CrashPlan Speed Increase Imminent

Here at Code 42 Software, a few of us have been working on speeding up our backup engine. The engine was topping out at about 15MB/second for a 2 year old MacBook PRO. While that's good enough for backing up over the Internet or even a wireless LAN, it's not fast enough for Gigabit LANs or direct attached disk.

We need speed. We need it to go to 11. We need warp 10.

It's a tricky thing, how do you accomplish the best compression in the business without slowing down too much? A happy customer wrote recently:

“CrashPlan compressed 951GB of design files into 350GB!!!! You guys rock!” ~David A.

Compression is a big deal. If you take David's example, before compression it would take 288 days to backup over the Internet at cable modem speeds of 40KB/sec. With our data de-duplication, compression, and encryption we reduce that time to 106 days. (Which is still ridiculous, which is why CrashPlan kicks serious butt by allowing you to back up over LAN in 10 hours and bring that drive off-site to continue your backup.)

So now that we've covered all the work CrashPlan does to save bandwidth and disk space, you can imagine how hard it is to make it go faster! A few days ago, we managed to increase the backup engine speed by about 38%.

It's amazing how "Sleeping on it" can help you solve problems in creative ways.

Today we made some innovative changes and managed to crank up the backup engine up to 60MB/sec on that same modern laptop.

That's a 400% increase in speed! Oh, and we're using 30% less CPU to do it too. WOOT!!

Since most USB drives top out around 25MB / second, we should be able to easily "max out" our new local backup feature.

Some of you techies might go, "60MB/sec? *yawn* I can copy files to my NAS device faster than that!"

Remember, we're managing that speed while at the same time, compressing 951GB of design files into 350GB while at the same time encrypting them - on a laptop - without slowing you down. THAT is a bit more tricky.

All PRO users will get this speed increase as a free upgrade.

OS X 10.5.4 Compatibility

Just a quick note to say we're thrilled with 10.5.4.  Everything looks good insofar as CrashPlan is concerned.

CrashPlan Release 6.10.08

No major new features in this release. Just a few minor bug fixes and tweaks before we release a new version of PRO Server, our continuous backup for business solution. Below is a list of bug fixes and minor changes for those who like to know everything. We've organized it by component and feature. No detail is too small for our release list!

CrashPlan Central Changes
• Account - Resetting password could fail to reset, fixed
• Computer:Rename - Fixed bug where renaming your computer online could make it "stick" in the desktop so you later could not change it easily

CrashPlan Backup Engine
• Archive Validation - This could be falsely triggered resulting in confusion and slower backup. Fixed
• Archive Validation - Added several new safety checks to be 100% sure a backup archive is in good working order
• Archive Migration - Old archives that have not yet been converted will be when you bring them back online
• Archive Migration - New series of checks to verify environment you're moving archive to. Correct permissions? Etc
• Data De-duplication - Found situation where small duplicate blocks could be stored more than once. Didn't lose any significant space due to this, but we like things to be perfect. Made perfect

CrashPlan Desktop
• Backup File Selection - Click folder in list now shows file in finder
• Backup Destination Status - If the destination's USB drive was detached, but you were 100% backed up, you wouldn't know the destination was in fact, not ready. This has been fixed. Error messages have priority over backup complete messages in display
• Backup Archive Location - Fixed bug that could prevent you from relocating a backup archive
• Settings:Security - When activating private data password, we remind you one more time about dangers of losing the password
• Restore - Settings no longer revert to default if you are switching panes
• Restore:Original Location - User Interface could look very broken when restoring to original location - fixed
• Account - Resetting password could fail to reset, fixed
• Backup File Scanner - It was possible to change file selection and avoid a rescan. Not critical, but annoying as heck. This has been fixed
• Friend's Destination - Nice shortcut link now visible for their name
• Friends:Alias - fixed rare situation where you couldn't call a friend's destination something of your own choosing
• Friends:Space Used - Selecting different friends could neglect updates to how much space they were using to screen - fixed
• Language - CrashPlan now speaks German!
• Settings:Advanced:Time - Small display issue where you can't change the time without touching the day - fixed! Thanks Mark A!

CrashPlan Licensing
• Backup Scanner - This could fail to start if you activated your license after your free trial had expired - fixed

CrashPlan Networking
• TCP NAT Traversal - Enhancements made to better connect

Windows
• Installer - End user license agreement in english unless translation is available
• pagefile.sys is now explicitly prevented from being backed up

Linux
• Upgrades - upgrade script enhanced to better support user based installs
• /mnt is no longer excluded from selection list

Mac OS X
• CrashPlan Desktop - File Selection - Click folder in list now shows file in finder
• Installer:File Locations - logs now go in logs, cache files in caches, etc

OS X 10.5.3 Compatibility

Just a quick note to say we work great with OS X 10.5.3.  We also support file vault on 10.5.3 too.  Simply install crashplan as the user who has file vault and CrashPlan will back up files as they change in real time.  (Of course, you have to be logged in)