# Let's Talk Computer Backup Plans **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 2, 2017, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550 "2017-11-02T21:08:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550/21 "2017-11-07T00:17:17Z")
[Crashplan for home is stopping](https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/consumer/nextsteps/), and will no longer accept new customers or renew existing accounts. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550/22 "2017-11-07T00:20:43Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > [Crashplan for home is stopping](https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/consumer/nextsteps/), and will no longer accept new customers or renew existing accounts. You can still use it, it just costs more. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550/23 "2017-11-07T23:22:19Z")
Yes, you can buy a small business CrashPlan account for your home. They are pretty explicit about that. It’s just expensive. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2017, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550/24 "2017-11-07T23:23:51Z")
Lancia, contact Dropbox asap, it is possible they can retrieve your files. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2017, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550/25 "2017-11-08T18:27:26Z")
> [@That\_Don\_Guy](#): > > I am in the “don’t keep personal things in online storage” camp - among other things, what if your online connection is down? Well with Dropbox, for example, everything is synced with your hard drive, so if you lose your internet connection you can still access your files and modify them. Then, when you regain your internet connection, they will be synced to the cloud. So, this is the approach I’ve decided on. I’m going to pay for Backblaze to back up all of my files continuously… that’s $5/month. In addition, I bought a flash drive and copied everything in my Dropbox folder to that drive, in a folder with a date. I plan to back up the Scrivener docs on that same drive once every week, and the rest of the docs on Dropbox once every month, and I’ll keep 3-5 versions of each at a time on there. That way, if a nuclear holocaust strikes down Backblaze and Dropbox at the same time as I get malware on my computer, I will have lost no more than a week’s worth of writing. I might also make backup copies of Scrivener docs in MS Word format every few months, because I’m paranoid Scrivener will go out of business or something and I’ll be stuck with files in an unreadable format. I acknowledge this isn’t really rational but I really can’t underscore enough how absolutely terrified I am of losing my writing. > [@Lancia](#): > > When I got a new hard drive installed and went about recovering my files I discovered that my Dropbox was completely empty—it had somehow been erased when the hard drive failed. This is nightmare fuel. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2017, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550/26 "2017-11-08T18:41:37Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Backblaze definitely does versioning. I know people who have gotten old versions from Backblaze. I’ve also been happy with Backblaze. It’s $5/month/computer, so the cost depends on how many devices you’ve got. They offer a wide variety of options for recovery, from downloads to “we’ll send you a multi-terrabyte hard drive”, including versioning (although I don’t know how “coarse” the versioning is). There are some caveats: First: It’s a multi-step pain to move the backup plan to a new computer (even if you don’t need to restore the old backup onto it). Expect you’ll go a few days without backups when you’re replacing a computer. Second: with all of these, it’s worth taking a detailed look at the settings. They don’t back up everything (video files and files over a certain size are excluded by default, for example) by default, and the particular set of options they provide may or may not work for you. (For example, I don’t back up applications themselves – I can get those back), nor things like the time machine drives (I don’t need backups of the backup). Since everything you back up has to be dragged over the network, it makes sense to minimize it just the stuff you’ll really need back. Finally, this isn’t a “need answer fast” technology: I’ve got a LOT of data, the first backup wasn’t complete for several days. There will be a window (and probably again with each new computer or upgrade) where protection is incomplete. I’ve recovered files from them via the download method before. You enter a bunch of stuff on a web site, and in a few minutes or an hour it’ll send you a link to an encrypted download file that you can drag down and decrypt to get the files back. ---
**Author:** ![drachillix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/48db29/32.png) [@drachillix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drachillix)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2017, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550/27 "2017-11-08T18:44:54Z")
> [@Spice\_Weasel](#): > > All right, _now_ you’ve got me worried. > > I think I’ll just regularly back up Dropbox to external, local storage from now on. even the free dropbox accounts can be rolled back for up to 30 days. so if something like a cryptlocker virus hits you, dropbox support can roll back to a time prior to the hit. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2017, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550/28 "2017-11-08T18:46:31Z")
> [@That\_Don\_Guy](#): > > Finally, this isn’t a “need answer fast” technology: I’ve got a LOT of data, the first backup wasn’t complete for several days.There will be a window (and probably again with each new computer or upgrade) where protection is incomplete. I’ve been running the Backblaze trial for about a week. It took about 5 hours to backup my data, while another backup software was also backing up my data at the same time (I was comparing them) but I don’t have much. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2017, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550/29 "2017-11-08T19:04:04Z")
> [@That\_Don\_Guy](#): > > I am in the “don’t keep personal things in online storage” camp - among other things, what if your online connection is down? > > I back up the files I can’t duplicate onto SDHCs and thumb drives. My stuff is either personal or somebody else’s property, so external hard disks (three copies in three different locations) and thumb drives. My current client provides the computer, they just changed mine. We’re supposed to use as backup a “personal HD” that’s got 2G of space. Some of my individual files are larger than that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-talk-computer-backup-plans/800550.md?page=1)