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dandy72 wrote: you now have enough drives to recycle them into a RAID5 setup.
Which is not an offline back-up nor an offsite back-up - congratulations you now need to buy a bunch more hardware and/or services! 
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It was inferred that yes, once your drives are too small for your ever-increasing backup, you do have to buy a new set.
And I wasn't suggesting to use the RAID for a backup. I was suggesting the spare drives can now be used for a RAID. In my case, that means more storage for my NAS, or for my VM host.
modified 23-Aug-17 10:49am.
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To each his own, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this advice. Drives easily fail, are lost, or get stolen, and few people take the necessary steps to ensure those scenarios aren't disastrous through proper security and encryption practices. It's also, frankly, horribly inefficient and pretty easy to screw yourself over ... as I believe someone described here in the past few days. Companies come and go (always have, always will) and I don't consider it a reason to live like a luddite.
I'm currently in this boat as well; I've been relying on CrashPlan for many years to back up multiple machines here and for members of my family. I've also been wanting to switch from CrashPlan for a while anyway thanks to their horrific speeds and bad UI. From the limited research I've done so far, we're pretty screwed. Most of the better cloud backup providers all offer good encryption and unlimited storage, but they box you into a single PC (or, worse, a single drive!) without having to pay through the teeth for a small business plan.
Tom's updated their comparison yesterday thanks to CrashPlan's announcement
here[^]. I'm intending to take a more serious look at Backblaze this week.
I'm starting to resign myself to the likely fact that I'm going to end up paying more money than I would prefer. I'm hoping others can share their own experiences with these providers ...
Jon
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jonmbutler wrote: To each his own, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this advice.
Great! I was simply relating what works for me, and I'm aware there's no one-size-fits-all solution. Feel free to adopt something else.
jonmbutler wrote: Drives easily fail
That's why I get that extra one, ready to go at a moment's notice.
jonmbutler wrote: are lost
That's a user problem. If a user can't keep track of a few drives, he's probably got bigger problems in his life anyway.
jonmbutler wrote: or get stolen
All my drives using whole-disk encryption. I don't consider a drive's monetary value to be a concern, at least compared with the data that's on it.
jonmbutler wrote: few people take the necessary steps to ensure those scenarios aren't disastrous
What those people do is their choice. Not doing something is also a choice. I make mine based on the value I put on my data.
jonmbutler wrote: a reason to live like a luddite.
Well, this luddite has a pretty slow internet connection, so if I need complete recovery from a bad enough disaster, an online backup is simply impractical.
My strategy hasn't failed me since I've adopted it, and short of a large enough meteorite hitting somewhere between my house and my off-site location (in which case I probably won't care about any backup), I feel I've got most scenarios covered. For the drives still sitting next to me, being physically disconnected means no hacker can get to it, no virus can encrypt it, and the backup drives themselves are all encrypted, so good luck to thieves.
Meanwhile, the only thing protecting you from a hacker logging into your cloud provider account and deleting your backup and its entire history is the strength of your password and--worse--how much effort your provider puts into securing its entire credentials database. Past history doesn't inspire confidence. You may feel differently.
Frankly, boiling it down to the essentials, I see this as little more than a choice between convenience, and taking things into your own hands. I have nobody to blame but myself for my own failings--I see this as a good thing. Not so with a third party.
In the end, all suggestions are valid. We're here to exchange ideas, which is what the original poster what soliciting. I'm just pointing out what I think are the pros and cons of your response, which I assume is fair game.
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dandy72 wrote: In the end, all suggestions are valid. We're here to exchange ideas, which is what the original poster what soliciting. I'm just pointing out what I think are the pros and cons of your response, which I assume is fair game.
Fair enough -- and my apologies for coming across as a jerk. Definitely wasn't my intention! I should drink more coffee before jumping on here 
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S'all good Jon. I didn't really read it this way. If I sound like I'm very much on the defensive, it's probably because it took me a long time to come up with what works best for me. I actually wished I had the trust in some of the online solutions--I just feel they're not there yet.
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I agree. I have over 40 TB of hard disks at home with thousands and thousands of photo, audio, home video and miscellaneous other files on them. Although I lose on average about 2 TB per year due to disk failure (and one of my file servers crashed irredeemably), I have not yet permanently lost a single file and I can retrieve any file within seconds.
I was going to start having off-line disks to save power but they now all shut down between actual usage anyway so that is no longer necessary. I do still make (multiple) CD copies of critical files and scans of important documents just in case of flooding. A fire could still brook disaster so I am putting some of those CDs in a safety deposit box.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Forogar wrote: I was going to start having off-line disks to save power but they now all shut down between actual usage anyway so that is no longer necessary
My only concern with that is ransomware. If it's connected, it can be accessed and thus encrypted before you realize it.
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I used to use multiple identical hard drives and did a complete image of the drive to a couple of them. Worked well too - no need to spend hours uploading files and everything was local.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
-- Marcus Brigstocke, British Comedian
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Did this as well, but only some laptops allow me to just pop out the SATA drive. Current laptop has an m.2 drive for the OS, something I need to image sooner rather than later.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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While I would normally agree with your sentiment of giving data to 3rd parties out of your control for most uses of the cloud... Offsite backups is not one of them. I was skeptical at first too, until I started using them for this purpose (still having local backup sets, and only relying on the cloud for off-prem storage).
I have seen many posts similar to yours (in other forums), and would like to know what suggestion you have for that off-site location that is both convenient enough to travel to several times a week (or even once per week) to drop off new backups and yet remote enough from your house that a regional flood/fire/earthquake wouldn't put them in jeopardy? I get having them anywhere else but your house will mitigate loss from theft, but not any of the other possible scenarios that off-site backup is supposed to cover.
I work from home, so taking one to work isn't an option. Most friends/family are within a small drive that many local disasters are likely to effect their location the same as my location. And safe deposit boxes are in not only close location, but a pain to drop off to and cost about the same as an online backup solution per year.
If I use an online backup solution, my offsite backup is not only kept (probably) in a completely different state than where I live and it is kept up to date every 15mins or so, verses updated maybe once a week (or maybe less if it's a pain in the but to physically swap drives often).
Don't get me wrong, I'm disappointed that Crashplan is getting out of the personal backup business, but I do not regret using them (and continuing to use them for the next year at least until my current subscription ends). While I'm not happy about having to use a more inferior solution at a higher price to fill the void, I'm not out any data, my data is still safe, and the only other issues with my data that I'll have is that I'll have to re-upload it all again, which is not that big of deal to me as I'm not "out anything". It's not like the data I was storing with them was compromised by hackers leaked or used against me or anything.
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The way I see it, it's not the end of the world if an offsite backup gets even an entire month behind--it's really for those times when disaster strikes and the backup(s) you had sitting right next to the computer no longer present a viable restore option.
I work from home as well also, but we do have an office about an hour's drive away. If something so bad happens that my data at both locations is destroyed, then I was probably sitting somewhere in-between as well and I'm probably no longer in a position where I'd still care all that much about any of the data I've collected over time.
That said, I wouldn't suggest to anyone a cloud backup is out of the question. I just find it impractical for myself because of sheer volume--and I'm not going to take the time now to figure out what can be in a cloud backup account, and what can be kept separate.
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It is only CrashPlan Home that they are phasing out. I already use CrashPlan Pro, and they say that they will be encouraging Home users to transition to the Pro product, which (at its lower end) is not ridiculously expensive.
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Actually, it is significantly more expensive.
The current home plan is $199 for 10 computers for the year
The new plan is $10 per device each month - translates to $1200 per year. I count a 600% increase as ridiculously more expensive.
-------------------------
"Qulatiy is Job #1"
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How many 'homes' have 10 computers? I admit that I haven't looked at CrashPlan's pricing since two or three years ago when I dumped Carbonite after experiencing a number of glacially slow restores (of relatively small amounts of data), but for my three systems (rather more typical for a home setup), I think that the Home pricing was then something like half that of the Pro contract I selected, and the latter included additional features that I thought worth the extra price.
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You must be single or have a small family.
Either that or you need to turn in your "nerd card".  A family of 5 could easily approach the 10 computer mark, if you consider each person having a laptop or desktop, and add in the fact that NAS appliances are now popular, as well as other possible computers like HTPC's being used for TV viewing/streaming.
Even if you don't have 10pc's to backup, if you have more than 1 or 2, then plans that charge "per pc" get expensive quick. Paying per PC on Crashplan's new SMB plan would cost me 4X more than it currently does, and each new PC I added would get more expensive, instead of now, where I wouldn't sweat it if I had to add another computer to the mix as I have left over slots from the 10 avail in my plan.
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I have a good sized family, but our children are scattered over two continents, with only my wife and I left at (our current) home. We find a desktop each and a single shared laptop for portable use to be enough hardware. I do have a NAS setup, but this is used as an alternate backup destination for the working systems- I don't expect to have to back it up!
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Actually the home plan for 10 PC's was $150, not $200. So it's an 800% increase, not 600%... which is even worse. Still your point is valid just the same.
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I use BackBlaze and they are cheap, fast and just plain work. Backs up my Windows and Mac machines and is only $5 per month per computer. Can't beat it.
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justahack wrote: I use BackBlaze and they are cheap, fast and just plain work. Backs up my Windows and Mac machines and is only $5 per month per computer. Can't beat it.
CrashPlan did beat it, though. For $150/year I'm backing up 5 computers (I think the Home plan was 10 max?) with unlimited storage and unlimited file versions -- it's that last bit that was the real winner, and the only reason I put up with their otherwise horrible software and speeds.
I'm hoping to do more comparisons in the next few days and will post with what I find.
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Depends on the use case, for sure. BackBlaze costs me $50 per year (if I pay up front) instead of $5 per month. I've only got 2 computers to back up, so in my case, that's cheaper. And the speeds and software are amazing.
I can't speak to versioning but I have had to go back and restore files that I screwed up or deleted and am able to select by date backed up. So, probably not versioning perse but good enough for my needs.
Not sure if BB offers any sort of discount for more computers that are backed up... perhaps there is. I do know they offer other solutions if you have a NAS to back up.
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BackBlaze is the first thing I thought of when I got the email, I was evaluating it before I choose CrashPlan in the first place. Unfortunately despite the pricing being the same, BB doesn't actually support backing up ANY of my data due to limitations they put in their software, and the software is pretty horrific if you want to back up anything specific anyway.
The main downsides are no real versioning; it uses an exclude setup to choose what to backup instead of a much simpler include (for example It's not actually possible to only have a single folder backed up with BB); it only runs on MacOS and Windows Client versions; no support for Windows Server or Linux, and it won't backup any data on a network share; which means unless all your data is local you can't backup a nas.
I doubt I'm the only one who put up with CrashPlan's generally crappy software just due to the features and ease of use.
Ironically, IF you have less than 5TB of data backed up, which includes your actual backups plus all versions, and you don't have multiple machines, upgrading to the newly renamed Small Business package is probably still the best option out there. If however you backup multiple machine and/or have more than 5TB of data, switching to the new plans means you're going to be paying far more and they're going to delete all your backups anyway... I dunno...
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Backblaze is a really good alternative.
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I use iDrive because their software allows network shares as well as external hard drives and NAS. When I started online backup 2 years ago, they were the only ones I found that did.
They have a free plan, but their 2TB plan is only $55/mo for 1 user unlimited computers and $75/mo for 5TB
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After looking around, iDrive seems to be the next best thing for an affordable price. The only downside is they don't offer a home plan more than 5TB, so if your backups are bigger than this, it either won't work, or you may have to pay for multiple's and have sets of computers use different account to keep them all under 5TB.
Backblaze does not support many of the Crashplan features, and they also charge for a file restore, so they get you comming and going so to speak.
I don't think I'd every pay for Carbonite, just personally, but they seem to be a half hearted, sleazy company. Maybe it's just the image I get from their radio and TV commercials, but they seem like they try to gouge people who don't know any better. Their "tiers" of service are strange as well, as they only give some basic functionality unless you pay even more for each PC. They don't even backup video files by default, apparently home video's of your family aren't considered "important" to backup.
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