Crashplan vs Backblaze: Which Is the Best for You?

Chapters:

1:45 – The Short Version: Which is for You?
3:28 – How is Unlimited Possible?
5:25 – General Overview
7:10 – Pricing & Plans
8:45 – Ease-of-use
10:25 – Reliability
12:38 – Speed (Upload/Download)
15:00 – Features
20:12 – THE WINNER!

Crashplan and Backblaze are one of my favorite cloud backup services. They do one thing only - but this extremely well: backing up your files online. The beauty of those two services is that they do not restrict the amount, kind or size of files you upload for a minimal monthly fee. That's why they are called unlimited online backup services.

In this video I'll compare both services in terms of who is the best solution for a particular type of computer user, features, speed, reliability and ease-of-use.

[heene]

I looked at many sites and by coincidence drilled it down to these two. Your video helped me decide which one to use.

[jimgrusendorf]

It should also be noted that Backblaze does not have client software for any version of Windows Server, even for their business plan. Crashplan does have a Windows Server client.

[mdd]

An excellent review/comparison, Sir; well done!

[Masteraal]

I personally think Crashplan is much better than Backblaze just because of the retention. People with 10 external hard drive backups do not want to connect all their devices every month. 1 backup online, 1 at home and 1 offsite is all you need.

PS. Thanks for the video :)

[willbaumbach]

Upload speeds generally are not an issue for us with CrashPlan and seems to be determined by your CPU and Network settings within the CrashPlan application. With the application set to not limit upload speed and 90-95% CPU utilization, it was able to utilize all of our available upload bandwidth.
Download speeds however were an issue, when we needed to restore a failed 16TB file storage server and capped out at 4.9Mbps. The workaround is to implement multiple restores from different systems to retrieve certain sections of the file stores. But still better than having lost the files completely in any case.

[felixpersson]

Great video @Cloudwards!. Thank you so much for the showdown of the two. I am a DJ and music producer and having a single backup for my computer and external drives isn't an option for me. I think I will go for Crashplan for my EX drives since I want to be able to have a few more options when backing up as well as the nice extra features you showed in the video. It's the payday for you haha, will sign up via your link.
Keep making great content!.
//FLX

[Childhoof]

I've used Crashplan for 7 years, I finally had to use it & it took them 10 DAYS to get just my main hard drive back. Unacceptable, we'll see how BackBlaze works.

[djcarter]

Excellent overview of both plans. Thank you!!

[anthonyfiorenzo]

I found this video very informative! But I do have some questions regarding the restore process.

I'm considering switching from Backblaze to Crashplan. I've been using Backblaze for about a year and have my settings set up to require a manual backup, as opposed to Backblaze always running in the background. I use Backblaze to backup my Macbook Pro hard drive as well as two 1TB external hard drives. My two external hard drives are rarely connected to my computer - hence the manual backup setting. Recently, I went on a trip that prevented me from performing my monthly backup process and Backblaze ended up deleting one of my 1TB hard drives. Now the only way to get it back would be to re-upload an entire terabyte. So I'm looking to switch to Crashplan because I like the idea of the service never deleting my files. But I'm curious about any potential downside to that approach. Here's the scenario I'm worried about:
I work with a lot of video files, so I'm often deleting files I deem unnecessary to keep on my hard drive. So say one of my 1TB external hard drives dies and I need to restore it from Crashplan. If it's a hard drive that I've deleted things from as well as added new things, it seems that the backup could, in theory, become larger than the hard drive capacity, due to all the stored files that I deleted. In this scenario, I would then have to sift through all those files I deleted in order to piece my hard drive back together. Does Crashplan have something in place to prevent scenarios like this from happening? Even though Crashplan stores files that you delete, do they somehow distinguish that the files were trashed or at least not part of the current hard drive?

I'd really appreciate your thoughts on the matter! Thank you so much!

[RobertMarconeG]

You have a great accent for a German, how did you learn it. I love your videos.

[xzenor]

there's one important thing you forgot.. the CrashPlan application is built on Java and is a LOT more memory intensive than BackBlaze.. that was my main reason to go for BackBlaze.

[canadier]

love the video and you made my decision a lot easier (crashplan) thank you..keep up the good work

[Faeriepunk]

So you said (around 16min in) these are 'backup services' not 'online storage services.' In that case, which 'online storage services' would you recommend? Thanks!

[RafaelSwit]

Thanks for a very thorough review! I've been using Crashplan since November. It took over a month to backup 1.5TB that's on my computer. I'm satisfied with that part of the backup. The only disappointment is their seeding service. I have nearly 10TB of archived photos and videos on external drives which I'd love to backup in cloud before one of those drives fails. At $125 per 1TB seed drive, the cost is very prohibitive. This service price hasn't changed for a number of years, so now the seeding service costs more than the actual LaCie hard drive they mail. I wouldn't mind this price if the drive was larger. I guess being in Germany you couldn't use this seeding service, so how long did it take you to backup all of your data?

[SladeGrovetv]

Crashplan throttles your bandwidth both during backups and even when you run a restore. Crashplan's excuse is that it's a shared service thus, bandwidth is throttled. ALSO, they will disconnect the client app from the cloud server if you're backing up over a long period of time by resetting your connection to the crashplan cloud. They don't tell you that up front. If your'e running the windows client, it's java based and eats up system resources. You will spend weeks if not months backing up very large amounts of data.

[carloalbertocontu]

Complimenti. Spiegazione completa, chiara, piacevole. Grazie!

[SteveRamm]

I got Crashplan when they had a personal account for $59/year Then they went to $10.99/month and no longer support Win 7 or 8. I asked a friend and they told me about Backblaze and it looks - as you say - simple. I'm trying it for 15 days. The current CP is was way too technical.

[aernoutsteegstra]

Thank you very much for your clear back please versus crash plan explanation. I Have a NAS server, What is my alternative for unlimited Back up? Kind regards, Aernout

[grumpywhale]

Note crashplan now have filesize and filetype restictions. No virtual machine backups allowed.

[pranavraval]

Very good video. I like details shared here.

Given they can send you copy of your data fore restore for money, that means your data-privacy is gone. Am I understanding this correctly?