As many of you know I’ve been a fan of CrashPlan.com for a few years now. It’s a major part of my backup strategy and gives me an offsite backup in addition to my onsite Time Machine backups. Recently I had Code 42 (the company behind CrashPlan) speak at my local user’s group and I learned even more about how cool their services are. Thanks to the good folks at Code 42 I’m able to give away a full year of the CrashPlan Family Plan (up to 10 computers) to one of my lucky readers.
It’s easy to enter this contest. All you have to do is write a comment below about why you think backups and offsite backups are important to you. The deadline for comments is Sunday, May 18, 2014 at 9PM ET.
I’ll select a winner from the comments below at random and announce the winner one week from today (Monday, May 19th, 2014).
I have too many photos backed up locally that I should also be backing up offsite!
The Moore, OK tornado destroyed my house a year on May 20th, and I lost nearly all of my data. I wish had been using an online backup.
The importance of backing up is not that apparent until you lose those all important files. Now with the access to tools like Crash Plan. That sinking feeling of staring at a drive that won’t boot and running through a catalog in your mind of all you just lost doesn’t have to be a reality any longer.
I’ve never tried an offsite backup plan but they sure sound a lot safer than storing everything on my external. My friend just recently got his home broken into and they took two laptops, his desktop and 2 externals with his work (programming, etc.) from the last 8 years…all gone. I worry everyday that I will get broken into like my friend and lose EVERYTHING.
Offsite backup is as important as incremental back ups. Hard drives fail as they are volatile and it is devastating to lose any data. Last year my laptop was stolen along with it my hard drives. Albeit I had backed up my data it had not worked (I should have checked it too). I lost photos of my grandfather that had passed the same week my laptop was stolen. My one regret was not using onsite and offsite backups.
Ever since I been a gamer in the early 80s it’s been Save! Save! Save! Floppy save! But since I became a Multi-Media Graphic Designer it’s been HHD save! Zip save! DVD save! Now blu Ray save! And now I even save to another server. I have an OCD on backing up. I love my Time Machine on my Mac, it’s my best friend.
I love saving my data files on servers, because I am able to retrieve them anywhere on any computer.
Thank you,
Drew Marino aka warcraftman68
If you ever have a house fire you will know how important off site backups are. I’ve had drives fail, and thus far I’ve been lucky. I keep a backup set in my home and one at my parents in case of disaster. An online server backup would fit the bill nicely.
If my computer goes down or is somehow lost, I know my important data, including all of my photos, are safe.
Backups are important to me because I have photos of my parents, who both passed away, and would hate to lose those precious memories.
I have been researching offsite backups and would love to be the lucky winner!
It is necessary in order to prevent losing is never what you have to give on to our customers. And in addition to files and nowadays a very large archive of photos so can not return back.
I’ve been looking for an online backup service and this one sounds great.
YOU WON!!!!!
That’s fabulous! What do I have to do?
Check your Gmail.
I use CrashPlan for my business machines (14) but not for my personal network. This will be important to me for creating the multiple copies of important personal data that is only backed up on Time Machine. CrashPlan would be important in my home for the ease of use: set it and forget it.
I’ve over 10TB data to back up. How long will this take to upload to CP?
That of course would depend on a lot of factors such as your upload speed and how much bandwidth you allow CrashPlan to use. In any case you’re probably looking at a few months for 10TB to be uploaded. They also offer a hard disk option (for a fee) that they will send you to do the initial backup and then ship it back to them. Same goes for a restore. You can opt to have them send you a hard drive of your data in the event of a disaster so that you can get your stuff back sooner.
I understand, the hd option sounds like the way to go. Thank you for the information Terry.
Just starting to get to photography business and I need to learn all tricks and program that can support me …. I am now running out of space and I need that program
I have been looking for a good cloud storage for the longest while, that
will back-up my hard-drives automatically in case of fail or crash
hard-drive,Thanks to @Terry White that i came across Crash Plan, i have
been saving all my data on external hard-drives but i still know that’s
not safe in-case of thief or fire of some sought…I’m gonna give Crash
Plan a try right away…….Thanks again @Terry White
OK. My HD on the iMac is ill. Have I backed up? Well, it was one of those things….
I actually just signed up for Crash Plan (so if I win I hope they will extend my plan!) I found Crash Plan much easier to use than I expected – it automatically found my c:drive and it was easy to add my other 3 external drives, plus my daughter’s laptop that is remote. Now all my photos and files are in one place instead of scattered about. I was able to look at my backups and see all the individual files – no mysterious coding of the file names. I feel confident that if I ever need to restore, it will simply just work.
Important to me? ESSENTIAL is more like it.
Backup is critical to me, even though it’s all personal stuff. I use Time Machine on an external HD and CrashPlan on both an external HD and on-line. I currently have about 1TB backed up on CrashPlan. I’m considering adding my wife’s computer to the mix, so a free year of CrashPlan’s Family Plan would be nice.
I once had had two nightly backups – little did I know that a small backup was overwriting the large one each night. So, even though I thought I was vigilant, I was unable to retrieve most of my data when disaster struck. That’s why I’d love CrashPlan because even when you THINK you are safe, you may not be.
Onsite backup gives me the peace of mind that my data can be retrieved if something happened to my computer. Off-site backups gives me the peace of mind if my home is ever damaged, broken in or is in a major accident. Both are necessities in the world we live in today!
I love CrashPlan and have been using it for awhile. I had to retrieve a file recently that somehow got deleted off my Hard Drive and CrashPlan made it really easy to do. Most people typically have so much valuable information on their computers, so a good, reliable backup is a must. I recommend CrashPlan when people ask and even when they don’t 🙂
Backup’s for me are necessary as I have customers that come back to be 4 and 5 years later looking for an image. I’ve had drive failures before so I learned the hard way how important multiple backups and off site back ups are.
As a former business owner, and now an educator, I have seen all kinds of ways for people to lose their data. Having an off site backup is one of the most important ways to protect yourself!
Cloud based backups offer a fire and forget mentality to safely protect your data. You owe it to yourself and clients (if you have those) to ensure your data is always available.
I should really have an online cloud backup… shouldn’t rely on local storage anymore.
Sheesh! Once my external drive went down and deleted all of 2007, I knew I needed something else!
As an Apple Service Manager and Firefighter, I’ve seen people’s worlds come crashing down. A dead hard drive is one thing, an external backup that also goes up in flames with the person’s computer…something you can’t repair. Photographers and designers alike need to be so careful with redundancy now, because not only could you lose your art, for so many of us, you also lose your source of income.
Having gone the route of External Hard drives works for a
while, until they crash and all is lost and almost impossible to recover. I
looked into Drobo but the cost is a bit high for my budget. The most sensible cost
option is off-site storage, you have peace of minding knowing that your
important data is backed up off-site, away from your home or office, is that
it’s safe from theft, fire, and other local disasters. Easily accessible should
the need arise for retrieval.
If you care at all about your images and data, you’ll use redundant backups. You never know….
I love be crash plan. I did a trial with them and was sad when it didn’t fit in my budget. I need something more reliable than my ancient external hard drives.
There is nothing better than having your files safe and secure, as well as accessible from anywhere. Doing consistent backups are a mandatory in business these days. We cannot rely on the old fashioned paper trail anymore. And having had 2 major external hard drive crashes in the past 10 years, makes me a firm believer in cloud storage technology…. All my data, at my fingertips… Priceless ( :
Ever lose a file that was extremely important, say a term paper, a degree thesis, or your family photos? When it is too late and a hard lesson has been learned, you think when will my computer / hard drive die gain. The off site backup is just one option. But you have to have at least one! Plus you need to test how it will be restored.
Backups to an external hard drive is only half of the equation – the other half is an off-site backup. CrashPlan makes the other half of the equation easy and hassle free.
I take pictures because I want to remember. If something catastrophic happens to my on-site backups, I’ll still have those memories safe and sound.
Backups are important to me because failure of a hard drive at some point is an absolute certainty. I want to preserve the memories, and the results of all that effort for a long, long time.
A backup plan is a vital part of one’s life; backing up electronic files and photographs for personal as well as professional storage should be a part of one’s daily life. Recently in the State of Mississippi we experienced 23 tornadoes in last than 8 hours time; homes destroyed, a hospital took a direct hit and is now closed for an indefinite time, businesses damaged or destroyed. Important data stored locally in file cabinets or on computers are now gone for many individuals and businesses. Adding CrashPlan as a resource would be a welcomed edition to my work. Thank you for considering me,
Although I do backup to multiple machines at my home and also at my office I’m still in the same geographic area. Should a disaster strike my data would be gone. Storing off-site with CrashPlan would take that single point of failure out of the equasion.
Multiple backups – local and offsite – are a must. Local backups are great for simple restorations, but in case of a disaster, my data files can be accessed from anywhere, any computer.
regularly scheduled backups onsite (Time Machine) and offsite (online) are my photo and info insurance
Local and offsite backups are a must. I currently have all my photos on a 2nd Gen Drobo (4 bay) and I make external backups daily using SuperDuper, I rotate identical hd’s once a week, having an offsite backup of all my photos. This doesn’t always happen, as I sometimes forget. Having a cloud based backup would be great, would be like having Time Machine for all my files, by this I mean automatic backups, no hassles. I surely could use this giveaway.
One of the worst feelings is when you think a hard drive with important photos failed and you don’t have a back-up. Automatic off-site back-ups save you from a lot of worry!
everyone loses stuff, but offsite backups can reduce your pain
the one thing I noticed was a slow down of the browser etc when using an online backup
Just think how much you would lose if your computer failed and backups become _very_ important.
I used to think that “off site” backup was the most difficult to deal with, but CrashPlan changes all that.
I don’t have a good off site backup plan, with all the family computers it’s hard to get them all figured out. Probably need to go with something like CrashPlan to keep it simple.
I could make an eloquent case about importance of backups, being somebody that works in an astronomical archive, but I won’t 🙂
Backup your data! At least the precious part, before it’s too late!!!!
As an online professor I create hours of lecture videos. If those aren’t protected by backup I can lose months of work in one catastrophic event. While I do have in-house backup, I’ve currently got no off-site plan. This could be a god-send for myself and my students.
I’m a technologist, an entrepreneur and a photographer. The data I generate is both large and quite important to me, and to others. As such, backups are essential – for my piece of mind and for those whose data I house! Unfortunately I’ve become somewhat of an expert in data recovery over the years. But I have recently adopted a new rule — I will *ONLY* help my family, friends and colleagues do data recovery *ONCE*. If those whom I’ve helped don’t start doing their own backups (CrashPlan is who I recommend!), I won’t help them a second time, as they very obviously have NOT learned this important lesson. Off-site cloud backups are essential, and thanks to increasing broadband speeds they are also viable, even for large amounts of data. Local backups are also helpful but you really can’t beat the security of knowing that you’re protected from theft, fire, and other local disasters. CrashPlan has saved my @ss a few times already and I thank Code42 for their great service!
Why is it important? Because it is much better to be SAFE, than sorry!
I have been using ‘another’ backup service and after so much data it just kinda …stopped? Then someone told me they ‘throttle’ your upload speeds waaaay down after you upload a certain amount of data. Frustrating!! As a photographer I have gigs and gigs of images to backup and I am tired of never getting everything backed up. Crash Plan sounds like a very interesting option! 🙂
Now more than ever, have a reliable backup plan is a must. And off-site backup option is a great first step in a smart plan to protect and have a safe way to retrieve your backup data.
Having been broken into on Thursday I was very glad it was only my camera gear they took and not my hdd’s and computer (think they got disturbed). I can handle loosing my camera gear but my photos are my children.
It was a big reminder to update my offsite backups and ensure they are offsite! The thieves had loaded up the hdds into a bag then left it behind.
An automated backup, via cloud, is a great way backup your familys important digital stuff 🙂
Have a backup plan that includes off site storage. Disasters happen so do boneheaded moves.
I have two backup external drives but know I should be backing up off-site as well. So many options, and many of them are quite expensive, but I love the idea of auto backups!
How do you replace a family’s treasured photo, especially if they are trusting you to preserve it?
I’ve had drives fail due to hardware issues and lost data due to human error. It’s important to have copies elsewhere.
Hi Terry, backups are super important. As the saying goes – it’s not if a drive will fail, but when it will fail. I’ve had drives crash and also ones that became corrupt. Not a fun process of restoring files from bad drives. Offsite backups extend the ability to reclaim your data if all hell breaks loose and something happens to your gear. Backup and Backup often folks!
Backups are extremely important both personally and professionally. If you’ve captured a once in a lifetime moment on film then nothing can be more heartbreaking than losing it. If you’ve spent hours upon hours creating something losing all that productivity can be frustrating. Offsite backups mean you don’t have to rely purely on your own equipment and that you have access to it under nearly any conditions.
I’ve been dealing with customer backups for over 15 years now, first with off-site tapes that were sent to companies such as Iron Mountain, then with cloners that were secured in data centers… however with every company being more and more cost effective I moved on to a combination of BoxCryptor and DB, Copy, etc. etc. … for the added security layer… now I’m trying CrashPlan, and if in 30 days I can move my company over along with the private/custom key configurations I will slowly start migrating my clients… lets just say that I’m tired of providing support for both security/backup in one package without messing up your workflow – I think this is where CrashPlan comes in… we’ll see 🙂
As others have said, physical drives can and will fail at the worst possible moment. Also, off-site backup will help protect the user’s data from natural disasters such as floods, fire, etc.
Backups are one thing. But remote backups–essential. As I live in southern California (San Diego–in a state of emergency right now due to all the fires), dangers of property damage is fairly high. Even if I make backups to another room in my house (which I do), I still run the risk of losing everything if I don’t backup remotely.
That’s client photos. First child’s birth photos and first step videos. You can’t get that back otherwise.
The worry in the back of my mind about losing all my photos,music and documents is not small. I have only one back up to an external hard drive that is already 5 years old. Would LOVE to back up to the cloud as my safety until I can get a new external back up for my computer. There is nothing more important than backing up but like many things in life, we put it off – sometimes until it is too late. I have not heard of Crash Plan till I saw it on mentioned on Scott Kelby’s blog and I just had a quick look-see. I would LOVE to have a year free so I can sleep better at night and stop chewing my nails every time I boot up or shut down! I can spend more worry free time shooting!
I used to store my backup files on a hard drive I kept at a friend’s house, but they moved away and I haven’t found a good alternative. Crash Plan sounds as if might be a good way to do it. It would be great to win a free year and get a good chance to try it out.
I do some redundant backups now and use a small safe for hard drives. Fireproof safes introduce moisture. Offsite is good, I hope that CrashPlan can be trusted. Some backup cloud storage only allows your main (C) drive to back up. Who keeps all of their images only on the “C” drive?
I have so many pictures and no online backup system. I used to back up pictures to disk and take them to my parent’s house, but I have far too many pictures for this process to work. I take pictures at my kids sporting events and share the pictures on Facebook with the kids and their parents. If my external backup drive fails, I’m out of luck.
My current backup system is an external drive and nothing else. So, if it goes, so do my pictures! Now that I’ve done a couple friends’ weddings I really need to make sure these photos are safe.
Love Crash Plan!! I backup locally and then to them as well. Also love they are based in my hometown of Minneapolis.
Just like my brain, it can’t keep everything. So, having local as well as cloud based backups is so helpful, especially for those times when your hard drive crashes. Now I just gotta figure one out for my brain.
I started using iCloud for my online back up because a year ago my external hard drive crashed and there went thousands of photos! Argh. Never again!
Hello.
I thought that I was pretty good at backing up my photos. Recently my desktop computer decided to act up. I thought no problem I’ll my back up. The back up wasn’t there. For what ever reason, probably me, the soft wasn’t backing up my photos. Fortunately I was able to rescue my photos. Crash plans sounds like a great part of a backup strategy.
Digital creations most of the time can only be stored on an internal or external harddrive. In a digital age with more need for storage capacity every year we need a reliable online backup, who we trust. So we have a chance of getting back all the creations we made; Photo’s, Video’s, Audio, Books, Drawings, Ideas….anything which is stored in 110010101110111011010……if our hardware some day fails on us.
Currently have no off-site back up so would lose so many important things if anything were to happen. This would be great.
After losing photographs from a once in a lifetime trip to Alaska, I understand the importance of backing up my photos. Having an offsite backup site like Crashplan would provide so much peace of mind and provide a excellent way to preserve those special photographs and memories.
No external hard drive’s backup system alone will sufficiently protect your important personal and professional files without having a reliable offsite backup service. You never know when a home office disaster such as a fire, theft, or natural catastrophe could strike leaving with no computer files to restore for you to ever use again. That’s why having an offsite backup service is absolutely needed to protect all of your digital images and documents. CrashPlan is the best, most efficient offsite service around!
Redundancy is key to our business and our craft. With the rise of digital media, our work is still susceptible to the dangers of fire, water, and time, but a new threat has arisen: data corruption. The only protection against this is redundancy and it is merely a short-term solution. Companies like Crash Plan provide protection that the professional photographer cannot provide themselves. However, it is only one part of a successful backup plan. One I would readily adopt if selected.
It would be good to know that my family life is safely stored – all the photos, videos and documents.
Ever since losing all my data back in college in 2001, I’ve been very careful to backup locally. I think it is just as important to back up your data offsite, should anything happen to your local stooge and backups (fire, flooding, etc).
Last year I nearly lost my backup, when 2 harddrives in my NAS started to fail at the same time! Luckily, one of the drives was still readable, so I managed to get all data off the NAS, before disaster struck.
I think cloud-storage would ease my mind!
I think crash protection is very important; that is why I always use a seat belt. And after hard drive crashes over the years I know the importance of backing everything up!
Backups are important coz computers fail. Offsite backups are important coz fire, earthquake, flood, etc. With cheap and fast Internet connection nowadays, cloud backup is a no-brainer!
I use 2 on-site backup drives currently. Longer term plan will be to migrate to a Drobo 4/5. I currently use Backblaze for my cloud backup for everything but media files ( as these are done on-site). As I use iDevices, my mail, contacts and notes are always available. While I feel secure, really how secure is secure enough ? You won’t really know until the worst possible scenario pops up.
CrashPlan saved my Ass!!! I lost ALL my photos and got them all back!!! Their tech support is top notch and will do whatever it takes!
Important because it’s not IF your computer crashes/data fails/etc. but WHEN! We need to be ready! Saves time, saves headaches, and generally saves your butt at critical times! Thanks for all your great info, and for the opportunity to take advantage of CrashPlan! 🙂
I’ve been doing a manual mirror of my 2TB HD to another 3TB drive so I have at least one local backup. But it’s so important to have an automatic local and external backup for those physical (house fire) or equipment failures because you never know when it’s going to happen. Just like Charlie says below it’s not if but when it will happen. Plan now and it’s one less thing to worry about.
Despit modern technologies advanced processing, vicissitudes arrive and those of us lacking clairvoyance certainly need crashplan!
…ps. awesome tutorials,learning so much!