CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market • Hacker News Board

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#21

Post by rrauenza » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

I think this means it is also an end to CrashPlan's peer to peer free backup solution? I don't believe their business plan offers that.

Thank goodness I bought into their long service plan. I have 1.9 years to figure this out.

We have one Linux NAS and a bunch of Windows clients. I could go with Crashplan Business on the NAS and then punt on the Windows clients. Or go back to BackupPC for windows... I hope their windows client solution has improved -- I used to have to install a Cygwin rsync daemon.

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#22

Post by ad_hominem » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 4:06 PM UTC

ishbits wrote: post #3

This is unfortunate. I chose Crashplan initially due to great family pricing, but more importantly as it had a Linux client. Given I backup Linux home server, a Linux desktop and a Linux laptop this has been its killer feature for me.

This is also what drew me to Crashplan, but I've been irritated with the service long enough that I think I'm glad they've forced my hand.

For one, their client is very bad at backing up without affecting other network services; when I'm on a video call I frequently have to pause Crashplan backups entirely or I'll have stream issues (or manually limit the upload speed to something really small that I'll inevitably forget to undo later). I've never had this issue with Dropbox for instance. The client is also written in Java so it's a resource hog; beyond annoying my desktop machine that also made it hard to install directly on a somewhat resource-limited Synology NAS device a few years ago (I eventually got the install to work but it sporadically won't start up on boot due to memory constraints).

Really, on my Linux desktop my most important files are my code, documents, pictures, and video, which are all already backed up to Dropbox. If my hard drive died it wouldn't be a big deal to do a fresh install as long as I can sync my code, documents, etc. with Dropbox. So I may just go without a full desktop backup solution.

I don't know how they're going to transition to enterprise given their trashy desktop client but good luck.

edit: in addition to Dropbox I'll probably add tarsnap to sync the important things to S3

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#23

Post by johndavi » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

ishbits wrote: post #3

This is unfortunate. I chose Crashplan initially due to great family pricing, but more importantly as it had a Linux client. Given I backup Linux home server, a Linux desktop and a Linux laptop this has been its killer feature for me.

Their email to users offers a transition to the Small Business product... which appears to be the same product at $10/month/device. So this is really a pricing change, though you can enjoy a 75% discount for a year while you decide what's next.

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#24

Post by viraptor » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #15

Time to finish writing my own backup system. Crashplan filled that need for me on linux.

If you're looking for something for Linux only, you could use a generic backup app like Borg instead. Stable and tested frontend with your choice of backend(-s).

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#25

Post by Naveg » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

johndavi wrote: post #23

ishbits wrote: post #3

This is unfortunate. I chose Crashplan initially due to great family pricing, but more importantly as it had a Linux client. Given I backup Linux home server, a Linux desktop and a Linux laptop this has been its killer feature for me.

Their email to users offers a transition to the Small Business product... which appears to be the same product at $10/month/device. So this is really a pricing change, though you can enjoy a 75% discount for a year while you decide what's next.

Be careful if you rely on old versions and deleted files being backed up indefinitely. Their Home offering includes this, but it looks like Small Business does not.

edit: I got confused - Small Business likely still offers indefinite retention.

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#26

Post by X86BSD » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

NelsonMinar wrote: post #18

So what's a good Linux consumer solution? We here are all capable of rolling our own hacks, sure. But I want a good clean friendly product I don't have to configure or think about. The real challenge in these things is the UX for restoring files. (For home-grown options, I've been using rsnapshot for years. But it really works best on a local disk and the rsync-over-ssh hacks I've done are the opposite of "clean cons…

Tarsnap.

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#27

Post by blacktulip » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

brianwski wrote: post #16

rrauenza wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main problem with BackBlaze is a lack of a Linux solution: https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217664628-Is-Ba...

Disclosure: I work at Backblaze. For Linux, Backblaze offers "B2 Object Storage". You can choose all sorts of Linux 3rd party clients! The billing is different -> half of 1 penny per GByte per month. This is cheaper for less than a Terabyte, and can be a bit more expensive for more than a Terabyte. Check the "integrations" page for pictures of a penguin: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html Among others, Cl…

Is there any chance that one day Backblaze will do the same as Crashplan does today?

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#28

Post by stryk » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

NelsonMinar wrote: post #18

So what's a good Linux consumer solution? We here are all capable of rolling our own hacks, sure. But I want a good clean friendly product I don't have to configure or think about. The real challenge in these things is the UX for restoring files. (For home-grown options, I've been using rsnapshot for years. But it really works best on a local disk and the rsync-over-ssh hacks I've done are the opposite of "clean cons…

There's rsync.net which very explicitly supports rsync/zfs over SSH

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#29

Post by X86BSD » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #5

Well, fuck. Let the suggestions begin - who should I switch to? Bonus points if moving data to a newly purchased hard drive isn't a terrifying process that looks like it's losing all of my backups, as well as Linux/Windows/Mac support.

Tarsnap. Seriously.

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#30

Post by ant512 » Tue, Aug 22, 2017, 4:11 PM UTC

rrauenza wrote: post #21

I think this means it is also an end to CrashPlan's peer to peer free backup solution? I don't believe their business plan offers that. Thank goodness I bought into their long service plan. I have 1.9 years to figure this out. We have one Linux NAS and a bunch of Windows clients. I could go with Crashplan Business on the NAS and then punt on the Windows clients. Or go back to BackupPC for windows... I hope their wind…

It's worth pointing out that CrashPlan's business client app uses Electron (because the Java client app for home users wasn't bloated enough). That's reason enough for me to look elsewhere.