Redundancy - TY!!

divamum

I forget who it was (Dan, maybe?) but somebody recommended Crashplan - seemed like a decent idea for the $, so I signed up for it a while back.

The initial backup took FOREVER, but last week I realised that I was finally most of the way there. THANK GOODNESS!!! After two days of computer hell, I finally gave up and formatted/reinstalled.

I have copies of my important stuff (shoots etc) on external drives - and I did have a chance to do some emergency backing up before I started the format - but it was sure a lot easier to click "restore" at Crash Plan Central...

I realise it's not a failsafe, but it's definitely been useful on this occasion, so thanks to whoever it was who first mentioned it! :thumb

ZBlack

I recently switched from Mozy to Crashplan myself (as mentioned in a recent thread). The initial backup, even without limiting my upload speed at any time, took about 5 days for roughly 100 gigs worth of stuff. I agree with the restore, it's so convenient just to hit the button and let it happen, vs trying to pull off of an external, which may be faster, but requires a little more work! Glad you're liking Crashplan so far.

divamum

Wow - your connection must be a lot faster than mine. It took over a month to get it all uploaded! I forget how big it was - probably about 120g or so, IIRC. Of course, maybe that slow transfer was an indication of whatever it was that finally ground the computer to a halt (still don't know what was wrong with it, but after two days trying to fix it I gave up and just reinstalled. Hadn't done an OS install since I got it, so it was needed maintenance anyway).

I'm still trying to make sense of what "adopting" a backup means in Crashplan (I think it just means that your files stay online as per the original computer and you just keep going from there?), but I'll deal with that once I"ve finished the restore.

Dan7312

Your idea on what adoping means is correct.

Crashplan is tied to a particular computer not the number of bytes you backup, the amount you can backup is unlimited. But if you want to backup two computers it costs twice as much.

When you restore your files to a new computer or one the failed on by rebuilding it, Crashplan may end up thinking you are adding another computer. By "adopting" the new/restored computer you are just letting Crashplan know you are not really adding a new computer, just replacing one it already knows about.

If you didn't "adopt" the new computer you would have to back it up from scratch after the restore. That's because if Crashplan thought it was a different computer it wouldn't know it already had the new computer's backup up on it's (Crashplan's that is) server.

Dan

divamum wrote: »

I'm still trying to make sense of what "adopting" a backup means in Crashplan (I think it just means that your files stay online as per the original computer and you just keep going from there?), but I'll deal with that once I"ve finished the restore.

Dan7312

Some of the online backup services throttle uploads to limit their speed after you get more than some arbitrary amount that they decide on, backed up. It can be quite noticable. Crashplan doesn't throttle uploads. Even on a DSL connection this can be noticable, but on fiber it really is noticable.

It's just one more thing I like about Crashplan. Once I complete video captures for one of the instructional videos I work on, it's usually pushed up to Crashplan in less than half hour.

divamum wrote: »

Wow - your connection must be a lot faster than mine.

angevin1

Dan7312 wrote: »

Some of the online backup services throttle uploads to limit their speed after you get more than some arbitrary amount that they decide on, backed up. It can be quite noticable. Crashplan doesn't throttle uploads. Even on a DSL connection this can be noticable, but on fiber it really is noticable.

It's just one more thing I like about Crashplan. Once I complete video captures for one of the instructional videos I work on, it's usually pushed up to Crashplan in less than half hour.

These sound like neat plans! 120GB, thats my yearly limit (10GB/Mo.) on my Internet connection, so I have to do my own crash plan.

divamum

It's got a couple more days to run before it's restored, and then I'll do the adopt, I guess. Annoyingly, I DID manage not to back up my FF bookmarks (duh). Oh well. Maybe a version of it is on an old local backup somewhere. That said, if that's the worst thing to happen following a complete computer meltdown requiring a format+restore, then I think I've done pretty well.

I will say I'm pretty obssessive about always having TWO (or more) copies of any paid shoots. When I upload to the HDD to work on them, I won't wipe the cards until there's also a copy on my external backup HDD. I won't wipe the C:/ copy until I'm sure it's also on Crashplan and/or I've archived to DVDs. Etc. I'm glad that several people here have preached the necessity of multiple backups!

I still have to reinstall CS3 (easy - that's from a "hard copy") and LR - not quite so easy. I have a hard copy of v2, and I'm not sure if the v3.0 update got stored locally or not (probably, but I have to FIND the exe which will be the hard part). Presumably if I write to Adobe to explain they'll let me re-download, since it was purchased and registered through them? All that said, I'm almost wondering if it would be easier just to buy a packaged copy of LR4 (is it being shipped as disks, or only downloads?). My original copy of LR2 was a legal educational copy from the college where my husband works, but it was ONLY a disk and no manual/documentation/anything else. Hmm.

ZBlack

There are settings within Crashplan to throttle or turn that off while you're working on the computer and/or when it's idle. The upload speed was limited when the computer is being used by default (at least on my installation it was), and it estimated about 30 days to get it all backed up. Once I turned that limit off is when it sped up significantly.

Lucky for me, I don't have any bandwidth caps that I'm aware of as Tom has. I've got Charter as my ISP on the coast of Oregon, with a 30 down and I *think* 12 up, but the upload may be a bit slower.

Glad to hear your restore has been pretty good so far, and if bookmarks are all that is gone, then yes, you did indeed make out quite good. If you registered with Adobe, you may be able to login to their site and download your software there. They are shipping a dvd version from Amazon when I checked a short bit ago.

Dan7312

One of the features of Crashplan is that you can have backups that are done locally as well as to the cloud. So you could maybe add 1TB usb drive to your machine and configure crashplan to use both the cloud and you 1TB drive. That gives some redundency and makes it a lot quick to restore when you need to.

divamum wrote: »

I will say I'm pretty obssessive about always having TWO (or more) copies of any paid shoots..

divamum

I thought about doing that, Dan, but wondered if it would just slow my machine down too much, especially with only USB2 and no firewire. I'm creaking along with this 2008 laptop until it finally dies; it's been a great machine which has really been pretty reliable (especially since the fan/heatsink was fixed (under warranty) and I doubled the RAM to 4g). To get what I *really* want/need in a new laptop is going to be spendy so I keep putting it off even though I know it will greatly speed up my workflow!

I'll check out the local backup again though - i'ts something I've considered for a while as it sounds very convenient.

Dan7312

It will depend on how old and creaky you laptop is. However if you do a right mouse button on the crashplan icon in the tray one of the choices is "sleep". So if it is getting in your way just put it to sleep. You can pick 1 hour, 2 hours, etc. I'd pick 1 hour and if it wakes up and gets in your way again just give it another nap. That way you can leave it running at full bandwidth but not have it get in your way while working.

divamum wrote: »

I thought about doing that, Dan, but wondered if it would just slow my machine down too much, especially with only USB2 and no firewire. I'm creaking along with this 2008 laptop until it finally dies; it's been a great machine which has really been pretty reliable. To get what I *really* want/need in a new laptop is going to be spendy so I keep putting it off!

I'll check it out though - i'ts something I've considered for a while as it sounds very convenient.

Dan7312

Well at least you don't live here:

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/04/pitcairn-island-to-double-bandwidth-to-512-kbps-amongst-48-people.ars

angevin1 wrote: »

These sound like neat plans! 120GB, thats my yearly limit (10GB/Mo.) on my Internet connection, so I have to do my own crash plan.

gecko0

divamum wrote: »

I thought about doing that, Dan, but wondered if it would just slow my machine down too much, especially with only USB2 and no firewire. I'm creaking along with this 2008 laptop until it finally dies; it's been a great machine which has really been pretty reliable (especially since the fan/heatsink was fixed (under warranty) and I doubled the RAM to 4g). To get what I *really* want/need in a new laptop is going to be spendy so I keep putting it off even though I know it will greatly speed up my workflow!

I'll check out the local backup again though - i'ts something I've considered for a while as it sounds very convenient.

You may want to consider buying a USB 3.0 card to add in...definitely worth the $20-$30. My motherboard already has it built-in and it's GREAT for dumping huge amounts of data to a small external drive quickly.

.02

edit: sorry...I didn't read the entire thread and see you're using a laptop. You can still get a PCMCIA card for this (I have one of those too for an older laptop)...just a thought.

divamum

Geck- do you have any experience with the PCMCIA ones? They're not expensive and if they work well could be great. HOWEVER, the bit of reading around I've done suggests that the PCMCIA interface acts as a bottleneck and you don't gain much speed. Thoughts?

As an addendum to my sad tale of woe, I will say that reinstalling the OS fixed all problems. Good news: don't have to buy a new computer yet Bad news: don't get to buy a new computer yet (kidding aside I'm actually very pleased that it works again, but you know what I mean!)

gecko0

divamum wrote: »

Geck- do you have any experience with the PCMCIA ones? They're not expensive and if they work well could be great. HOWEVER, the bit of reading around I've done suggests that the PCMCIA interface acts as a bottleneck and you don't gain much speed. Thoughts?

As an addendum to my sad tale of woe, I will say that reinstalling the OS fixed all problems. Good news: don't have to buy a new computer yet Bad news: don't get to buy a new computer yet (kidding aside I'm actually very pleased that it works again, but you know what I mean!)

I have a cheap Kingwin brand adapter for my laptop. I actually don't use it...I bought it originally intending to do backups, but then after testing with it, it went into a box.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839302002 (deactivated now...this was a few years ago when I bought it)

If I remember correctly, it tested out at 80-90MB/s...which was the max my laptop's internal drive can push. The theoretical max for a 32-bit interface is 133MB/s, so that's about all you could expect. You would want to verify what type of interface your laptop has to make sure it's the faster type, otherwise you would be correct that it may not be worth it.