A week into my dabbling with Crashplan as a potential Time Machine replacement I have make some discoveries.

Full System Backups Not Possible

I made an interesting discovery early on. Crashplan is unable to do a complete system backup. The System folder is not even available as an option when selecting what to backup. This is kind of a bummer. One of things I like about Time Machine is that I can just restore everything to a new drive and be rocking. So this means I have two options with Crashplan:

  1. Re-install the OS and then Crashplan and restore the backup
  2. Maintain a Carbon Copy Cloner Image of the entire drive

The issue with #1 is that there could be OS updates that are needed to be re-installed. Additionally Crashplan has to be re-installed first. The downside to #2 is that a lot of space is needed for a full CCC image and it has to be updated with some regularity. I haven’t yet decided if this extra bit of maintenance will ultimately outweigh the positives but I am thinking it won’t.

Horrible User Interface

Sorry but the Crashplan UI is just brutal. The UI for restoring files requires a ton of clicks to restore a single file. Restoring everything (which I tested) isn’t too bad but it could be better. Also some of the
lingo is confusing.

Overall State of the Union

Crashplan is showing promise. I went through my workflow of restoring a drive to test it out and everything SEEMED to be ok. If I use Carbon Copy Cloner to maintain the base image, and update it once a week, then I have a second level of backups no older than one week. Having this image also means I can be more selective of the things I backup.

Ultimately the biggest advantage will be the network backups. I am hoping to get my Drobo off my computer and onto my network so it’s not relying on one computer. I can’t do this “officially” with Time Machine so that will ultimately be the likely determining decision.