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like deleting backups of Hard Drives that haven't been plugged in for 6 months Wait - what? If your hard disk gets lost or destroyed, how do you protect those

like deleting backups of Hard Drives that haven't been plugged in for 6 months Wait - what? If your hard disk gets lost or destroyed, how do you protect those backups?

0xCMP 11y ago
You need to keep them connected periodically otherwise if you lose it without reconnecting... lost. For backblaze it's even less time.
- beernutz 11y ago
  I believe for CrashPlan, this ONLY applies to CLOUD backups. If you backup to local media or across computers, there is no "auto-delete" timeframe.
  - 0xCMP 11y ago
    Yea I think so, it's only for them to keep you from storing everything up there forever when it could just be stale data. I think it's fair if these are supposed to be daily backups to do this esp with cloud data and having to provide "unlimited" space to everyone using the product.
  - jjp 11y ago
    Don't know whether I'm grand-fathered into a different terms but I've just pulled some files from a back-up on a machine that was last active 5.4 years ago.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - jarrodatCode42 11y ago
    Hello Everyone, Wanted to jump in here to confirm. This policy only affects devices that have not connected to CrashPlan Central in 6 months or longer. This does not affect volumes that have not connected to the device in that period of time. (i.e. an external hard drive that has not connected in 6 months.) Additionally, there is no minimum connection time for local CrashPlan backups. It’s important for CrashPlan users to consistently connect their device(s). Part of CrashPlan’s ability to maintain the archive health and integrity relies upon regular connection from the device. CrashPlan is able to routinely perform maintenance on the archive by comparing checksums between both device and CrashPlan Central. https://support.code42.com/Administrator/3/Monitoring_And_Managing/Archive_Maintenance https://support.code42.com/Administrator/3/Monitoring_And_Ma... Please let me know if I can provide additional clarity. Best regards, Jarrod
    - jonaswouters 11y ago
      Is this also the case for crashplan business or PROe? (ceejay in europe).
      - jarrodatCode42 11y ago
        Since the infrastructure for CrashPlan's backup engine is the same between our Business/Consumer clients, we recommend that all users routinely connect their devices to the backup destinations. That being said, this policy only affects CrashPlan for Home subscribers at this time.
- rsync 11y ago
  "You need to keep them connected periodically otherwise if you lose it without reconnecting... lost. For backblaze it's even less time." No way. What ? You're saying that if I dutifully pay my $X/mo for unlimited backup space, but fail to connect, or perform an update, the remote data is removed ? What ?
  - Strom 11y ago
    Yeap, most if not the overwhelming majority of backup services work like that. Some like Mozy have as low as a 30 day counter. [1] -- [1] At least they had that 30 days limit a few years ago, I haven't used them in a while.
    - rsync 11y ago
      Well, I know one that doesn't work like that :)
barrkel 11y ago
It took 3 years of disconnection before I got a notice the other day that one of my old backed up PCs was going to be deleted. It makes sense; they're not an open-ended data archival company. If you don't have a copy of the data locally, you can't expect CrashPlan to keep the one true copy indefinitely. Connecting the data to the internet twice a year doesn't seem too onerous to show evidence of that, particularly for a cloud backup, the entire premise of which is that you're connected.
- ghshephard 11y ago
  Absolutely agree with you - I think CrashPlan/BackBlaze are acting entirely reasonably when they delete old hard drives, particularly if they give a bit of grace after sending the email that they are about to nuke them. It's that just for some of us, who like to archive something like a 100 GB Hard Drive onto Amazon Glacier, for $0.007/GB/Month. (Roughly $0.70/month + $5 upload fees for a 100 GB Hard Drive Archive) - and just leave it there, presumably for decades, are better served by Arq + Glacier than we are by CrashPlan/BackBlaze - they are entirely different tools for different purposes. On the Flip Side, backing up users two 5+ Terabyte Hard Drives on S3 with Arq gets a little pricey... How crashplan/backblaze manage to do it for $5 is beyond me. Presumably it's because most its users are sending in < 100 Gigabytes (after deduping)
  - atYevP 11y ago
    Yev from Backblaze here -> Absolutely. They key difference is backup vs. archive. Backblaze was designed as a backup solution, it's intended to be a 1:1 copy of your user data, and if your data set changes we change it on our end as well, with a 30-day history for accidental deletes. We need to reclaim that space to keep costs down, and we're not intended nor designed to be an archive (keeping data forever). Backblaze B2 is designed differently and can be used as an archival system. The philosophies are different, but one of the reasons that we created it was to give folks the option of making actual archives they could keep in the cloud. We hit the $5/month price-point by having our own server design, and by reclaiming space on occasion when data sets are removed. On the B2 side, since you're paying per GB, we can afford to keep that data for longer stretches. Hopefully Arq will integrate with B2 in the future and you'd be able to use their system to pick and choose what you want archived and have B2 as a possible repository.

like deleting backups of Hard Drives that haven't been plugged in for 6 months Wait - what? If your hard disk gets lost or destroyed, how do you protect those backups?

0xCMP 11y ago

You need to keep them connected periodically otherwise if you lose it without reconnecting... lost. For backblaze it's even less time.

beernutz 11y ago
I believe for CrashPlan, this ONLY applies to CLOUD backups. If you backup to local media or across computers, there is no "auto-delete" timeframe.
- 0xCMP 11y ago
  Yea I think so, it's only for them to keep you from storing everything up there forever when it could just be stale data. I think it's fair if these are supposed to be daily backups to do this esp with cloud data and having to provide "unlimited" space to everyone using the product.
- jjp 11y ago
  Don't know whether I'm grand-fathered into a different terms but I've just pulled some files from a back-up on a machine that was last active 5.4 years ago.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- jarrodatCode42 11y ago
  Hello Everyone, Wanted to jump in here to confirm. This policy only affects devices that have not connected to CrashPlan Central in 6 months or longer. This does not affect volumes that have not connected to the device in that period of time. (i.e. an external hard drive that has not connected in 6 months.) Additionally, there is no minimum connection time for local CrashPlan backups. It’s important for CrashPlan users to consistently connect their device(s). Part of CrashPlan’s ability to maintain the archive health and integrity relies upon regular connection from the device. CrashPlan is able to routinely perform maintenance on the archive by comparing checksums between both device and CrashPlan Central. https://support.code42.com/Administrator/3/Monitoring_And_Managing/Archive_Maintenance https://support.code42.com/Administrator/3/Monitoring_And_Ma... Please let me know if I can provide additional clarity. Best regards, Jarrod
  - jonaswouters 11y ago
    Is this also the case for crashplan business or PROe? (ceejay in europe).
    - jarrodatCode42 11y ago
      Since the infrastructure for CrashPlan's backup engine is the same between our Business/Consumer clients, we recommend that all users routinely connect their devices to the backup destinations. That being said, this policy only affects CrashPlan for Home subscribers at this time.
rsync 11y ago
"You need to keep them connected periodically otherwise if you lose it without reconnecting... lost. For backblaze it's even less time." No way. What ? You're saying that if I dutifully pay my $X/mo for unlimited backup space, but fail to connect, or perform an update, the remote data is removed ? What ?
- Strom 11y ago
  Yeap, most if not the overwhelming majority of backup services work like that. Some like Mozy have as low as a 30 day counter. [1] -- [1] At least they had that 30 days limit a few years ago, I haven't used them in a while.
  - rsync 11y ago
    Well, I know one that doesn't work like that :)

barrkel 11y ago

It took 3 years of disconnection before I got a notice the other day that one of my old backed up PCs was going to be deleted. It makes sense; they're not an open-ended data archival company. If you don't have a copy of the data locally, you can't expect CrashPlan to keep the one true copy indefinitely. Connecting the data to the internet twice a year doesn't seem too onerous to show evidence of that, particularly for a cloud backup, the entire premise of which is that you're connected.

ghshephard 11y ago
Absolutely agree with you - I think CrashPlan/BackBlaze are acting entirely reasonably when they delete old hard drives, particularly if they give a bit of grace after sending the email that they are about to nuke them. It's that just for some of us, who like to archive something like a 100 GB Hard Drive onto Amazon Glacier, for $0.007/GB/Month. (Roughly $0.70/month + $5 upload fees for a 100 GB Hard Drive Archive) - and just leave it there, presumably for decades, are better served by Arq + Glacier than we are by CrashPlan/BackBlaze - they are entirely different tools for different purposes. On the Flip Side, backing up users two 5+ Terabyte Hard Drives on S3 with Arq gets a little pricey... How crashplan/backblaze manage to do it for $5 is beyond me. Presumably it's because most its users are sending in < 100 Gigabytes (after deduping)
- atYevP 11y ago
  Yev from Backblaze here -> Absolutely. They key difference is backup vs. archive. Backblaze was designed as a backup solution, it's intended to be a 1:1 copy of your user data, and if your data set changes we change it on our end as well, with a 30-day history for accidental deletes. We need to reclaim that space to keep costs down, and we're not intended nor designed to be an archive (keeping data forever). Backblaze B2 is designed differently and can be used as an archival system. The philosophies are different, but one of the reasons that we created it was to give folks the option of making actual archives they could keep in the cloud. We hit the $5/month price-point by having our own server design, and by reclaiming space on occasion when data sets are removed. On the B2 side, since you're paying per GB, we can afford to keep that data for longer stretches. Hopefully Arq will integrate with B2 in the future and you'd be able to use their system to pick and choose what you want archived and have B2 as a possible repository.