That’s a minor inconvenience for one file, but a huge hassle if you’re restoring lots of files from different locations.īy contrast, the CrashPlan app gives you the option to restore any file to its original location-either overwriting or renaming any file of the same name. After digging down to it, you’ll have to drag it manually to the corresponding spot on your disk.
So, if you restore a single file that was stored 10 levels deep in a series of nested folders, your expanded Zip file will be a series of 10 nested folders with your file inside the last one. You log in to your account on the Backblaze website and select the file(s) you want to restore, and what you get back is a Zip file containing those files-in a replica of their original folder structure. While Backblaze is easy to use, a few of its quirks drove me away.įirst, file restoration drives me nuts. So I’m reluctant to criticize it, but I do have a few bones to pick.
The native Mac software is clear, reliable, and easy to use, and it worked well for me during the year or so I used it. I’ve met the guys who run the company, and they’re great. I’ve heard nothing but positive comments about Backblaze. In terms of basic features, online backup services are more alike than different.īackblaze. With all those links and tabs, CrashPlan looks more like a Web page than a Mac app. So although I could wish for a more modern, Mac-like look and feel, CrashPlan’s use of Java is a non-issue when it comes to security. More importantly, CrashPlan’s built-in version of Java is self-contained, inaccessible to other Java apps and to websites, which are where most Java security exploits originate.
That means you can run CrashPlan on your Mac without having to download Oracle’s Java-it behaves just like a stand-alone app. Instead-perhaps as an interim measure while the native app is being perfected-CrashPlan now bundles its own copy of Java. And indeed, the CrashPlan app looks more like a series of web pages than a Mac utility.ĬrashPlan developer Code 42 publicly stated a few years ago that a native Mac app was in the works, but for some reason it has so far failed to materialize. Apart from security issues and ads, apps written in Java tend to have somewhat odd-looking, un-Mac-like user interface elements. You can still download Java from Oracle yourself if you like, but Oracle has begun bundling adware with it, which makes it even more unappealing. Java (or, more specifically, the Java Runtime Environment, or JRE) has a long list of well-known security issues, enough that Apple stopped including it with OS X starting with 10.7 Lion. 1 worry I’ve heard about CrashPlan is that it is a Java app, an increasingly rare animal in 2015.