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CrashPlan Cloud Backup No Longer Available for Consumers

August 23, 2017

Code42, makers of the cloud-based backup solution for home users, announced end-of-life of the consumer version. When Sharon and I lecture around the country at CLEs, we hear a lot of solo and small firm attorneys singing the praises of CrashPlan. Code42 is going to concentrate on business users, effectively abandoning all of those loyal CrashPlan users. Code42 is recommending moving over to Carbonite, which is an exclusive partner. We like Carbonite too. It is one of the few cloud-based backup offerings where the user can control and define the encryption key.

TechCrunch reported that Backblaze is the recommended solution by The Wirecutter. Obviously, Backblaze wants your business. They have posted a comparison to Carbonite on its website. I draw exception to the comparison about the Private Encryption Key. Whenever I have configured Carbonite (no matter what version), I was able to change the encryption key. Granted there is a pretty ominous warning saying that Carbonite cannot provide support if you change the key, but so what? If there's a problem, tell the support folks what the password is and then change it to something else once the issue is resolved.

I don't think you can go wrong with either service. Just make sure you have some backup service that is impervious to ransomware attacks before CrashPlan shuts down.

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