would be awesome.
TravisVs
BestOnlineStorage.com
Thanks TravisVs!
I tested out carbonite as well but discovered some pretty scary things like not all my files being uploaded and serious upload performance issues. Who knows, they might have fixed them as my review was a while ago but I don’t believe you know a backup solution is really working until you have to do a restore! Make sure you test out a restore before you really really need it and by all means let us know how it goes!
Oh and to answer your other question, you can backup to multiple locations
Hi folks,
First of all, thanks to all commenters for your feedbacks and to Erik for all your investigations!
Crashplan guys should hire you in their PR team!
They at least should provide an affiliate program so that good customers can have some benefit making them publicity…
I have a question that has not been asked yet: what about performance?
I’ve read that processes were big (more than 700 KB). What is your experience?
And what abour the load?
Thanks in advance for your answers !
CrashPlan uses Java and the way Java uses memory can be misleading to a lot of people. Java can look like it’s consuming all the available memory when it’s really just trying to be efficient and not spend any CPU cycles on freeing up memory when no one really needs the memory to begin with. Best way to get an idea (these instructions are not for a novice) is to stop or kill your Java process and then start up CrashPlan again and perform a few activities, after 5 min check the memory usage and see if it looks unusual. You mention 700KB as something that might be unusual are you sure you didn’t mean 700 MB? The majority of processes on my computer are over 1 MB and much much more. My Java process (now running for several weeks, no reboot) is consuming 319 MB and that is lower than it normally is.
As far as CPU load, it all depends on you, you can configure when and how much CPU CrashPlan uses so if you find it’s slowing down your computer, I would tweak those settings until it’s running right for you.
Last but not least, I sure would love a affiliate program, but I guess my review is more credible knowing that I’ve never seen a dime from CrashPlan and I’m sure that’s what they want. Besides CrashPlan is doing so well I guess they don’t need to pay people to get the word out!
Thanks again for your questions, keep them coming!
[...] Peterson, of silvexis.com, said in his CrashPlan review that on his home network (a mix of WiFi 802.11 n/g and Gigabit [...]
I loved crashplan and so I bought a 4 your unlimited family plan. I have a connection with 10 Mbit/s upload capacity. At first I startet to back up my homeserver/NAS. It backed up with 8-10 Mbit/s. But it is slowing down and down. Now I have backed up about 1.3 TB and backup speed is now at 2 Mbit/s. At this speed it takes over a year to finish my backup – instead of 2.5 month at fullspeed. They say they don’t throttle – but maybe they do! I asked the support – the answer was “maybe many people are backing up to that cluster”. wow – so they can’t do anything. And my backup is getting slower and slower.
If nothing will change I have to take a look at Backblaze.
Thanks for the comment Tobias, I would be pretty upset if this was happening to me. In fact it’s this exact sort of behavior that made me cancel my Carbonite subscription and go with CrashPlan. (see my Carbonite experience here). If CrashPlan really is throttling in some way, even unintentionally because their systems are becoming overloaded, then that’s cause for concern. There might however be another possibility, your Internet service provider (ISP). I run CrashPlan on my laptop and take it all over the world which has me connecting through numerous ISP’s. Apart from the speed differences of different networks, all of them seem to behave a little different in how they prioritize certain traffic. I’m lucky that my home ISP seems to let me upload to CrashPlan at a pretty fast clip with terabytes uploaded so far but on some ISP’s I notice my crashplan speeds crawl almost to a halt while normal web browsing seems to fly along just fine (and testing using speedtest.net shows good performance as well). If you do give Backblaze a try (they look pretty cool as well IMHO) let us know if you see similar performance slow downs over time, it might just be your ISP and not the backup services fault. Either way, i’m sure everyone here wants to know what’s going on!
I wrote another email to the crashplan support. The say again they don’t throttle. And maybe my ISP boosts initial traffic and throttles after transfering much data. Or my ISP is heavy loaded and maybe changing their routing, …
But I also tried to back up at another internet connection with a measured speed of 18 Gbit/s (!) into the USA (I am from Germany). The switch was limiting my port to 100Mbit/s. But even there I couldn’t backup faster than 2Mbit/s. And no: Bandwith ist set to unlimited inside crashplan, CPU is set to a maximum of 100%, too. And my CPU idles most time… So it seems crashplan is the limiting point. Maybe because of cheap hardware, too many clients, throttling, …
I took a look at Backblaze – they don’t support files larger than 9GB. Too bad. So this is no alternative for me.