Downloads

Do you have a plan for when your PC crashes and takes your primary data with it? If you don't, CrashPlan does. This, the latest online, offsite backup service I've perused is supremely friendly, offers unique peer-to-peer features--and judging from the company's Web sitehas an honest modus operandi. If your backup needs outstrip the free 2GB offered by Mozy and Fabrik, or Xdrive's 5GB, CrashPlan's $5 a month for 50GB is absolutely worth considering.

While CrashPlan bills itself as an offsite backup service, it's more than that. You can also use the downloadable backup client to back up to local drives, your other computers, or get this--a friend's computer in a remote location. You accomplish the latter by sending your friend an e-mail invitation composed by CrashPlan with a slick little message generator. When they accept and install CrashPlan and you acknowledge their reply, they're available as a backup destination--and vice versa if you so choose. There's no charge for the local or peer-to-peer backups and all backups, online and otherwise, use the same data selections. Redundancy is a good thing when it comes to backup strategy.

CrashPlan is one of the friendliest backup programs I've ever used, from its basic appearance to the way it offers up options in a concise, logical manner. As per usual, the program runs in the background with system tray access to options and the main client. The program even automatically selects your documents folder for back up. I'm pretty sure most folks will think that's friendly, though personally, I'm a DIY kind of guy.

CrashPlan costs 10 cents per month per GB of data with a $5 minimum. The plan is automatically adjusted according to your usage at the moment of billing, not the high point of the month, so you can exceed the limit for short periods of time. Though there's no free option as with Mozy, Fabrik, or XDrive, CrashPlan is competitive at and beyond the point those services start charging. Though unlimited sounds sexy, in practice few people will be able to utilize more than 50GB.

I love a company that not only puts its phone number on its site, but embeds a Google Map pointing to their location. Big props for signing-the-back-of-your-work ethic as well as the feature request link. CrashPlan is a worthwhile download for the free local and peer-to-peer backups alone, and it's a noteworthy alternative to other online services if you need more than 5GB of storage. Give it a whirl.

Note: The price shown here is for business users. This program is now free for personal use.

--Jon L. Jacobi