Crashplan Pro: interesting backup solution for PC/Mac/Linux that could also replace Apple’s Time Machine

I met the Crashplan people last week when I was walking around the demo pit at TC50. They are using a peer-to-peer system to backup your data from a computer to another one (or to a local drive). Among the interesting features:

• Mac, PC, Linux interoperability (backup a Mac on a PC…)
• Local, Network, Internet or “cloud” backups
• Continuous backup (real-time versus hourly)
• Differential backup at the sub-file level (chunks of files are backed-up, great for huge files)

The feature list is quite long, but you get the picture. I was interested by it because my Time Machine configuration is reaching its limit. I have a 1TB external drive, and it is full. The options to expand from there are getting pricey. At some point, it might make more sense to build a Windows Home Server and pile up hard drives to extend the capacity. The other thing that I liked was that I could backup stuff across the web to someone else’s PC or host backups for my family. Of course, your files that are stored offsite aren’t readable by others (not even the file names) because they are strongly encrypted. I have not tested Crashplan Pro (yet), but I thought that I would share this. If you are serious about backups, this is worth looking at. As I said, it could replace time machine, but it is not as cool-looking, or as simple to use. However, Crashplan potentially allows you to extend your storage in a cheaper way. If you have extended your Time Machine storage to 2TB or more, please drop a comment about how you did it (time capsule+USB HDD?) and what the cost was.