One of the biggest annoyances lately has been trying to figure out how to back up my Windows Home Server. I could, like a lot of people, just stick a 2 tb usb hard drive to backup my shares, but do I really want to spend the money? Not to mention that it doesn’t give the protection of offsite (fire, theft, 2012).

This is where CrashPlan comes into play. Now I have done my share of research. When affordable backup came around, I jumped on the band wagon, first with Carbonite. Carbonite was a good program… I think… really I couldn’t tell how well it worked, it just seemed like it was backing up consistently, and slowly, but it gave me the peace of mind that I was protected. Then along came LiveDrive. I was drawn in by the fact that I could watch videos and listen to music online, for a mere $160 a year, well worth it in my book. The problem with this service is I jumped in too quickly without really testing it out, and lost some files in the progress. LiveDrive’s briefcase and software just plain sucks. Viewing movies and listening to music sucks as well, as sometimes it doesn’t buffer all the way and restarts. I thought about jumping to Mozy… until I saw Justine Ezarik sponsoring it… ugh…

So why CrashPlan? It was the best deal for what it offered.

1. Free software to backup to other computers, or have other computers backup to you. Kind of nice to let family use my space to backup and I can do the same for them

2. Good pricing. Online backup is $54/yr for 1 computer or $100/yr for up to 4 computers, IF you decide to use their facilities for storage (not to mention the more years you buy, the cheaper).

3. No limitations on amount of data and file sizes. I looked at Elephantdrive and BackBlaze, but they limit the file sizes to 2gb and 4gb respectively, which now and days is not sufficient, especially for movie backups. That and a lot of services that claim to be “unlimited” actually have a limit.

4. File Encryption. This one was a biggy for me now. If I am going to put my whole life on someone else’s computer, I don’t want them to peer into my files. This was another issue with LiveDrive, given that the only way they would release the information and access to files is if the UK Feds warranted them. Thus, meaning employees of LiveDrive can still access the files. Think I’m paranoid? I use to work at a bank, and would hear tellers and other associates talk about accounts that they randomly looked up. Give an employee access, and regardless of the rules and laws, curiosity will always prevail. So with CrashPlan, the files are encrypted AT YOUR COMPUTER, and using a separate password for your backups (as opposed to your account) means only you have access. When they say you’re SOL if you forget your backup password, then it’s perfect for me

5. Seeding. I doubt I will use this, but the fact that I can ship my encrypted data to them to jumpstart the backup is great. Not to mention I can also order my backup be sent to me (and it even comes to me encrypted).

6. Btw, their forums are lively and people speak highly of them… unlike LiveDrive.

Now all and all, there still is the issue about WHS, which is based on Windows 2003. One of the biggest issues is how to backup files correctly. According to the release documents of Windows Home Server:

If you want to access files that are in shared folders, always access them via the shared folder name (\\server\SharedFolderName). If you browse the file system via the Administrator's Desktop, you will discover multiple places where you might think your data is stored, but your data is likely stored elsewhere. Accessing \\server\SharedFolderName or \\localhost\SharedFolderName from the Administrator’s Desktop results in no performance hit and ensures that things work correctly.

Do not use standard tools to manually create, delete, or change properties of shared folders. If you want to configure shared folders, use the Windows Home Server Console from your home computer.

This is the key issue, as the requirements of having the backup software use the UNC paths. One of the main reasons that this will probably never be supported by online backup software vendors is to protect their own pricing. I mean, a user could easily set their online backup to backup \\server1 , \\server2, …\\servern, thus for $50 a year they can backup 100 Petabytes. KeepVault and Jungledisk have support though, along with a WHS add-in, but they pricing plan is based on the size of the data, and I really don’t feel like spending $310+/month.

I have read a lot of people just saying “fuck it” and backing up the d:\shares folder. I give them credit as I don’t have the balls to do that (I tried it with LiveDrive, elephantdrive, and CrashPlan… But got too paranoid and uninstalled). So after a lot of research, trial and errors, this is probably the only way to correctly have CrashPlan backup WHS shares. It is actually pretty damn easy, especially with learning the issues of CrashPlan and reading how to use “net use”.

Next Up: Setting up CrashPlan for WHS