I’m passionate building a software business as an indie Mac developer, but I’m equally passionate about helping people protect themselves from data loss.
Back in February 2010 I ran several online backup applications through a test suite called Backup Bouncer, hoping it would increase awareness among users and attract enough attention to get the providers of those applications to fix the issues. The results weren’t good. Backblaze failed 19 of 20 tests, Mozy failed 16, Carbonite failed all 20, Dropbox failed 19 and CrashPlan failed 12.
On June 30 someone tweeted Crashplan with a link to the Backup Bouncer test result asking when they’d address the restore errors I had documented:
Crashplan replied that all the issues would be fixed in the next release.
Finally in early December they released a new version that passes all but 1 of the tests.
Data Safety for Everyone
I’m very happy that Crashplan have fixed those issues, and I like to think I helped in a small way to make that happen. Of course I think everyone should use Arq 
but even if they use a different product no one should suffer from data loss.
Hopefully Mozy, Carbonite, Backblaze and Dropbox will fix their issues with restoring metadata as well.
Well done Stefan – your positive action has positive results.
Comment by pinky — December 13, 2010 @ 12:15 pm
Great job, Stefan. It’s great to see the other providers taking notice of the test results. The next step for the other providers is to redesign their clients to be as simple to use as Arq!! They can go ahead and add de-duplication and completely secret encryption to their apps as well. All the while, keeping their app simpler than Finder. I’ll not hold my breath for that!
Comment by Matt — December 13, 2010 @ 12:21 pm
It’s probably worth noting that Dropbox isn’t specifically a backup program
Interesting about the rest though! And I’ll look into Arq
(Found your site for iPhotoSync–I work as a University Apple Tech, people are always frustrated about iPhoto sharing, we’ve been recommending your app, so far, no complaints
Comment by Aaron — December 19, 2010 @ 10:27 pm
Well, Dropbox sells itself as a backup program. The title of their home page says “Dropbox – Home – Online backup, file sync, and sharing made easy.”.
Comment by Stefan Reitshamer — December 21, 2010 @ 9:51 am