Those of you who utilize us for your computer support know that we have recommended and use ourselves Mozy Pro for online data backups.

Earlier this year Mozy modified their pricing structure and did away with their unlimited plan for Mozy Home users.

While this did not affect our Mozy Pro users as they were already paying by the GB, it did get us to thinking about pricing, and so we looked at other online backup services out there.

Today I want to tell you about Crashplan, a service that offers unlimited backups for both home and business users, along with a couple of other very nifty features.

Because Mozy charges by the GB of space you use, all we backed up was our core data.  We did not include photos or music.  I have a LOT of music, and the monthly cost to back it up would be in excess of $30/month for that space alone using Mozy’s service.

I installed the CrashplanPro software on my main office system, which took all of 2 minutes to download and install, then kicked off the backup.  My initial data was 102GB in size.  To back that much data up on Mozy would cost $54.95 a month, and the initial backup would take a very long time, measured in weeks.

One of the great things about Crashplan is that it will allow you to modify how much bandwidth to use.  I removed all restrictions, let her rip!

The initial backup took 36 hours.  For 102GB of data.  FAST!  I ran the backup during business hours, kicking it off on a Wednesday morning.  I had another tech who was also using Crashplan to backup 60GB of data on his system at the same time.  We did not notice any degradation to our network speed, but we do have a 25/25 FIOS pipe here.  I would imagine with a standard DSL line it would take considerably longer to backup your data.

Another (HUGE!) feature is that you can backup mapped network drives or NAS drives.  It does take a bit of configuration, and while it not officially supported, Crashplan did post a how-to article on how to set it up.  We setup a NAS drive here with about 700MB of data and ran a full backup on the drive in a matter of a few minutes.

And the icing on the cake? Android and iPhone access to your backups! Install the free Android or iPhone app, login and you can check the status of your backups, even browse and download backed up files.  Now that is slick.

We welcome any feedback, and as always if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give us a shout!

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Scurlock Systems and Associates LLC

866.665.1750 | 972.633.1111

Scurlock Systems is located in Plano, Texas and provides both remote computer service and computer repair in Plano, Dallas, Richardson, Allen and surrounding areas.
We also just happen to make rock solid desktop computer systems!