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Freebies

Freebie: CRASHPLAN

CRASHPLAN IS A MUST HAVE – Data Backup Software for all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux)

A lot of people ask me how they should back up their data.  Well I have an answer and it doesn’t have to be expensive either.

My outline for a successful backup system, geared toward the home office, is a dual backup strategy consisting of both:
1.  Local backup – This can be an external disk, usb/flash drive, or another computer.  This provides quick, easy and fast access to backup data with the trade off of being prone to theft, fire, and flood.
2. Remote (offsite) backup – This provides ultimate safety of your important data by avoiding theft, fire, and flooding.  If you backup remotely, you can forego a local backup solution as long as you are comfortable with a longer delay in file backups and recovery (depending on your upload/download speeds).

Initial Remote backups will take a long time to copy all data offsite (personally took 65 days for my ~250GB of data) but once the initial backup is complete subsequent backups are super fast and done during idle CPU times, and with Crashplan there is no bandwidth limit no matter how much data you have.

Here’s where you can easily start, at virtually no cost:  CRASHPLAN

Crashplan allows you to backup to multiple locations:

  • Local computer or external drive
  • Remote (offsite) computer running Crashplan
  • Remote cloud system (paid service)
The beauty of Crashplan’s software is that it allows you to backup to local disks and computers, or even a friend or family member’s computer for FREE!  If you need to backup your mother’s computer, just install Crashplan and point it to your computer.  Crashplan will backup her files to a location on your computer that you specify and it will be encrypted which provides her some privacy.  You can point your backups to a local external drive or even to another friend’s computer.  All of this for FREE!  The software is easy to use and has no file limits, or drive limitations, and, if you subscribe CrashPlan offers UNLIMITED storage space.
You can also choose, like I do, to subscribe to the online cloud back up solution of Crashplan+.  This is a very cost competitive solution!  Crashplan is the backup choice for some major players too like: Google, Cisco, Adobe, and Oracle.