How to get CrashPlan+ features on my own?

April 26, 2012 8:51 AM

Is there a program or pair of programs that can do everything CrashPlan+ does?

I need a program or two, at most, that will handle local synchronization between atleast 2 computers and an external drive. It must do so intelligently, ie. delta copying, recover accidentally deleted files, real-time monitoring, etc. And I also want it to backup data to Amazon S3. Essentially, I want nearly all of the CrashPlan+ features (http://goo.gl/rcCA1) with the S3 back-end that I control.

Does this exist?

posted by dvrcthewrld to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

For what platform?
posted by cmiller at 8:55 AM on April 26, 2012

Best answer: I've never used it, and it isn't clear to me that it is stable, but Syncany sounds like it might be close to what you want.

I'm curious though, why not Crashplan? It is cheaper than s3 if you are dealing with much data.
posted by Good Brain at 10:28 AM on April 26, 2012

Check out S3 Backup. I've been in the middle of comparing features with services like CrashPlan, and will probably be buying it soon.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 10:31 AM on April 26, 2012

Response by poster: I can survive with Windows only, although I prefer cross-platform.

S3 Backup doesn't come close to the feature-set I'm looking for.

I came across Syncany earlier today, and it appears to be almost ideal, but, as you said, stability is an issue. Syncany is still under "heavy development."


Regarding why not CrashPlan: I would like the freedom of being responsible for my own data. If I go with CrashPlan+ and decide to leave a couple years down the road, or if they go belly-up, then I have to retrieve all of my data and re-backup. It's the same reason why I'll soon be hosting my photos on OpenPhoto rather than another service.
posted by dvrcthewrld at 10:50 AM on April 26, 2012

Response by poster: I forgot to note that Syncany doesn't have any official releases yet and will initially be Linux-only.
If it comes to fruition, it will be a great option.
posted by dvrcthewrld at 10:53 AM on April 26, 2012

rsync is what you want for your local syncing. It's great for backups too, but doesn't natively grok S3.

So I did a quick search and came up with the outfit called S3rsync, but their pricing structure is a little weird and it appears that what you do is rsync to their servers and then they do the AWS put for you. Thats—non-optimal.

Then I was going to suggest you roll your own version of the S3rsync service. Rsync to an Amazon EC2 staging server and then AWS PUT to your S3, but a standard EC2 instance runs $60/month and the $15 micro instances need an EBS backend.

Then I found these:

Rsync backups to Amazon S3
How I automated my backups to Amazon S3 using rsync and s3fs

I think that's your best bet. Use a local *NIX box with your S3 mounted as above, rsync everything else to it, then rsync from there to your S3 mount.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:48 AM on April 27, 2012