Backup Solutions - SpiderOak vs CrashPlan
You don't have to convince me of the importance of backup!
In 2012 I thought I had a decent backup scheme, but when my laptop was stolen I discovered that I had neglected to backup a very important folder - the folder with all my grades in it! I was reduced to going to my students and asking, "Do you still have a copy of that test with the grade on it? No? Well, um, what grade do you think you got on it?" and then recording that! BIG oops!
So I want to back up. Deeply.
But I'm also a big fan of sync. A lot of the work that I do ends up being done on whatever device I happen to have in front of me, and it's really nice when I have all the data at hand rather than having to do job X always at device Y. So monthly reports, financial information, etc - I really want them to be sync'd in such a way that I can access them from my wife's computer, from my phone, etc.
At first I thought that Dropbox was the solution. Everybody has it and everybody uses it. It's super-easy. My wife loves it. With all the references I've given over the years we've got 15gb of free space. What's not to love?!
Well, about 4 years ago I was the director for a school that closed down. I took all the key pieces of documentation and put them on my DropBox for future reference. One day I discovered that the directory was deleted. "No problem," said I, "I'll just go and find it in the deleted items." Oh. Did you know that Dropbox permanently deletes items after 30 days?! (You can pay for a special "packrat" service, but it is relatively expensive and requires me to move into the paying customer category for Dropbox.)
Then just the other day I was looking for my old bank statements that I automatically have copied to Dropbox (check out filethis.com). It's a great solution, but once again someone (probably me) accidentally hit the delete button on that folder and they're gone! I can go back 6 months or 12 months for my financial institutions, but all the carefully backed up statements for the last several years are all of a sudden gone! (Incidentally, when I discovered it I found that you can also back up to Evernote which makes a lot more sense to me and is my new solution for financial statements.)
The long and the short is that Dropbox works great as a sync'ing solution, but it is not backup. It is not intended to be backup and it should not be used as backup.
So, I thought, let's look for another solution like Dropbox but one that keeps files forever. Spideroak quickly came to the forefront in my research. It did everything I wanted and seemed to be a great way to have my cake and eat it too (both backup and sync capabilities). So I found a coupon, paid my $$$, and started the backup. A week later I had finished one computer. Two weeks later I had finished 2 computers, but the other 2 were hopelessly mired. I did a calculation and realized that I was going to be another 2.5 MONTHS (no, that's not a misspelling of the word "weeks") before I finished if I kept going at the rate SpiderOak was moving. I did more research and realized that my system was not the bottleneck - SpiderOak was using less than half of my upload bandwidth and none of my computers were using more than negligible amounts of CPU on encryption.
SpiderOak is just slow.
I also sent several support queries to SpiderOak during the time I was trying them out. They inevitably responded after 72 hours and apologized that they hadn't made it within their desired 24 hours - that's neither here nor there and not something I wanted to quibble about. But in every case their response was that SpiderOak couldn't do what I wanted it to do.
ISSUE: Slow upload
RESPONSE: Keep trying - maybe it'll get better. If not, we'll switch you to a different server. No joy.
ISSUE: Is there any way to get a list of duplicated files (since they calculate duplication carefully)
RESPONSE: No capability (not a big deal - it was as much curiosity as anything)
ISSUE: Can an external drive be its own device so that I can move it from computer to computer
RESPONSE: Oops, no response on this one.
ISSUE: SpiderOak holding onto locks on files and not allowing ejection
RESPONSE: Shut SpiderOak down. (That's a workaround, not a solution.)
ISSUE: How do I search for a file in backup
RESPONSE: Search for it on your own computer. (Erm, the reason I'm putting it in backup is because I may have lost access to my own computer so how then am I going to search. This is a fairly big deal.)
ISSUE: Slow upload, what is involved in closing my account? (No clear statement that I was definitely going to do that)
RESPONSE: (This was the only time they responded in a timely fashion - this time within an hour.) They closed my account, shut off access to any of my existing backups, and told me a refund was being processed.
Now I'm actually quite pleased that they were so nice about refunding my money (I've heard horror stories about some other backup companies that won't let you cancel if you've paid in advance). But it's just weird to me that after all the long delays all of a sudden the one thing they were really good and prompt about was cutting me off. But, again, I'm not complaining about that - I appreciate their good service on this last issue.
So within 20 minutes I was back to my research and narrowing in on CrashPlan. I briefly looked at BackBlaze, but they don't seem to have anything to compare with the multiple-device backup ("family plan") that CrashPlan has. I recall from last year that they had some really good deals on Black Friday or Cyber Monday and they have a very generous trial (30 days unlimited family plan) so I'm now backing up as fast as I can go.
Here's what I've discovered so far in terms of comparison:
The cost is $150 for a year of the family plan with unlimited data on up to 10 computers - well over what I need, even if I encourage my kids to use it. And Dropbox continues to be free for me due to the various references I've given over the years.
Backup solution gets moved (at least for now) into the "solved" category.
Now the only problem is that Evernote is telling me I used up my entire monthly quota yesterday in downloading my bank statements. But that's a problem for another day!
UPDATE: CrashPlan puked on us. They discontinued their consumer version of backup Aug-2017. They give time to figure out an alternative, but this is definitely UNCOOL for a backup company. Stay tuned for results from my new research.
In 2012 I thought I had a decent backup scheme, but when my laptop was stolen I discovered that I had neglected to backup a very important folder - the folder with all my grades in it! I was reduced to going to my students and asking, "Do you still have a copy of that test with the grade on it? No? Well, um, what grade do you think you got on it?" and then recording that! BIG oops!
So I want to back up. Deeply.
But I'm also a big fan of sync. A lot of the work that I do ends up being done on whatever device I happen to have in front of me, and it's really nice when I have all the data at hand rather than having to do job X always at device Y. So monthly reports, financial information, etc - I really want them to be sync'd in such a way that I can access them from my wife's computer, from my phone, etc.
At first I thought that Dropbox was the solution. Everybody has it and everybody uses it. It's super-easy. My wife loves it. With all the references I've given over the years we've got 15gb of free space. What's not to love?!
Well, about 4 years ago I was the director for a school that closed down. I took all the key pieces of documentation and put them on my DropBox for future reference. One day I discovered that the directory was deleted. "No problem," said I, "I'll just go and find it in the deleted items." Oh. Did you know that Dropbox permanently deletes items after 30 days?! (You can pay for a special "packrat" service, but it is relatively expensive and requires me to move into the paying customer category for Dropbox.)
Then just the other day I was looking for my old bank statements that I automatically have copied to Dropbox (check out filethis.com). It's a great solution, but once again someone (probably me) accidentally hit the delete button on that folder and they're gone! I can go back 6 months or 12 months for my financial institutions, but all the carefully backed up statements for the last several years are all of a sudden gone! (Incidentally, when I discovered it I found that you can also back up to Evernote which makes a lot more sense to me and is my new solution for financial statements.)
The long and the short is that Dropbox works great as a sync'ing solution, but it is not backup. It is not intended to be backup and it should not be used as backup.
So, I thought, let's look for another solution like Dropbox but one that keeps files forever. Spideroak quickly came to the forefront in my research. It did everything I wanted and seemed to be a great way to have my cake and eat it too (both backup and sync capabilities). So I found a coupon, paid my $$$, and started the backup. A week later I had finished one computer. Two weeks later I had finished 2 computers, but the other 2 were hopelessly mired. I did a calculation and realized that I was going to be another 2.5 MONTHS (no, that's not a misspelling of the word "weeks") before I finished if I kept going at the rate SpiderOak was moving. I did more research and realized that my system was not the bottleneck - SpiderOak was using less than half of my upload bandwidth and none of my computers were using more than negligible amounts of CPU on encryption.
SpiderOak is just slow.
I also sent several support queries to SpiderOak during the time I was trying them out. They inevitably responded after 72 hours and apologized that they hadn't made it within their desired 24 hours - that's neither here nor there and not something I wanted to quibble about. But in every case their response was that SpiderOak couldn't do what I wanted it to do.
ISSUE: Slow upload
RESPONSE: Keep trying - maybe it'll get better. If not, we'll switch you to a different server. No joy.
ISSUE: Is there any way to get a list of duplicated files (since they calculate duplication carefully)
RESPONSE: No capability (not a big deal - it was as much curiosity as anything)
ISSUE: Can an external drive be its own device so that I can move it from computer to computer
RESPONSE: Oops, no response on this one.
ISSUE: SpiderOak holding onto locks on files and not allowing ejection
RESPONSE: Shut SpiderOak down. (That's a workaround, not a solution.)
ISSUE: How do I search for a file in backup
RESPONSE: Search for it on your own computer. (Erm, the reason I'm putting it in backup is because I may have lost access to my own computer so how then am I going to search. This is a fairly big deal.)
ISSUE: Slow upload, what is involved in closing my account? (No clear statement that I was definitely going to do that)
RESPONSE: (This was the only time they responded in a timely fashion - this time within an hour.) They closed my account, shut off access to any of my existing backups, and told me a refund was being processed.
Now I'm actually quite pleased that they were so nice about refunding my money (I've heard horror stories about some other backup companies that won't let you cancel if you've paid in advance). But it's just weird to me that after all the long delays all of a sudden the one thing they were really good and prompt about was cutting me off. But, again, I'm not complaining about that - I appreciate their good service on this last issue.
So within 20 minutes I was back to my research and narrowing in on CrashPlan. I briefly looked at BackBlaze, but they don't seem to have anything to compare with the multiple-device backup ("family plan") that CrashPlan has. I recall from last year that they had some really good deals on Black Friday or Cyber Monday and they have a very generous trial (30 days unlimited family plan) so I'm now backing up as fast as I can go.
Here's what I've discovered so far in terms of comparison:
- Crashplan fully saturates my upload bandwidth. As it should - I've given it a job to do and it is doing it at full speed using all the resources available.
- Crashplan defaults to a much more complete backup which results in more time, but then I have a more complete backup, so it's worth it.
- Crashplan supports searching through your backup.
- Crashplan supports moving an external drive from one computer to another (it's not super-easy and not something I'm going to do every day, but it can be done).
- Crashplan supports a restore as of a certain date/time which SpiderOak does not.
- Crashplan has a related service called Shareplan which *may* provide my sync service. I'm not holding my breath, but it may.
The cost is $150 for a year of the family plan with unlimited data on up to 10 computers - well over what I need, even if I encourage my kids to use it. And Dropbox continues to be free for me due to the various references I've given over the years.
Backup solution gets moved (at least for now) into the "solved" category.
Now the only problem is that Evernote is telling me I used up my entire monthly quota yesterday in downloading my bank statements. But that's a problem for another day!
UPDATE: CrashPlan puked on us. They discontinued their consumer version of backup Aug-2017. They give time to figure out an alternative, but this is definitely UNCOOL for a backup company. Stay tuned for results from my new research.
posted by Peter Bowers at 12:48 AM
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