BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan
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Trying CP now. I'm more impressed in the first 30 seconds with them.
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Has anyone using CrashPlan had to deal with the tech support recently?
They used to have a great live chat, but that is gone. And the past few times I had to resort to e-mail, it took days for them to get back to me. It's like something changed over there, but it might just be my instances. Figured I'd see if anyone else had any issues.
I still use them to backup all the key person machines.
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@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Depending on what you're backing up, how large your internet pipe is, etc - I'm not surprised it could take 8-24 (or way more) hours before the first backup shows up.
No no, it takes that long for EVERY backup (whether it is a new file or a change to an existing file) to show up. Have an old file opened and you just made a significant change to it? If your computer crashes within 8 hours of that time frame, your changes are all gone. Haven't closed the application in 4 days cause you always lock the PC? It's not backing up. That is straight from the horse's mouth.
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@BRRABill said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Has anyone using CrashPlan had to deal with the tech support recently?
They used to have a great live chat, but that is gone. And the past few times I had to resort to e-mail, it took days for them to get back to me. It's like something changed over there, but it might just be my instances. Figured I'd see if anyone else had any issues.
I still use them to backup all the key person machines.
Go here... http://support.code42.com/ I see chat at the bottom...
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@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Depending on what you're backing up, how large your internet pipe is, etc - I'm not surprised it could take 8-24 (or way more) hours before the first backup shows up.
No no, it takes that long for EVERY backup (whether it is a new file or a change to an existing file) to show up. Have an old file opened and you just made a significant change to it? If your computer crashes within 8 hours of that time frame, your changes are all gone. Haven't closed the application in 4 days cause you always lock the PC? It's not backing up. That is straight from the horse's mouth.
Huh - again, not surprised on the open files not being backed up - do other desktop backup solutions backup open files? - are you sure?
But you're saying that once your computer sends a file to their servers, it takes their server 8 hours to make it available to you? or that your PC will only sync once every 8-24 hours?
Well, you're starting to see why it's cheaper - fewer sync options. LOL
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@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Depending on what you're backing up, how large your internet pipe is, etc - I'm not surprised it could take 8-24 (or way more) hours before the first backup shows up.
No no, it takes that long for EVERY backup (whether it is a new file or a change to an existing file) to show up. Have an old file opened and you just made a significant change to it? If your computer crashes within 8 hours of that time frame, your changes are all gone. Haven't closed the application in 4 days cause you always lock the PC? It's not backing up. That is straight from the horse's mouth.
Huh - again, not surprised on the open files not being backed up - do other desktop backup solutions backup open files? - are you sure?
It's not about the file being open, BackBlaze said the program that generated the file creation or change needs to be closed. You could make a Word doc, and close all Word docs. But unless you close Word, they said that it might not backup.
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@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Depending on what you're backing up, how large your internet pipe is, etc - I'm not surprised it could take 8-24 (or way more) hours before the first backup shows up.
No no, it takes that long for EVERY backup (whether it is a new file or a change to an existing file) to show up. Have an old file opened and you just made a significant change to it? If your computer crashes within 8 hours of that time frame, your changes are all gone. Haven't closed the application in 4 days cause you always lock the PC? It's not backing up. That is straight from the horse's mouth.
Huh - again, not surprised on the open files not being backed up - do other desktop backup solutions backup open files? - are you sure?
But you're saying that once your computer sends a file to their servers, it takes their server 8 hours to make it available to you? or that your PC will only sync once every 8-24 hours?
They're not saying it takes 8-24 hours to be available, they're saying it could take 8-24 hours to upload.
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I use BackBlaze at home and I'm not too concerned about the delay. This backup is for catastrophic failure, not to protect me against accidental file deletion or the computer crashing while I'm in the middle of writing my term paper. If I wanted that level of protection I'd use a local Time Machine backup or something equivalent, with BackBlaze as the final step in my backup process.
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@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Additionally, BB requires that any applications that are generating the files are often required to be closed before the file is eligible for upload. Prefer to leave your apps open, lock your computer, and go home for the weekend? No backup is taking place.
That's pretty standard. Is CrashPlan backing up open files? If so, how does it keep from corrupting them?
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@Nic said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
I use BackBlaze at home and I'm not too concerned about the delay. This backup is for catastrophic failure, not to protect me against accidental file deletion or the computer crashing while I'm in the middle of writing my term paper. If I wanted that level of protection I'd use a local Time Machine backup or something equivalent, with BackBlaze as the final step in my backup process.
Yeah, that is the job of versioning, not backup.
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@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Depending on what you're backing up, how large your internet pipe is, etc - I'm not surprised it could take 8-24 (or way more) hours before the first backup shows up.
No no, it takes that long for EVERY backup (whether it is a new file or a change to an existing file) to show up. Have an old file opened and you just made a significant change to it? If your computer crashes within 8 hours of that time frame, your changes are all gone. Haven't closed the application in 4 days cause you always lock the PC? It's not backing up. That is straight from the horse's mouth.
Huh - again, not surprised on the open files not being backed up - do other desktop backup solutions backup open files? - are you sure?
But you're saying that once your computer sends a file to their servers, it takes their server 8 hours to make it available to you? or that your PC will only sync once every 8-24 hours?
They're not saying it takes 8-24 hours to be available, they're saying it could take 8-24 hours to upload.
Propagate would not be the term then. Propagate implies that it was uploaded somewhere and just isn't visible from all online nodes. 8+ hours to upload is what they would say. But that sounds fishy, they actually are waiting eight hours before considering uploading a file? I think that we need to double check that, that's very weird and does not mimic any behaviour that I have seen.
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@scottalanmiller said
That's pretty standard. Is CrashPlan backing up open files? If so, how does it keep from corrupting them?
It uses VSS.
Though they recommend against certain data that does not like being backed up that way, or will cause inconsistent data, such as Exchange, SQL, and Quickbooks.
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@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Haven't closed the application in 4 days cause you always lock the PC? It's not backing up.
This applies to all backups. Enterprise, hosted, scripted... everything. Anything that looks at files. You need something grabbing the underlying block device, like Veeam, to get around this. I don't know anyone that does that and doing so causes data corruption of the backups, so we normally don't want that behaviour.
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@BRRABill said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@scottalanmiller said
That's pretty standard. Is CrashPlan backing up open files? If so, how does it keep from corrupting them?
It uses VSS.
Then it doesn't get around the problem. It's exactly as I described, the "non-reliable" method of taking a block snap without verifying integrity... not a serious backup mechanism. You need the apps to be shut down for the backups to be reliable.
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CrashPlan doesn't allow for custom naming of backups... You can just click on the options and they switch to "overwrite/rename" and "to Desktop/to Folder (desktop)" etc. After you click on restore you're not given the option to name it... so effectively "rename" can be the same thing as "overwrite" if the names are the same. So if you have a folder called Test with a bunch of sub folders, then delete it and create a new folder called test and start adding stuff to it, then do a restore with "rename" as the option, it will remove Test and add the old folder called Test in its place.
Very unlikely I would see that scenario, I'm just looking at all the pitfalls.
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@scottalanmiller said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Depending on what you're backing up, how large your internet pipe is, etc - I'm not surprised it could take 8-24 (or way more) hours before the first backup shows up.
No no, it takes that long for EVERY backup (whether it is a new file or a change to an existing file) to show up. Have an old file opened and you just made a significant change to it? If your computer crashes within 8 hours of that time frame, your changes are all gone. Haven't closed the application in 4 days cause you always lock the PC? It's not backing up. That is straight from the horse's mouth.
Huh - again, not surprised on the open files not being backed up - do other desktop backup solutions backup open files? - are you sure?
But you're saying that once your computer sends a file to their servers, it takes their server 8 hours to make it available to you? or that your PC will only sync once every 8-24 hours?
They're not saying it takes 8-24 hours to be available, they're saying it could take 8-24 hours to upload.
Propagate would not be the term then. Propagate implies that it was uploaded somewhere and just isn't visible from all online nodes. 8+ hours to upload is what they would say. But that sounds fishy, they actually are waiting eight hours before considering uploading a file? I think that we need to double check that, that's very weird and does not mimic any behaviour that I have seen.
Maybe propagate isn't the right term. Double checking it though, I'd have to talk to someone else in the company cause everytime I chat them, I get the same Ryan. But there is no confusion there unless Ryan is the one who is confused because that is exactly how he described it.
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@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@scottalanmiller said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Depending on what you're backing up, how large your internet pipe is, etc - I'm not surprised it could take 8-24 (or way more) hours before the first backup shows up.
No no, it takes that long for EVERY backup (whether it is a new file or a change to an existing file) to show up. Have an old file opened and you just made a significant change to it? If your computer crashes within 8 hours of that time frame, your changes are all gone. Haven't closed the application in 4 days cause you always lock the PC? It's not backing up. That is straight from the horse's mouth.
Huh - again, not surprised on the open files not being backed up - do other desktop backup solutions backup open files? - are you sure?
But you're saying that once your computer sends a file to their servers, it takes their server 8 hours to make it available to you? or that your PC will only sync once every 8-24 hours?
They're not saying it takes 8-24 hours to be available, they're saying it could take 8-24 hours to upload.
Propagate would not be the term then. Propagate implies that it was uploaded somewhere and just isn't visible from all online nodes. 8+ hours to upload is what they would say. But that sounds fishy, they actually are waiting eight hours before considering uploading a file? I think that we need to double check that, that's very weird and does not mimic any behaviour that I have seen.
Maybe propagate isn't the right term. Double checking it though, I'd have to talk to someone else in the company cause everytime I chat them, I get the same Ryan. But there is no confusion there unless Ryan is the one who is confused because that is exactly how he described it.
Let's see if @aaron can shed some light on it. That BB just sits idle for eight hours waiting for your data to get old before uploading it seems crazy. Why would they have done that? I can't think of a reason why it would be good for them and it certainly is not good for you. Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems fishy. And if I kick off a backup, it backs things up right away. Just try installing a fresh OS and kick off a backup, it does stuff.
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@scottalanmiller said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@scottalanmiller said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@BBigford said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
@Dashrender said in BackBlaze vs. CrashPlan:
Depending on what you're backing up, how large your internet pipe is, etc - I'm not surprised it could take 8-24 (or way more) hours before the first backup shows up.
No no, it takes that long for EVERY backup (whether it is a new file or a change to an existing file) to show up. Have an old file opened and you just made a significant change to it? If your computer crashes within 8 hours of that time frame, your changes are all gone. Haven't closed the application in 4 days cause you always lock the PC? It's not backing up. That is straight from the horse's mouth.
Huh - again, not surprised on the open files not being backed up - do other desktop backup solutions backup open files? - are you sure?
But you're saying that once your computer sends a file to their servers, it takes their server 8 hours to make it available to you? or that your PC will only sync once every 8-24 hours?
They're not saying it takes 8-24 hours to be available, they're saying it could take 8-24 hours to upload.
Propagate would not be the term then. Propagate implies that it was uploaded somewhere and just isn't visible from all online nodes. 8+ hours to upload is what they would say. But that sounds fishy, they actually are waiting eight hours before considering uploading a file? I think that we need to double check that, that's very weird and does not mimic any behaviour that I have seen.
Maybe propagate isn't the right term. Double checking it though, I'd have to talk to someone else in the company cause everytime I chat them, I get the same Ryan. But there is no confusion there unless Ryan is the one who is confused because that is exactly how he described it.
Let's see if @aaron can shed some light on it. That BB just sits idle for eight hours waiting for your data to get old before uploading it seems crazy. Why would they have done that? I can't think of a reason why it would be good for them and it certainly is not good for you. Maybe I'm missing something, but this seems fishy. And if I kick off a backup, it backs things up right away. Just try installing a fresh OS and kick off a backup, it does stuff.
It's good for them, potentially, because it could save them bandwidth.
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Only found one shortfall with CrashPlan so far...
Sales is awesome with a follow up. I downloaded it and they reached out an hour later seeing if everything is going well. I told them that if you choose "rename" instead of "overwrite", it still overwrites the more recent version. Unlikely scenario I used to test:
*Create a document called Test 1. In that doc it says "old document test 1."
*Do a backup and delete the file.
*Create a new document called Test 1. in that doc it says "new document test 2."
*Restore the original. Point it at the same location but choose "rename".You don't have the option of naming the new backup, so you can do a side-by-side comparison of the restored document and the new one you created. It just overwrites the new file. This is an unlikely scenario where someone would delete the old file, create a new one, and name it the same. I'm just pointing out how renaming still overwrites the new file instead of creating a file named something like Test 1(1), like when you download two of the same files from the internet.
