CrashPlan "home" account level is gone. Business only. Any good alternative for local/network backups?

[clay]

News here: https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/consumer/nextsteps/

I currently use crashplan to back up 3 Windows 7 workstations to local networked storage. Has worked great. Short of paying the $10/workstation monthly fee to upgrade to a crashplan business account, any other good options out there? I'm not opposed to buying 3 licenses of some sort of backup software, but I'm hoping to avoid ongoing license fees, etc. I need something automatic that supports versioning. Any tips?

[Acer]

Just local networked storage? Not cloud?
I run SyncBack for local backups. It's been very reliable for the what, 10 years? plus I've been using it. Free and inexpensive versions available. Still (the last time I looked) a one-time purchase, not a subscription.

[clay]

Looks perfect, Acer. Will check it out and probably buy a license of SyncBackSE, as it should suit my use case just fine.

[Don C]

Crashplan does have a deal to migrate to Carbonite. I cannot tell if Code 42 will send your files to Carbonite or if you have to start from scratch.

[mspace]

Really disappointed that CR made this decision, so I have been researching this.

Was considering BackBlaze. A main issue that I never considered has to do with file retention.

CP keeps any file you have deleted for an unlimited amount of time. So if you realize you don't have a file from, say, a year ago, it will be there.

The other services have a 30 day delete policy (some have 90). If a file has been deleted from your system, they will only retain it for 30 days and then delete it themselves. This amounts to a glorified mirror, not a back up. Most of the time, you don't realize something was deleted on your end until you can't find it, and then it may be way beyond the 30-90 day window.

I am leaning towards using the CP small business for at least the next year. They are offering a 75% discount. Then I'll recheck with everyone else's policies are again, to see if anything has changed.

Sigh . . .

[jdc]

mspace wrote:
CP keeps any file you have deleted for an unlimited amount of time. So if you realize you don't have a file from, say, a year ago, it will be there.

Thats an interesting factoid.

[decay]

RE: retention policy...

is why we generally recommend Crashplan Pro to our business clients.

HOWEVER, we thought that CP was HIPAA compliant, and it's not.
one client is moving to Carbonite, which is compliant.

[mspace]

HIPPA is important, but only for those clients.

It was an eye opener for me to realize files would be thrown away, not a true back up.