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CrashPlan Alternatives
I've been using CrashPlan since 2014 to back up my ReadyNAS (about 9 TBytes used out of 20 TByte capacity). It's been great. Unlimited, continuous, encrypted, versioning backups running on the ReadyNAS itself (and hence independent of any workstation running or human intervention, except for original configuration) for about $4/month! The initial backup took a couple of months, but since then in regular usage, all data added is safe within the cloud within minutes, or at most a few hours.
Sadly, as all good things must come to an end, CrashPlan just emailed me that they are transitioning out of the retail market to focus on SMBs and hence are terminating the CrashPlan for Home plan I'd been using. They recommend switching either to Carbonite or upgrading to a CrashPlan Pro plan.
The latter alternative doesn't look terrible. After an initial year of even more discounted storage (only $2.50/month!), it'll cost $10/month. That's a steep hike, but worth it to me, if there are no better alternatives. Worse, for some technical reason, they can't transfer backups larger than 5 TByte to their new system, so I'd have to do another full backup, taking months and leaving the data partially unprotected during the process.
I haven't been following the market closely since I picked CrashPlan years ago. But given that I need to reupload everything anyway, I might as well hold another beauty contest.
So what are you guys using? Can anybody recommend an alternative that is superior to CrashPlan Pro?
The feature I cannot live without is continously running the backup process on the ReadyNAS rather than having to Windows workstation mount the NAS drives and perform the backups. (If that requires a bit of UN*X hacking, I can do it; CrashPlan on ReadyNAS required that anyway). Versioning is nice, but I guess I can live without it for a good price.
Is there anything that fits the bill for $10/month or less (for my amount of storage requirements which are not expected to change hugely)?
Thanks to all those who replied.
Sadly, from these responses and my other inquiries, it seems that CrashPlan, even at twice the old price, is still the only viable solution for my case. Everything else either--and there are lots of other options--doesn't run under Linux or has a monthly cost for my use case that is an order of magnitude or more higher than even CrashPlan Pro.
The closest, widely-discussed alternative is BackBlaze. Unfortunately, their personal plan which is unlimited, inexpensive, and seems generally good, does not run under Linux. They do have a well-regarded B2 Cloud Storage plan which has multiple clients which might run om ReadyNAS, but it has a metered cost that would be much more expensive than CrashPlan Pro. The implication of discussions by the Backblaze CEO is that they have no plans to change either.
So when my CrashPlan Home plan expires at the end of the year, I plan to transition to CrashPlan Pro/SMB.
But if somebody comes up with something better (ideally before then!), please do respond here.
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Hello CarlEdman,
Netgear does not have official list of 3rd party Cloud backup service. However you may check Readynas Vault and Amazon, Readynas is a local storage device it will act as the source and any 3rd party Cloud service can be a destination. You may check online for list and reviews Cloud Backup service available on the market right now.
Regards,
Marty_M
NETGEAR Community TeamI think OP meant to get helpful responses from those with experience using such services. Naturally, this topic has been coming up from a lot of corners lately. This is a disruptive change that may not benefit them much in the end, IMO.
That said, I've seen Backblaze coming up on a LOT of lists lately and I can't say it's done badly. It's certainly cheaper than AWS -- $5/TB/month on their "NAS" plan, cheaper if you use the $5/computer/month plan and don't do full backup. One issue, however, is getting it working properly on the NAS. I notice that both QNAP and Synology have official integrations with Backblaze, but Netgear isn't listed.
I remember looking and trying ReadyCLOUD a while back but I think it came up simply being too small/expensive to really back up a whole NAS. At the rates some charge, it would be far cheaper just to have another NAS you located someplace else (after first full backup). Perhaps ReadyDR is meant to take that mantle up.
With so many options available, one would think it'd be easier to choose one than this... but...
CarlEdman wrote:
The feature I cannot live without is continously running the backup process on the ReadyNAS rather than having to Windows workstation mount the NAS drives and perform the backups.
This might be challenging with Crashplan - it depends the unsupported "headless install" continuing to work.
CarlEdman wrote:
Is there anything that fits the bill for $10/month or less (for my amount of storage requirements which are not expected to change hugely)?
There are quite a few Crashplan users here, and I think we'd all be interested comparing some of the alternatives. I care about
- price (per TB)
- robustness
- speed
- Memory requirements (rather high for Crashplan)
- support for encryption
- support for versioning
- I migrated to the small business version of crashplan today and all seemed well but the readynas was still running home edition. It would not update so I did it manually and now it does not work at all. The server starts but stops. Tried endless fixes but no joy. Crashplan no longer support ARM processors so no help coming from them. It was initially a Java issue but I fixed that but now it's something else I have no idea!
Thanks to all those who replied.
Sadly, from these responses and my other inquiries, it seems that CrashPlan, even at twice the old price, is still the only viable solution for my case. Everything else either--and there are lots of other options--doesn't run under Linux or has a monthly cost for my use case that is an order of magnitude or more higher than even CrashPlan Pro.
The closest, widely-discussed alternative is BackBlaze. Unfortunately, their personal plan which is unlimited, inexpensive, and seems generally good, does not run under Linux. They do have a well-regarded B2 Cloud Storage plan which has multiple clients which might run om ReadyNAS, but it has a metered cost that would be much more expensive than CrashPlan Pro. The implication of discussions by the Backblaze CEO is that they have no plans to change either.
So when my CrashPlan Home plan expires at the end of the year, I plan to transition to CrashPlan Pro/SMB.
But if somebody comes up with something better (ideally before then!), please do respond here.
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