CrashPlan or Time Machine — What's the Difference?

There are significant differences between the two backup solutions. We hope you find the following information helpful when deciding on your backup strategy.

CrashPlan Advantages
Time Machine Advantages
Running both on the same computer
Additional Information

CrashPlan Advantages Over Time Machine

Offsite Backup

Our second customer at Macworld was a police officer who had his laptop and backup drive stolen from his home. Offsite backup protects you from all forms of data loss. Time Machine is onsite backup only.

Encryption

Your data is encrypted before being stored at destination. Time Machine just makes a copy, including previous versions. Someone else can recover things you thought were deleted.

Multiple Locations

CrashPlan will automatically backup to as many other locations as you desire. For example, onsite, near offsite, and far offsite respectively providing speed, security, and protection from local disasters.

Compression

Backup files are compressed. Duplicates are also removed. This saves you space, allowing for larger and more frequent backups. Time Machine does neither.

Delta Blocking

This is a very powerful form of compression. When a file changes, only the new bits are compressed and stored. Time Machine copies the entire file over again. This is a big deal when you have large files that are changing (i.e. Entourage mail database, VMware or Parallels disk images, video files, etc.)

No Additional Hardware

If you don't have a ton of data to back up, you probably have enough space on another computer (or your friends) to hold your backup.

Scheduling

You can schedule when CrashPlan is allowed to do its work. Time Machine lacks scheduling.

Real-Time

CrashPlan can back up your changes every minute. Time Machine is once per hour.

Excludes

With CrashPlan, you can say things like, "don't back up files ending in temp". Time Machine cannot.

Includes

CrashPlan allows you to back up only the files and folders you select.

Quotas

You can limit how much space your backup archive is allowed to use. Time Machine will consume all available disk.

Backup Brains

CrashPlan isn't fooled if nothing has really changed in a file. Time Machine will dutifully make another copy of the same file. CrashPlan knows when you've moved the file or duplicated it and stores it only once. Time Machine makes copies upon copies.

Cross Platform

You can back up your Mac to an old Windows box or Linux server.

Data Integrity

CrashPlan repeatedly verifies that your backup archive is in good and working order, even if there is no new data to back up. Time Machine assumes everything is fine and good and only at time of restore can you realize the drive had bad data on it.

Supports Tiger

We support 10.4. (We'd support 10.3 too if someone can get Java 1.5 working on it.)

Time Machine Advantages Over CrashPlan

It's free with Leopard

You can't beat free. Unless of course, you need to buy a new USB drive to fit all your backup data. Then we might be less expensive.

Supported on OS Install Disk

It's really neat how they offer the ability to back up or restore on OS install. Awesome feature.

Developer APIs

Third party developers can integrate with Time Machine. CrashPlan is still a closed application.

Dead Simple to Get Started

Hats off to Apple for making it really easy.

Really amazing looking interface

Gotta hand it to the designers at Apple, that's one sexy UI.

CrashPlan and Time Machine on the Same Mac

Time Machine & CrashPlan will complement each other well on your Mac. Just make sure you tell Time Machine to ignore the CrashPlan.app file. If you're letting others back up to your Mac using CrashPlan, it also makes sense to ignore their backup data.

The reason for this exclusion is because as CrashPlan appends new data to the backup archive, Time Machine will copy the entire archive to USB again, and again, and again. You'll be out of space in no time if you fail to exclude the archives.

Did We Miss Anything?

Please let us know at support@crashplan.com.