For the last couple of years, I've been a happy customer of Crashplan. A backup service that saves my data to the cloud in almost real time. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) they decided to discontinue their consumer product. My options were to pay more for their commercial solution or find something else. I decided to find something else.
Why do we need backups?
As a prelude to my choice, I wanted to start with why I need a backup solution at all. I mean why was I paying Crashplan more than $60 a year to back up my data? Why would I do that when there are options like Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive or iCloud, etc.?
So here's the deal, there are two kinds of services out there that people see as backing up your data. There are file synchronization services (OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.) and there are backup services (Cloudberry, Crashplan, Carbonite, etc.). What's the difference?
A backup service backs up your data. Maybe to an external hard drive or to the cloud or somewhere else. If something happens to your data like a hard drive failure or ransom-ware or you delete the wrong file, you can get your data back by restoring your backup. Simple.
A file synchronization service makes sure all of the files on your PC are synchronized with the cloud and other PCs or laptops. If you get a new computer or a hard drive fails, you set up your sync service and your data is all downloaded. Awesome! But what happens if you delete the wrong file? It's deleted everywhere! What happens if you're hit by ransom-ware that encrypts all of your data and wants to to pay to get it back? It's encrypted on all of your devices.
I'm a happy OneDrive user but I realized that OneDrive doesn't protect my data. It's not supposed to. I still need a backup. So, back to my search.
What do I choose?
If you want to back your data up to the cloud and are willing to pay $60 to $100 a year to do so, there are lots of options out there. However, if you're willing to get your hands dirty and want to save a lot of money, you should really look at Cloudberry.
I set up Cloudberry on my wife's laptop to back up about 30 GB of data. To back up to the cloud, I decided to use Amazon's AWS Glacier storage. It is by far the cheapest option I could find. While not trivial to set up, I was able to follow the instructions on Cloudberry's web site and get it all done. My initial backup (AWS charges you to add files) cost around $2.50 and thereafter I was billed about $0.17 per month. That's right, 17 cents!
Let's compare costs:
Well, that went great for a few months and then I decided I need to backup my main PC (which will be discontinued from Crashplan backups in about a month). With the addition of a new PC to back up, I also wanted to test restoring since backups aren't any good if you can't restore. Well I ran into a few gotchas and wanted to share.
Why do we need backups?
As a prelude to my choice, I wanted to start with why I need a backup solution at all. I mean why was I paying Crashplan more than $60 a year to back up my data? Why would I do that when there are options like Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive or iCloud, etc.?
So here's the deal, there are two kinds of services out there that people see as backing up your data. There are file synchronization services (OneDrive, Google Drive, etc.) and there are backup services (Cloudberry, Crashplan, Carbonite, etc.). What's the difference?
A backup service backs up your data. Maybe to an external hard drive or to the cloud or somewhere else. If something happens to your data like a hard drive failure or ransom-ware or you delete the wrong file, you can get your data back by restoring your backup. Simple.
A file synchronization service makes sure all of the files on your PC are synchronized with the cloud and other PCs or laptops. If you get a new computer or a hard drive fails, you set up your sync service and your data is all downloaded. Awesome! But what happens if you delete the wrong file? It's deleted everywhere! What happens if you're hit by ransom-ware that encrypts all of your data and wants to to pay to get it back? It's encrypted on all of your devices.
I'm a happy OneDrive user but I realized that OneDrive doesn't protect my data. It's not supposed to. I still need a backup. So, back to my search.
What do I choose?
If you want to back your data up to the cloud and are willing to pay $60 to $100 a year to do so, there are lots of options out there. However, if you're willing to get your hands dirty and want to save a lot of money, you should really look at Cloudberry.
I set up Cloudberry on my wife's laptop to back up about 30 GB of data. To back up to the cloud, I decided to use Amazon's AWS Glacier storage. It is by far the cheapest option I could find. While not trivial to set up, I was able to follow the instructions on Cloudberry's web site and get it all done. My initial backup (AWS charges you to add files) cost around $2.50 and thereafter I was billed about $0.17 per month. That's right, 17 cents!
Let's compare costs:
- Crashplan: about $5.25 per month (and discontinued)
- Cloudberry + Glacier: $0.17 per month
Umm... Wow! Now, full disclosure, I purchased the full pro version of Cloudberry for $30 and it did cost me about $2.50 for my first backup. So my cost for the first year is really $32.50 plus a year of storage (about $2.00) or $34.50. Of course, after the first year, it drops to $2.00 a year after that. So the first year it's about half the price of Crashplan and every year after that, it's about $2 (or a little more if your backups are bigger). Seems like a great deal to me!
Well, that went great for a few months and then I decided I need to backup my main PC (which will be discontinued from Crashplan backups in about a month). With the addition of a new PC to back up, I also wanted to test restoring since backups aren't any good if you can't restore. Well I ran into a few gotchas and wanted to share.
- Use a different Glacier vault for each computer being backed up. The documentation does tell you this but it's easy to miss.
- When you create an Access Key in Glacier, you are given a Key Id and a Secret Access Key. Write these down! Once you leave the Glacier console, you won't be able to get your Secret Access Key back.
- When you first set up your Glacier storage account in Cloudberry, if you are connecting to an existing vault (say you want to do a restore) it will ask you if you already have backups stored there and if you want to sync or something (I don't remember the exact verbiage). Say yes! If you say no it won't see anything stored out there and you won't be able to do any sort of restore. However, be patient - it takes 5 hours to run the sync.
- AWS wants you to create an IAM account for your access keys. You don't have to, just make sure you record your Key ID and Secret Access Key
So, is Cloudberry the best backup solution out there? I don't know, but if you're not afraid of something a little more complex, it's awesome!
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