CrashPlan vs Dropbox Pro

I am deliberating whether to go with CrashPlan or Dropbox for my online backups. Crashplan currently has a special offer until 2th Dec for $46.20 a year. Dropbox Pro will cost $109 per year for 1TB.

Most of the files I will be backing up are my photos (plus some personal documents). This come to about 400GB at the moment. The data don't grow that much each year so I reckon it will grow max 50GB per year from this point onwards.

What would you guys suggest? Crashplan or DropBox Pro?

Cheers for any suggestions.

Comments

  • +2

    Two different tools for two different purposes.

    CrashPlan is purely for backups - i.e. it works in a very traditional sense of how backups would, i.e. it will run periodically, look for changes and update that on its servers. It's not meant to be a real-time or collaboration service. Thus, it's cheaper and you get more storage for your buck.

    DropBox is not a backup service - it's a collaboration platform which allows you to edit files with teammates on the cloud and hence everyone has access to the latest files. The benefit of DropBox, of course, is real-time access and sychronisation. If you have two PCs, for example, DropBox is great because you can sync your files between them.

    My suggestion would be to go for the one which suits your needs better, there's no one-size-fits-all solution.

  • CrashPlan encrypts your data before going out of your own computer so I would recommend that over Dropbox if you're use is for backup, but if you want to show off your pictures and have easy access to it, Dropbox would be better. An alternative to Dropbox would be OneDrive, which has unlimited storage if you're also an MS Office 365 subscriber. You can get discounted subscriptions on Office 365 from shops like Harvey Norman. I don't know if you can get discounts on your subsequent years too.

  • Cheers for the comments. I will also look at onedrive as well.

  • As has been said completely different services.

    Crashplan, if you need to restore from a point in time you push a button and download all the files.
    Dropbox, you're going to have to email them to restore from a specific event. It's a pain in the ass.

    Also, I would steer clear of Google Drive…it doesn't support upload resume as ridiculous as that sounds.

    • Also, I personally use both.

      Dropbox to sync my photos, files etc between my Phone, Laptop and PC.
      Crashplan to backup the PC, and therefore backup Dropbox.

      Look up the whole "Cryptowall" virus and you'll see why I find it necessary to have something other than Dropbox.

      Disclaimer: I work as an IT consultant and the time I would be down should I lose files is worth alot more than the cost of Crashplan. I can't wait 24hours for Dropbox to get their shit together and restore my files…seriously this should be a function.

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