Four years ago, if you would have asked me which backup service I would recommend, I would have said CrashPlan in a heartbeat. Possibly even faster. They were economical, offered great service, had great plans for families, and were reliable. I have suggested the service to numerous people, and have used it myself since 2012.
Well, that has changed. Slowly at first — the price edged upwards for the Small Business plan from $7 to $10. Then the CrashPlan Home service was terminated, with everyone being migrated to CrashPlan Small Business under grandfathered rates for a single year. At that point, it seemed as though the service may have stabilized. I certainly dropped the amount of computers I was backing up because they were considerably more costly to do so.
Now, today, I have discovered that back in May they also eliminated the ability to back up certain files and file locations. No longer can you back up the “Program Files” directory of your computer. You also cannot back up the “AppData” folder either. But worst of all for me, no longer may I back up .vhdx files, meaning that my virtual machines are unprotected. If something happens to the disk array, they will be wiped out as CrashPlan happily ignores them despite my configuration settings. Others have mentioned that pre-existing virtual machine backups have also been erased, which is an absolutely ridiculous and irresponsible action for a backup service to take!
The irony is that I received this e-mail today…
Not so unlimited after all is it?
So, at this point it looks like I am going to be looking for another backup service to deploy on my server that can handle copying virtual machines, and I will be saying farewell to CrashPlan once and for all.
Adios CrashPlan, it’s been a nice run, but it’s time that we part ways and see other people.