
Warn HN: CrashPlan are deleting backups older than 6 months with no notice - SimonPStevens
I received an email from CrashPlan today informing me they have deleted one of my backups. [0]<p>They have a retention policy [1] that states backups from PCs that have not connected to the service for 6 months will be deleted. However, this policy has never previously been enforced and is not highlighted during signup or setup. I&#x27;ve been a paying user of CrashPlan for around 8 years and was not aware of this policy. The computer in question was listed as not having been active for nearly 2 years. I have several other backups that have been inactive for up to 5 years. I have not yet received any emails about these other devices, but I can only assume I will be soon.<p>I received no prior warning or notification that this was going to happen.<p>I contacted support [2] and they claimed the new enforcement was due to a recent audit of the service.<p>Although the email I received informed me that the data had already been removed, as of this moment it appears to still be accessible. Support have so far been unable to tell me how long it will remain available for, so I&#x27;m in the process of downloading many gigabytes of old backups as fast as I can in the hope some automated process doesn&#x27;t delete them before I have restored them all.<p>Not the kind of action I want to see from a service that I need to trust with backups of my data.<p>[0] - http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastebin.com&#x2F;SrJuwgDV<p>[1] - http:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.code42.com&#x2F;CrashPlan&#x2F;4&#x2F;Subscriptions&#x2F;Backup_Retention_Policy_For_Inactive_Cloud_Destinations<p>[2] - http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pastebin.com&#x2F;ee32yhzB
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jarrodatCode42
Hello All,

Jarrod from Code42 here. Sorry about the scare. Wanted to clarify a few
things.

If a restore has been initiated from the archive of the device in question
it's considered "connected" and your data won't be deleted. To be clear - no
automated process is going to remove your data while you’re restoring.

You are correct in your assumption about the other devices— we are in the
process of enforcing this policy when we previously haven't. We realize that
many users won't be aware of this existing retention policy. That's why we've
been testing different messages to small batches of users (small meaning .3%
of our user base) and seeing how they respond.

Like the email says many of the affected archives are from backups that were
once connected to an older device. This often happens because people aren't
aware of our "adoption" process that is used to connect and existing backup to
a new device. Because silent, continuous backup is very "set it and forget"
many folks just end up backing up their new machine instead of getting rid of
the old backup. Bit by bit the data in those forgotten archives adds up. Thus
why we’ve begun enforcing this policy.

We’re trying to learn as much as possible from these small test batches so
that we can clean up some of these “dusty archives” as we call them sooner
rather than later while making sure we do right by our customers. I’ve
certainly learned a lot from the feedback you’ve provided here.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Best Regards,

Jarrod

~~~
jarrodatCode42
Hello Everyone,

Great questions, let’s dive right in.

One thing I wanted to clarify is that this policy only affects devices that
have not connected to CrashPlan Central in 6 months or longer. This does not
affect volumes that have not connected to the device in that period of time.
(i.e. an external hard drive that has not connected in 6 months.)

Many of you are inquiring about the notification emails being sent
before/after the archives are deleted. Like I mentioned in my previous reply,
we’ve been testing verbiage to small groups of our users who are affected. Our
goal here is to dial in the messaging so users take action as opposed to
ignoring the email (something we routinely see from our some of our customer
base). In some cases, we sent very direct emails in order to provoke action
from the sample base.

We want users to address any old archives that have not connected. Part of
CrashPlan’s ability to maintain the archive health and integrity relies upon
regular connection from the device. CrashPlan is able to routinely perform
maintenance on the archive by comparing checksums between both device and
CrashPlan Central.

[https://support.code42.com/Administrator/3/Monitoring_And_Ma...](https://support.code42.com/Administrator/3/Monitoring_And_Managing/Archive_Maintenance#Validation_And_Healing)

From the feedback we’ve received so far (including this thread), it’s evident
we should provide advanced warning prior to deletion of these archives. We’ll
continue to refine our messaging to reflect this.

Thank you again for all your feedback.

Jarrod

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jtrtoo
I can understand the policy and the action, but the notification should come
prior to deletion. And possibly include a per machine opt-out for paying
customers. (For the record I am a paying customer and have a couple old
backups, but haven't yet run across this.)

~~~
SyneRyder
+1 for the per machine opt-out. I have some older machines that I only use
infrequently but still want to use CrashPlan on. It's unlikely any would be
turned off for six months, but one of them did have a multi-month disconnect
from CrashPlan due to a weird Java version conflict.

(Also, because I tend to keep my older machines and still want to use
CrashPlan there, it's harder for me to use the "adopt a machine" method. I
bought a new computer and just finished re-uploading about 200GB of near-
identical data.)

