Solution #4 — As I mentioned in my first Solution about Backup (Solution #1) properly backing up your data is often a highly personal solution.  One tool that may help is CrashPlan from Code 42 Software.  Crashplan has many features, but it helps solve several important backup problems.

  1. Crashplan is cross platform.  It works on Windows, Mac, and many Linux operating systems.
  2. It provides an “off-site” backup in two ways.  Like many services you can pay Crashplan a yearly subscription to back up your data to their servers.  This services is competitively priced but very similar to other companies, Carbonite, Back Blaze, Mozy, and others.  Crashplan also allows you to backup your data to another computer running Crashplan.  So you and a friend could each back your data up to the others computer.  Or you could back up the data from your home computer to one at work or vice versa.
  3. Crashplan has many free options.  Crashplan will allow you to backup to a friend (or another computer your own) or a local hard drive, or a NAS server… for free.  Crashplan will charge you only if you use their online storage for backup or if you need some of the more advanced features of the software like different backup sets.
  4. Crashplan has apps for various mobile devices (Apple, Android, and others) that will allow you to access documents stored in your Crashplan online backup from your mobile device.
  5. It does protect you from yourself.  Files that are accidentally deleted or altered can be easily recovered from the backup.

There are still backup problems that Crashplan will not solve.  It does not make a clone or bootable copy of your hard drive.  Recovery of files is very nicely done, but is not particularly fast if you are using their online service, but it works well in many situations.  I even have a number of my own family members using Crashplan to backup their data to my computers here in the Sherrard Solutions World Headquarters… all for free.

Problem #4 — More Backup Suggestions