Apr 8
Crashplan
Whoa, there, let's backup a bit.
Okay, bad pun.
Seriously, though, backup is something everyone should take very seriously and almost no one does. Ironically, the people who should back up the most diligently, i.e., the non-geeks, are the ones who almost never do so.
Backups are painful to do, take time, space, cosmic energy and are no fun. Until your hard drive crashes and you lose all those photos of grandma on the rollercoaster.
Enter Crashplan.
Important pricing information:
Free, as in no money required. Or, as low as $5 p.m., but read the fine print.
You need:
An internet connection, preferably one that's always on while your computer is on. And a suitable lead time for the first backup - if you have lots of data, it could be running (auto) for several days. A local disk is faster but is not an offsite backup.
I tend to be OCD about backups. I've used a raft of backup software and currently use no less than three different backup programs on two machines.
One is Time Machine that comes bundled with the Mac. Simple, loads of eye candy, but only backs up to a local (external) hard disk. So, if a power surge fries my equipment or a burglar climbs in the window, my originals and my backup both stand an equal chance of consignment into oblivion.
So, I also use Mozy. For $5 per machine per month, it backs up my stuff into the cloud (Mozy's servers), so now my backup also sits off my premises. But $5 per machine per month adds up when you have 5 machines in the household. And restoring 60+ Gb from the cloud can be sl-o-o-w (I hope I never have to find out how slow). And Mozy doesn't do local backups, so I need to use Mozy + Time Machine.
Cue the trumpets and cymbals.
Crashplan backs up an unlimited number of machines in a household and an unlimited number of Gb to the cloud (Crashplan's servers) for about $8 per month. The downside is you pay upfront for the full year, rather than monthly as for Mozy. If you pay for 3 years, the cost per month comes down to $5.
That's not all. If you like living on the edge and don't opt for the cloud backup, then Crashplan is completely free. With the software download you back up locally to any other machine/s on your network. That's not all.
If you have a friend you can trust, you can backup your machine to hers and vice versa - all for free (over your internet connection, so it could be slow).
Like Mozy and Time Machine, Crashplan works in the background, so you set it and forget it. If you like, you get weekly emails giving you the backup status.
Oh, and it's cross platform - Mac, Win, Linux, whatever.
Automatic backups, local backups, cloud backups, backups to friends, free or cheap.... Crashplan has you covered.
It's a no-brainer.
