Obnoxious Practical Gift Idea
Dec. 7th, 2010 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snarpCrashPlan+ Family Backup Plan.
(I got it for my parents, but given that it, you know, benefits me as well, I also got them other stuff.)
CrashPlan is an automatic offsite backup program, similar to Carbonite, Mozy, or JungleDisk. CrashPlan's a kind of an unusual entry in the genre: the basic software, which is free, won't back up to their servers - it will back up to external drives, local folders, or remote computers, which can be your own or those of friends who also have CrashPlan installed. The data is encrypted using 128-bit Blowfish, so those friends can't open it. (I mean, unless you choose a crappy password. There's an option to use a private key, as well.)
This strategy is interesting, but it's probably not particularly practical unless you are a huge nerd who knows many other huge nerds. Hence the paid version, which allows you to back up to their servers. The family plan, which is unlimited-data-unlimited-computers, is $72 a year. The unlimited-data-single-computer plan is $36.
Carbonite was my main offsite backup service for the past year, so I considered getting that for Mom and Dad. But while it seemed to be backing up my frequently-accessed files acceptably, I found a lot of horror stories from people trying to do full restores. Mozy, its nearest competitor, had the same problem. CrashPlan's reviews are surprisingly uniformly positive there. The interface is also much cleaner and more customizable, and the background process doesn't seem to take up as much RAM. It has version control built in, and doesn't delete files on the server when you delete them locally. (The latter ought to be a standard feature, but Carbonite and Mozy don't have it.)
The only place where Carbonite and Mozy beat CrashPlan is that they offer browser-based access to your files; this not something Mom and Dad need, but it's something I do. Fortunately, I can replicate it with a DropBox account for my most-accessed files. The fact that CrashPlan can simultaneously back up both to the remote server and to a local drive makes up for it, in my opinion - this way I no longer have to have two separate backup processes going on.
(I got it for my parents, but given that it, you know, benefits me as well, I also got them other stuff.)
CrashPlan is an automatic offsite backup program, similar to Carbonite, Mozy, or JungleDisk. CrashPlan's a kind of an unusual entry in the genre: the basic software, which is free, won't back up to their servers - it will back up to external drives, local folders, or remote computers, which can be your own or those of friends who also have CrashPlan installed. The data is encrypted using 128-bit Blowfish, so those friends can't open it. (I mean, unless you choose a crappy password. There's an option to use a private key, as well.)
This strategy is interesting, but it's probably not particularly practical unless you are a huge nerd who knows many other huge nerds. Hence the paid version, which allows you to back up to their servers. The family plan, which is unlimited-data-unlimited-computers, is $72 a year. The unlimited-data-single-computer plan is $36.
Carbonite was my main offsite backup service for the past year, so I considered getting that for Mom and Dad. But while it seemed to be backing up my frequently-accessed files acceptably, I found a lot of horror stories from people trying to do full restores. Mozy, its nearest competitor, had the same problem. CrashPlan's reviews are surprisingly uniformly positive there. The interface is also much cleaner and more customizable, and the background process doesn't seem to take up as much RAM. It has version control built in, and doesn't delete files on the server when you delete them locally. (The latter ought to be a standard feature, but Carbonite and Mozy don't have it.)
The only place where Carbonite and Mozy beat CrashPlan is that they offer browser-based access to your files; this not something Mom and Dad need, but it's something I do. Fortunately, I can replicate it with a DropBox account for my most-accessed files. The fact that CrashPlan can simultaneously back up both to the remote server and to a local drive makes up for it, in my opinion - this way I no longer have to have two separate backup processes going on.
