The Best In Off-Site / Cloud Based Backup

"CrashPlan" is incredible!
The very best way to backup your memories and data!

Keep in mind, all photos and family videos, as well as letters to friends and family, school work, medical records, important spreadsheet, financials, etc... have all gone digital these days. The years of scrap booking, big file cabinets, family slide show carousels or closet full of 8mm family movies have all evolved and gone digital!

We must therefor find effective, EASY, cost effective methods of backing up these all these irreplaceable memories and resources, or risk loosing them forever. Simply placing a copy in your own home, is not a great "backup" policy. Burned CD's and DVDs do not last the years and years which store bought DVD's provide, so cloud storage is a GREAT choice!

After testing for month the 1/2 a dozen leading, cloud based backup services; "CrashPlan" wins! ...hands down!
https://www.crashplan.com/consumer/crashplan-plus.html
For less than $5 a month you can back up an unlimited amount from one system (even a home server, including attached drives or mobile devices.) Mac or PC. Family plans for < $12 a month provide unlimited for 2-10 systems!

In addition you can use the same SIMPLE software for multi-destination backups! Across town, to and from another friends and family, or to addition mirrored local storage. There is no better value or technology offered by any another competitor at the moment!

Students can backup from school to home. Or the whole family can backup to the CrashPlan cloud! (All 448-bit encryption is done on your own machine, BEFORE it leaves your possession; so NO "unlocked" files are EVER stored or even visible on other 3rd party systems, without your password and authorization.)

The performance is also beyond comparison within the Dallas / Ft. Worth area. Maintaining 5+ Mbps uploads to their servers 24/7. (I'm sure this performance varies depending on which data center your are assigned and how close you reside.) This consistant high upload performance, allows my (HUGE) 1.6 Terra Byte, initial, seed backup to complete in just over 4 weeks time. (Most initial "seed" backups will only take days, with all subsequent incremental backups happening seamlessly and instantly.)

In addition, I love taking advantage of their "Backup Sets" prioritization options; in order to fully control which areas of my 1.6 Terra Byte, seed backup, are tackled first. This is particularly useful since I'm relocating my home server in less than 20 days, and wanted to assure certain irreplaceable family video and photo archives are the first to make it to "CrashPlan Central's" off-site data servers. :-)
(Many more impressive specifics on CrashPlan's backup priorities & efficiencies are discussed below in the "Detailed" info.)

• CrashPlan Video Explanation: http://youtu.be/vG_e2dyJ570 
• 3rd Party review: http://youtu.be/Ja1O04rV1pI
• And in-depth tour (7mins): http://youtu.be/O6qSJIkcWss
• Getting Started: http://youtu.be/fy62DxQGarM

More Details on CrashPlan's Unique Backup Methods:
"Like other online backup programs, CrashPlan compresses and encrypts your data before sending it over the Internet. And, like the others, it's constrained by the laws of physics; compression notwithstanding, online backups can in some cases take days or even weeks to complete. But CrashPlan does three unique and interesting things.

First, it gives precedence to files that have changed recently. So, if you're running your first full backup and it takes three days to finish, but in the meantime you make major changes to a document you're writing, CrashPlan almost immediately backs up the new document rather than waiting until the rest of the queue has been processed.

Second, it can store multiple versions of files that have changed, and can optionally do so right after a change takes place, rather than having to scan every file on your disk before each run; you can set the number of minutes that elapse between when the file is saved and when CrashPlan backs it up. This means that, from the moment you begin using CrashPlan, it can archive multiple versions of your most important and actively used files - somewhat like a version-control system - without waiting to run on a fixed schedule.

And third, if a file changes, CrashPlan doesn't make a new copy of the entire file, but copies only the bytes that have actually changed. This means that incremental backups run very quickly and that storage space is minimized - two attributes that are always welcome, but especially so with online backups. As a consequence, if you were to back up, say, the 10 GB disk image you use for Windows XP in Parallels Desktop, you could update it every day without worrying that you'll overwhelm your backup media. In fact, CrashPlan goes a big step further: if more than one computer in your home or office contains a file identical to one you've backed up already, CrashPlan stores just a pointer to the original backup file, not another copy. So you can effectively store much more data in a much smaller space than with other backup solutions."

(The "More Detailed" info above came from a, now out of date, blog article, at Tib Bits: http://tidbits.com/article/8882; However, the info I included above was still correct and relevant as of March, 2012. Crashplan has added several feature since the Feb., 2007 blog article; such as, "restore to folder" options and other features allowing for even more flexibility the original article was suggesting / requesting.)

  Flexible Remote Backup & Online Storage
CrashPlan+ gives you all the protection of CrashPlan, plus the added benefit of secure cloud storage to CrashPlan Central for your personal files.

The Best In Off-Site / Cloud Based Backup