Best Cloud Backup Services (Archive)

[DannBerg]

We've tested five reputable online backup services (aka cloud backup services) and crowned a winner based on features, convenience and price.

Best Cloud Backup Services : Read more

 

[ashpole]

Only BackBlaze will ship a restoration HDD anywhere worldwide for the same price; CrashPlan will ship a drive to only USA and, I believe, a couple of other countries not including UK - a bummer if you live in UK! That said, I still use CrashPlan, but in the past BackBlaze has proved to be totally reliable - for me it comes down to the any deals the companies have i.e. to get the cheapest, quality backup service.

 

[iso8859]

Crashplan offer multi-target backup : in the cloud but also to external drive, other computer and friend's computer (i.e. using internet). It's free when you don't use the cloud.
You can install it at your mother's computer, do the inital backup to an external drive, copy this initial backup to your computer, and you are done. Database will sync and your mother few data backup for free.
Because crashplan use block backup it can easily backup your huge Outlook PST file, sending only modified block.

 

[pairof38s]

What guarantees do any of these companies offer with respect to third party and/or government snooping of stored/back-up files?
Golden Rule #13: If it goes on the 'Net, anyone can see it.

 

[iso8859]

What guarantees do any of these companies offer with respect to third party and/or government snooping of stored/back-up files?
Golden Rule #13: If it goes on the 'Net, anyone can see it.

With Crashplan data is always encrypted and you can install your own encryption key if you wish.

 

[Chrisg34]

I like MyPCBackup because it is really very fast and reliable. If you need a secure, unlimited online backup provider then you have to try MyPCBackup.

 

[ginzero]

I've had Carbonite for the past 3 years using Personal Plus (1ry/$100). What I like about it is the local mirror drive feature which allows me to recover my computer in the event of a complete (C: ) disk crash.

My subscription is up for renewal and I'm look around to see whats new. It seems CrashPlan has better performance for cloud backups. Question is does any other service offer system recovery features in the event of a complete system disk crash?

 

[pjcamp]

Skip Crashplan. They will NOT protect your data. They just totally destroyed, without prior warning, three years worth of data from a five year long research project. Lost. All of it. Sent me a notice AFTER it happened. Their data retention policy believes that a backup is not an archive. Your data is NOT safe here. They deliberately deleted my data and THEN sent me an email. They seemed to be quite proud of this.

 

[rgd1101]

always have more then 1 place for your important data.

 

[JJP_11]

After being a long-time, loyal Carbonite customer, I'm looking into other options and appreciate this comparison. I was paying over $150/yr for Carbonite so I could get backup of large HD video files (professional) and mirror image options. Every time I'd go on a business trip or vacation and my PC was off for a week, I'd get a notice, which is fine, but something always didn't work right when I returned and I'd have to spend hours figuring out the problem. This time, it was the mirror drive; it said it needed reconnected. After following all the Carbonite support articles, I contacted their tech support, who did a remote session. I have no idea what all they did as I saw all kinds of logs and reinstalls and things popping up, including messing with my external HDs, but not only did my system lock up, but the tech person ended the session without closing out properly. Now my entire PC is totally messed up! I may have to do a complete reformat and reinstall of Windows and check all my hardware as it is so much is messed up I don't even know where to start. Carbonite is extremely expensive. What you get for the comparison price is not much. I'm doing a free trial of backblaze now. I'm considering choosing it over CrashPlan, because all data is backed up, where another comparison table I found showed CrashPlan only backs up partial data. I will be giving up the mirror image option, but I'll explore what other options there are for that. Any ideas for mirror imaging?

 

[Gibhunter]

As a Crashplan customer for 2 years I have to say, stay far away. There are so many issues they cover up on their website and facebook page.

1. If you have more than 500Gb of data, get ready to fork over a constant 1Gb of memory for crashplan to run. In fact, even with a small backup of 50-100gb, you can bet crashplan will be the #1 memory user on your device. Not a problem for my gaming rig to lose 1Gb of my 32gb, but on my low end laptop and parents laptop it is death. CPU usage is very high as well. Their old java built program isnt cutting it and there are loads of complaints online about this.

2. Read online about the slow backup and even slower recovery. Crashplan is LAST RESORT because a 10gb backup will creep at 5 megabits/second (less if they are small files) even if you have a 100mbit connection.

3. I tried to do a 100gb restore and after a week I gave up. You cannot backup new files while a restore is in progress.

4. EVERY TIME I make a hardware update over the 2 years (This is across my 5 computers and this summer I did SSD updates and decided a full restore vs. image was best on a few devices), instead of adopting the old computer it decides it needs to re-upload - sometimes we are talking 2Tb of data being re-uploaded which takes 3-4 months of 24/7 use. Every time I emailed support I was told, "dont worry it isnt actually re-uploading data, it is comparing" but they are wrong every time and it costs me time and money and suffering with slow internet for the next 3-4 months.

It is my opinion they are out there only for large businesses to build a brand and get bought out. The news articles they promote suggests this.

 

[Jaspov]

Nice review. For crashplan above is stated that you can go back to file versions for (only?) the last 30 days.
I checked their site and it states you can keep versions forever? Am I misreading this?

Crashplan: http/support.code42.com/CrashPlan/4/CrashPlan_App_Reference/Backup_Settings_Reference#Frequency_And_Versions_Settings

In CrashPlan, version retention means keeping more of the recent versions of your backed up files and less of the older ones. Subscribers of CrashPlan for Home have the option to change the default version settings, which includes the ability to keep all versions of all files forever.

 

[theaadityasinghania]

One name which I consider is worth getting a place in the above list is "GS RichCopy 360 Enterprise". As the tool contains all the features listed above and it is best of its kind. In addition to that there are many other features which make the task of data transferring, migration, large data backup, etc. easier than ever. You will surely abandon the traditional copy/paste operation of yesteryear. Must give it a try. Hope this will help.

 

[Paul Wagenseil]

Thanks for the comments. We'll have a new round of reviews coming soon.