It is ironic that my last post was about backing up multiple ways. Since I made that post, my network hard drive failed for good, I had previously discovered that a program that was supposed to inform me when a backup job failed wasn’t notifying me that it was unable to connect with the network drive, and CrashPlan announced that they were getting out of the consumer backup business. That perfect storm means that I have to completely reestablish a new backup plan.

I could continue with CrashPlan on a small business subscription, but it would be much more expensive for all our computers. There are services similar to CrashPlan, but they don’t necessarily do everything CrashPlan did. There are also other programs than my rather outdated stand-alone program that has stopped sending me emails.

After researching the problem, I decided that the best solution for me was a new network drive and Acronis True Image 2018, which also allows for backing up to the cloud. This will enable me to back  up all of our computers on the network and send copies to the cloud. So far, the program is sending me confirmation emails, too. At the moment, I am using a trial version, but I’m pretty sure I will pay the $120 per year cost for all the computers.

One of the problems with setting up a new backup scheme is that the process of doing a full backup can be very time consuming. Once everything is set up to operate automatically, it won’t be a problem, but it can take nearly a month to back up a big hard drive when you are sending it to the cloud. Also, some of our computers are getting old and are slow, so that adds to the time. Multiply that by 4 computers, and it is a pain. At least I will have network backups of all the computers while the cloud backup is going on, and CrashPlan will work for a couple more months so I have the data I have previously backed up.

I could be doing something more fun with my time, like building tiny computers or woodworking, but this is a necessary precaution.

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