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CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

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Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#311

Post by turc1656 »

rrauenza wrote: post #263
turc1656 wrote: post #175

I recently had evaluated my entire backup plan and CrashPlan was evaluated as a possible change. It was one of two finalists I was debating between. Boy am I glad I didn't go with them. I understand that they will not just cancel the existing users and are only preventing new customers from signing up. But let's be real. We know what this means. It means they will not be giving the individual consumers in any sort of…

And who was the other finalist?

Sorry, I had split my original (long) comment into two separate ones and I thought I left a brief mention of it.

The winner was pCloud. Please see my other comment for a more detailed explanation of how I have things set up and why I use them if you are interested. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15075935

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#312

Post by votepaunchy »

slavik81 wrote: post #105
X86BSD wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tarsnap.

Tarsnap is not reasonable alternative for most users. Consider that I was paying $5/mo for 200GB of storage from CrashPlan. From tarsnap, that would be $50/mo. And, frankly, my measly 200GB isn't much data. A 2TB HDD costs under $100 and could cost $500/mo to back up with tarsnap. It would still have been $5/mo with CrashPlan. I get that Colin is basically just charging the S3 costs plus a small margin, but the reali…

The most expensive S3 storage tier is $0.023/GB/month, or $4.60/month for 200 GB. That's quite a markup to $50.

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#313

Post by j45 »

simonh wrote: post #289
5_minutes wrote: post #33

I actually have 3 Crashplan for Families under my hands. My mom and dads iMacs is one of them. This is literally easy money for Crashplan. But the price would double to move them to the new Small Business plan. What I liked about Crashplan, besides the unlimited space was that if files would get deleted, and you would find out about it 3 months later, you could recover them. With Backblaze, which is mentioned here, y…

I agree it's a concern. If you're in a Mac I'd recommend doing time machine backups as well. I consider those my first resort backups for file recovery and such. My Backblaze backups are a worst case scenario, belt and braces off site option. Even my time machine backups only go back about a year though due to capacity limitations on the backup drive. My most critical files are also on Dropbox, which I know isn't rea…

Agreed, it's not a backup if it only exists in one form, or one space.

After purchasing the eventual death and exit of your 10th or 15th laptop, you kind of want to spend less time doing those transfers, especially with complex installs that can't be trivialized to the cloud.

For Mac users, I like the backup practice of using two drives in two locations, Time Machine for incremental backups, and Carbon Copy Cloner for bootable backups, and then bump one of those images up to the cloud. One drive on a desk at home, one at the office, offsite, or a family member's house.

Additionally, keeping a third hard drive in rotation elsewhere, or use a local NAS that bumps up to the cloud for you as well.

The bootable backups tools like Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper provide are priceless in my mind.. you can simply plugin your HD into another mac and boot off the external drive not missing a beat while your hardware may be getting attention.

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#314

Post by balladeer »

brianwski wrote: post #209
balladeer wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After we are done talking about Backblaze as a snappy app (yes, it has always been many times faster than CrashPlan), cleaner and simpler interface (no doubt here), a lot faster speed (this has been my experience and seems to be the case with a lot of people), it really isn't much good as a backup service choice. I have mentioned before, I think here on HN too, the data retention policy is just too bad and their reas…

Brian from Backblaze here. > I guess it's tough luck if you are in a different country, or different continent altogether. Backblaze sends USB hard drive restores to other continents every day! Today we have one restore shipping to Finland and one to Great Britain. And to be clear, we absorb 100% of the cost: it is $189 USD deposit and we absolutely absorb 100% of the shipping cost whether it is Texas or Finland. Als…

Hey Brian, so nice of you to be commenting here. Thank you.

I am sorry if I am sounding like an obstinate whiner but no, I don't want that. I mean I am glad if you offer that but I want:

1. A way to restore that is from the app and that can withstand disconnection, gap of hours, or maybe days - right inside your really awesome app (I mean it) with partial download and shit.

2. (I didn't know about international shipping, thank you for telling me) I don't want to rely on that and I honestly am not looking forward to cover whatever little (or more) cost that is and being out of USA it will be more and then the hassle of returning is even worse.

You know, I may just want 30GB out of my 3TB, or hell maybe even 5GB and even for that "the browser restore interface" is just sad.

As a customer I would urge you to have a look at it and maybe listen to customers on it (or future customers :))

And data retention! You didn't even touch upon it. Kind of shows your/BB's stand is clear on it, right?

[edit]

And I forgot that you need my encryption password for sending me that hard disk. Now that's a design problem you shouldn't even have in the first place :(

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#315

Post by jimmux »

turc1656 wrote: post #311
rrauenza wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who was the other finalist?

Sorry, I had split my original (long) comment into two separate ones and I thought I left a brief mention of it. The winner was pCloud. Please see my other comment for a more detailed explanation of how I have things set up and why I use them if you are interested. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15075935

After checking them out, it does seem like they hit a nice sweet spot of features and price. The lifetime plan is pretty tempting as well, but I do wonder how sustainable that is. I assume they are banking on a charge for increased storage in the future.

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#316

Post by slavik81 »

votepaunchy wrote: post #312
slavik81 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tarsnap is not reasonable alternative for most users. Consider that I was paying $5/mo for 200GB of storage from CrashPlan. From tarsnap, that would be $50/mo. And, frankly, my measly 200GB isn't much data. A 2TB HDD costs under $100 and could cost $500/mo to back up with tarsnap. It would still have been $5/mo with CrashPlan. I get that Colin is basically just charging the S3 costs plus a small margin, but the reali…

The most expensive S3 storage tier is $0.023/GB/month, or $4.60/month for 200 GB. That's quite a markup to $50.

It seems the price of S3 has dropped significantly over the years while tarsnap has remained more or less constant. I guess my statement was out of date.

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#317

Post by ukyrgf »

5_minutes wrote: post #59
archagon wrote: post #8

In my mental checklist of evaluating new products and services, Backblaze has always gone above and beyond while Crashplan irritated me enough to make me switch: * Are they one of the market leaders? * Do they have a company blog? Are they passionate about their product? (Backblaze's technical articles are always a treat; barely a word from Crashplan.) * Do they regularly interact with their users, e.g. on HN? (I oft…

Their 30 day file retention policy makes all these questions irrelevant. "Do they have a blog"? Really? I'm sorry but when it comes to backups I rather have them working on the product instead of having a marketing machine up and running.

Backblaze's reports on their hard drive failure rates regularly tops Hacker News' front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=backblaze.com

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#318

Post by SyneRyder »

duebbert wrote: post #277
jschulenklopper wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So if you're on monthly billing, you've got about 60 - 90 days. I got such a mail, mentioning: "We will honor your existing CrashPlan for Home subscription, keeping your data safe, as always, until your current subscription expires. To allow you time to transition to a new backup solution, we've extended your subscription (at no cost to you) by 60 days. Your new subscription expiration date is 09/13/2017." There's…

Same here! Received email today (22 Aug) saying: "we've extended your subscription (at no cost to you) by 60 days. Your new subscription expiration date is 09/14/2017." That's not 60 days from today (or from the end of my monthly subscription)!!!

I just checked my email again, and the subscription expiration they quoted me on my annual subscription wasn't extended either (it's exactly the 12 months I'd paid for). I assume it's a typo and that they mean it's that date + 60 days.

But you're right, I wouldn't rely on it though...

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#319

Post by abrookewood »

5_minutes wrote: post #33

I actually have 3 Crashplan for Families under my hands. My mom and dads iMacs is one of them. This is literally easy money for Crashplan. But the price would double to move them to the new Small Business plan. What I liked about Crashplan, besides the unlimited space was that if files would get deleted, and you would find out about it 3 months later, you could recover them. With Backblaze, which is mentioned here, y…

Yeah, I'm bummed about this as well. One answer to your accidentally deleted file might be to do snapshots at home (I do them using ZFS). That way, you can recover those locally if required and then use your external backup provider for true disasters. But I agree it's a shitty compromise.

Re: CrashPlan is exiting the consumer market

#320

Post by x0x0 »

Thespian2 wrote: post #287
x0x0 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

arqbackup.com will do windows and mac; you pay for your own S3/gc data usage. It allows you to (1) black/white list; (2) encrypt client side; (3) use s3/gcp/your own nas; (4) schedule on demand. I guess the reason for CrashPlan bailing on the home market wasn't just people trying to store 20T of movies, but also just the support needs. The economics of providing end-user support on $60/year plans is horrific. Note th…

x0x0 not quite. $6 to $10 a month would be acceptable to me, but its now $10 a month per device , where before it was $6 a month for a "family" of up to 10 devices. That's the real cost increase problem. I'm still only one customer, with almost no support burden, but the price to go to office version is substantially different for multiple machines.

oh wow, that is a big price increase

$6/mo for a family's worth of devices is ludicrously cheap

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