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I thought this would be a pretty good topic to bring up since I have first-hand experience about losing files on my computer. I’ve had numerous hard drives crash (too many to count) and I’ve accidentally deleted files. I learned from my lessons fast and am here to share a great tool with you!

I’ve often setup RAID-1 in my home computers to help retain data should a hard drive fail. Explaining RAID setup is beyond the scope of this post, but basically RAID-1 requires 2 hard drives. Whatever is copied on hard drive 1 is copied to hard drive 2. What happens though if your house were to burn down, there’s flooding in your region, or  lightning strikes your computer? You can still lose all your data!

I now use a little tool called CrashPlan. This is not a free tool and it does cost a small monthly subscription. It costs $5.99/month or as little as $3.95/month if you pre-pay 4 years in advance. CrashPlan offers UNLIMITED disk space and will backup whatever folders you have the program monitor on your computer. Currently I have 4TB backed up with CrashPlan and I keep transferring more and more data to them each week.

In order to use CrashPlan, you do have to have a high speed Internet connection. I currently have 10Mbps upload speed and CrashPlan typically transfers data at about 1.9Mbps up to 5.5Mbps. Their servers are located here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In order to backup 4TB of data it literally took months and months. If you have a lot of data, be prepared to leave your computer on 24/7 until your backup is complete!

If you can afford the minimal monthly fee, I would HIGHLY recommend CrashPlan to anyone that is worried about losing photos, music, videos, etc. It’s happened to me twice now and I vowed I would never do it again.

Do you use something else for backing up your files? What do you think of CrashPlan? Let me know in the comments!

 

12 comments

  1. oldans

    I actually use Carbonite and I have for quite sometime. I have not really read up much on CrashPlan but I would love to know of any major differences between the two if anyone has tried both.

  2. Justin

    I actually don’t use any off site backup at the moment, and I realize the fact that I am at risk from fire or theft. I have good on site back up procedures, so I guess I tend to just push to the back of my mind that this is a possibility. Time to start looking into it.

  3. Abigail

    My backup processes are not robust at all. I have in the past lost 7000 photos through a hard drive crash, so I really should learn a lesson from it and start to look after my files a little better.

    • Justin

      Well this is as good a time as any to get started Abigail. It’s never too late to put backup procedures into place, even if you only run your backup on a weekly basis it could save you a lot of pain.

      • Abigail

        I fully agree, and I sort of learned a lesson from my previous issue in that I now just keep filling up media and then never moving the files, lol. But still, I don’t have a second copy of most things.

        • Justin

          I’ve heard people say that if you don’t have two separate copies then you don’t have it at all, and that makes sense. If you lose the device with that one copy, you lose the lot.

          • Puhlease

            I’ve never heard of that saying, but you’re right, it does make logical sense. With only one copy on your back up there is a high risk of failure and loss.

    • Giselle

      It’s so easy to crash your hard drive and having that many photos lost is awful! Backup is so important especially for people who are constantly using their computer.

  4. braedan

    I usually back up my computer because I’ve learned the hard way. I was using my daughter’s laptop for a while when my was have problems and had a lot of information on it for work. Little did I know she hadn’t deleted anything of her laptop in ages and the hard drive crashed on her. The was no way to salvage all my work. She is now backing up her laptop.

  5. raffy

    I haven’t heard of CrashPlan but I’ve heard of others like Carbonite or Mozy. Is it competitively priced? Most people know to back up their hard drive but a lot of people don’t bother until it’s too late. Then they end up taking it in to see if anything can be salvaged.

  6. PEvans

    Thank you for the tip. I’ve had so many crashes that I now back up to an external hard drive. It hadn’t crossed my mind that if a fire or flood happened I’d probably wind up with nothing.

  7. Giselle

    I don’t mind paying a fee for a good service that works well. Back up for computer files is so important and I think everybody at one time or other ends up with a computer crash.

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