A backup is making copies of data which may be used to restore the original after a data loss event.
Backups have two distinct purposes. The primary purpose is to recover data after its loss, be it by data deletion or corruption. Data loss is a very common experience of computer users. The secondary purpose of backups is to recover data from an earlier time, according to a user-defined data retention policy, typically configured within a backup application for how long copies of data are required.
Since a backup system contains at least one copy of all data worth saving, the data storage requirements are considerable. In the modern era of computing there are many different types of data storage devices that are useful for making backups. Before data is sent to its storage location, it is selected, extracted, encrypted and manipulated.
CrashPlan is backup software that allows Windows, Mac, Linux and Solaris users to back up their data to an offsite data center as well as to attached drives / shared folders. There is a free version (for non-datacenter backups) and CrashPlan+ which is for backing up to CrashPlan’s servers. Both versions allow users to back up data automatically. Files are encrypted using 448-bit Blowfish (128-bit with the free version) encryption for CrashPlan+ before transmission.
CrashPlan+ users can access their files stored online with free iOS and Android applications. As updates occur to files, changes are tracked automatically and updated with a simple gesture.