My CrashPlan

Posted on November 25, 2013 Updated on November 28, 2013

Backup… backup… backup. 

If you have data that is important to you (and we all do) you want to make sure it is backed up before you lose it and wish you had it backed up.  Some people can take backing up to far and maybe I have but when it is all automated I don’t care.  For a long time I did the single backup strategy to a external hard drive in my home.  This is a great first step and shockingly more then most people still do today.  But what about the commonly used backup rule of three?

• 3 copies of the data you don’t want to lose

• 2 different physical locations

• 1 off-site backup

I wasn’t following this basic and very logical backup rule until last year when I added CrashPlan to my backup strategy.  I have an ioSafe Solo at home so my backed up data would survive from a fire up to 1550*F for 1/2 hour and survive being submerged in water up to 10ft for 72 hours but there are some natural disasters that still could have ruined that ioSafe Solo and my important data long with it.  I often talk to others that I help with technology issues or questions about having a backup solution in place.  Doesn’t even need to be something complex just something to get you started and your data more secure then it is today.  With the plan of moving to a full backup rule of three sooner then later.

This is my backup plan today.  I have two 1TB hard drives internal to my computer case that are in a mirrored configuration to ensure that I get duplicate copies of my kids pictures once they are downloaded from the camera or duplicates of important files.  That covers the immediate and gives me redundancy (remember that Raid is not a form of backup).  Then I use Microsoft’s File History (you could use Time Machine if you are using a Mac) feature in Windows 8.1 to save the new files or updated versions to files to an external hard drive. This runs on a schedule every hour and keeps versions of files up to 6 months (these times can be configured to what you need).  So, I have covered how I accomplish my local backups but next is the part that seems to confuse and worry people; off-site backups.

This is were CrashPlan comes into play for me.  I have a single powerhouse computer at home that runs everything and I need a powerhouse off-site backup solution to go with it.  Last year around this time (it was actually Black Friday morning) I was looking through my Twitter feed and came across a deal that @CrashPlan was featuring were I could get a full 1 year subscription to CrashPlan’s unlimited online backup for one computer.  I rushed through the process on my smart phone (this was a Samsung Galaxy SII at the time) and that was it.  I was now a technology fanatic that was doing what I knew I should be doing and telling everyone else to do.  Backing up to an off-site location.

Remember at the beginning how I said that some people can take backing up to far.  I do.  Not only do I backup to an external hard drive in my home and to CrashPlan’s cloud solution but I also backup to my brothers spare hard drive in his house and he backs up to my other brother which in turn backs up to a spare hard drive in my house.  Did that sound confusing?  It doesn’t have to be and was very easy to setup.  You see I send the data I care about to my brothers install of CrashPlan using a backup code and through a secured tunnel and encryption in transit as well as being encrypted at rest I am assured that my data is safe.  Not only that but my brother can’t even see the data that I am saving to his hard drive.  The data is all mine and I am simply borrowing storage space from him to keep my data safe and off-site.

Are you backing up using the rule of three? 

Interested in setting something up like this for your self?

Go to: https://www.facebook.com/trustedtechforyou to discuss your needs more with me.