Some time ago I started using CrashPlan with CrashPlan Central to finally start backing up my family photos and important documents off-site. It’s been working pretty well, despite my frustrations over slow upload speeds. It’s pretty much a fire and forget solution.
Recently I’ve installed FreeNAS on to an old PC to (a) start getting some stability to my storage solution, and (b) play around with ZFS and iSCSI at home. I tried OpenFiler but it pales in comparison to FreeNAS. I’ve gone against my better judgement and I’m using some of the cooler plugins including the Torrent client, Dynamic DNS and I’ve even installed SABNzbd on it. FreeNAS comes with rsync built in and even Unison which is an interesting solution to cross platform backup/synchronisation, but I’ve payed for my CrashPlan Central plan so want to make use of it!Only problem now is backing up my data!
CrashPlan doesn’t support backing up from a network share – either mapped drive or UNC path. There is a work around on the CrashPlan site which works but is a little convoluted so wanted to post a nice, quick version here.
Read on after the break… The problem is simply that CrashPlan runs as a service using the SYSTEM account. To allow us to backup a network share we have a couple of options….
- Change the service to run as a standard user account (e.g. the one you’re logged in to your machine as)
- Map a drive under the SYSTEM account so that it is visible to CrashPlan
I’d recommend the latter but if you just plan on using this on a desktop machine and/or want a quick and dirty solution, here’s how you change the logon account for the service…
- Open up the Services MMC and find the CrashPlan Backup Service. Double-click it to open its properties
- Click the Log On tab and then select the This account radio button.
- Enter the username and password of a local/domain user account with full permissions to the network share you want to back up
- Click OK and then restart the service
- Relaunch the CrashPlan application and you’ll now be able to see drives that you currently have mapped as a backup selection as well as local drives
The preferred method is to map a drive as the SYSTEM account. That in itself is no big deal, the thing is getting the drive mapped as soon as the machine boots and doing it each and every time your machine restarts. To do this we simply make use of Vista/7′s Task Scheduler.
The batch script, which we’ll save as c:\mount.bat simply uses a NET USE command. The one drawback to this method is that the username and password need to be saved in the script. You must use a username which has permissions to the network share. This need not be a local username, in the case of FreeNAS, if you have it joined to a domain as I do.
Here’s the code:
net use M: \\freenas\media /USER:dave@mydomain.lan myP4ssw0rd
Once you have that saved open up the Task Scheduler…
Create a new task (I keep my tasks in a seperate folder to the default Windows ones simply for easier administration). Give your ask a name, for example Mount drive for CrashPlan. Select Run whether user is logged on or not, tick the Run with highest privileges box and then click Change User or Group…
Type system and then Check Names (it should capitalise and underline). Click OK.
Back in the Create Task window slect the Triggers tab and click New… Select At log on… from the drop down list and click OK to close the window.
Now select the Actions tab and, again, click New… leave the action as Start a program and then browse to your batch that we created above.
Click OK to close the New Action window and again for the Create Task window.
Job done! You can right click on the task and select Run to try it out.
A much more elegant solution would be to have a native FreeNAS (or just BSD) client for CrashPlan or to make use of rsync/Unison. This will do me for now though.
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Hello.
I have tried to change the user with which you start the CrashPlan service, but doesn’t work.
Did it work for you?
Thanks.
Hey there.
It does indeed work for me. Currently using CrashPlan 3.8.210. Be sure to close down the application and stop the Crashplan service befor you change the logon user for that service.
Don’t forget you still need drives mapped for the user you change to – so ideally you’d change it to your currently logged on user – and also that user must have access to the remote share.
How far do you get with it?
Dave
Thanks for this guide.
One question: What happens if the NAS is off or not accessible. Will CrashPlan ignore to back it up and try again next time? I hope it won’t delete the copy at CrashPlanCentral…
btw: Isn’t the second method exactly the same as the one at crashplan.com: http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/recipe/back_up_windows_mapped_drives ?
Hi Ted – yup, you’re right….second method is the same as the support doc at Crashplan. I just wanted to give some a complete guide and compare it to the other option.
With regards to the NAS being offline, I have never experienced anything like that. Crashplan doesn’t sync…it doesn’t work like DropBox (for example). It’s purely backup. Even if you were to delete all your files locally, you still retain an indefinite copy on CrashPlan Central or wherever you’re backing up to.
Hey mate,
I have tried both solutions and none seem to work for me.
I am also running a domain at home, and have attempted to run the service as my domain user account and also tries as the local SYSTEM account.
If you have any further suggestions I’m all ears!
For your troubleshooting info, When attempting both methods i get all created successfully then restart he service, then see my normal local drives only.
Dan
Hi Dan – I’ve got to be honest, I’ve had more luck mapping the drive as the SYSTEM account. I’ve found that when the scheduled task runs successfully the drives will appear in My Computer in a disconnected state (this doesn’t affect Crashplan and in fact you can double-click on the drive to browse it as normal).
What OS are you running? I’m on Windows 2008 R2. If you use the mapped drive method (option 2) then you won’t need to mess with the Crashplan service.
Hi David – I’ve been using CrashPlan for about a year as well now and am curious whether your frustration with the slow upload speeds has lessened over time?
I’ve got a 3 Mbps uplink where I have CP installed, and have a fairly large backup set (2TB over 94,000 files). What I’ve found is that once the backup set gets this large, my speeds to CrashPlan central crawl (~600 kbps). I’ve gone through rounds and rounds of support with CP and am about ready to give up, but I thought I’d check to see what your experience was as well.
Thanks.
Hi Jason – sorry about the slow approval of your comment.
I’ll be honest, I’ve all but given up CrashPlan. Don’t get me wrong…I’ve found it a life saver in a couple of situations, but I’ve had enough of the slow and inconsistent backup speeds. I now use a Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ for a good deal more on-site protection, but I also have set up rsync backups to a family members NAS device over the internet. It’s not (in theory) as optimal, but I know where I stand with my backups.
I’ve been using the second/latter option successfully for a couple of months but recently all of a sudden it stopped working. CrashPlan says “destination unavailable – backup location is unavailable” and now in Windows Explorer the mapped network drive is accessible/browsable (it no longer has a red X on it). I checked the CrashPlan service and its still set to run as the SYSTEM user. The only changes I’ve made recently in CrashPlan was adding a new destination (CrashPlan Central trial). CrashPlan may have auto updated itself too (I’m not sure).
Any ideas why it actually stopped working and how to resolve it?
I had the exact same experience that Anuva had. It was working until I added the CrashPlan central service.
I found an even easier method to map the network share. Three steps here: http://rahul-oncall.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-map-network-drive-to-be-used-by.html. When you download the SysinternalsSuite all you need to unzip is the PSexec file. Otherwise you will have to click through and unzip every file. Not fun. Anyway, I have one of my shares on my ReadyNAS Duo mapped using this method and I’ve been backing it up since last night.
Even though this method is supposed to persist the mapping through logging off/on it did not when I tried it. I had to go through the process of opening a cmd dialog as an admin again. I’m sure there is a way to put this into a batch file and make it work. However, I don’t have a lot of experience with this type of stuff and I haven’t figured it out yet.
Good work! I’ll have to give this a go myself…
I have found a new solution. See http://rahul-oncall.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-map-network-drive-to-be-used-by.html for details. It is working for me except when I power off the computer. Otherwise, logging off/on is not a problem. After downloading the sysinternassuite just unzip the psexec file to save time from having to unzip every tool in the suite.
I just wanted to thank you for this blog post, while I didn’t have any luck with getting Crashplan to pickup the drive using your method or the one on Crashplan’s site, the method that Mapguymike posted did the trick and I never would of found it without seeing this. Thank you!
Great article. What I need is Using CrashPlan to backup a network share using a Mac.
Thanks for the article.
Nice, concise article. Thanks.