Data Recovery Digest

Backup services are aplenty nowadays. Every company seems to have their own version. At some point, though, too much choice can be a bit daunting. When there’s so much to choose from, how do you know which is the best one? Well, one option to look at is CrashPlan.

In a poll held on LifeHacker, over 4,029 of their readers voted on what they thought the best online backup service was. Surprisingly, over 50% of the respondents chose CrashPlan over services such as Carbonite, SpiderOak and Bitcasa.

This article will explore CrashPlan and the features it offers to really see whether it is the best online backup service.

Perhaps the number one feature is that you can store as much data as you want. The term unlimited gets banded around a lot, but it seems that with CrashPlan there really is no limit. That applies that to the size of the file too, which can also be as large as you want.

Handily, CrashPlan lets you customise our backup schedule and then sit back and relax. It’ll take care of everything for you, whether you want it to back up every week or every minute. The backups are also performed incrementally, meaning that the whole file isn’t reuploaded when minor changes are made to it – only the bits that have altered will be uploaded. This is great as it saves on your bandwidth. You can then send these backups to any computer on the network or to an external drive. If you’re on a paid plan, you can also back everything up online. There’s potential there for three different backup locations, which offers a very secure plan. Remember, just one backup isn’t going to be enough.

Your files can be restored whenever you want through the CrashPlan program or their online application. Plus, unless you specify otherwise, CrashPlan will keep a copy of your file, even if you delete it locally. This is great for those times when you realise you shouldn’t have deleted that data and you need it back or perhaps if you remove it accidentally.

CrashPlan comes in a variety of payment plans. Handily, there is a free plan that offers local and offsite backup online. It isn’t the full hog, but it’s definitely worth trying it out and seeing if the service is reliable and caters for your needs. From there, you could perhaps upgrade to one of their paid plans. The cost varies on how long you subscribe for, but we’ll just compare a yearly subscription. For unlimited online backup on one computer, you’ll be paying $5 a month. If you want that on more than two computers then it’ll cost $12.50 a month. There is also a business plan, available on up to 200 computers, that is as low as $9.99 a month per computer.

With a cheap monthly cost and great feature set, CrashPlan certainly seems like a great option for those needing a backup provider. Check out their website, try out the free plan and see if it’s a service that works for you.