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I've just set up CrashPlan between three computers in the family (in three different locations) so that they all backup to each other over the internet. The problem is that the backup files are huge and for the first backup (where everything needs to be transferred) it's taking far too long a time to happen. We are 10 hours in and only about 7% of the way!

I'd like to speed this up by backing up each computer locally to an external hard drive, driving to the other computers and copying this backup file onto them. The idea being that CrashPlan will then start with that backup file for comparing differences and so a full transfer of several hundred GB over the internet won't be necessary.

I thought this could be done but my Google searching is failing me miserably. Can anyone point me in the direction of some instructions on how to do this properly?

Jon-Eric
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Richard
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1 Answers1

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Google search didn't work, but the CrashPlan site search was quite helpful.

In short, you need to backup your computer to an external drive:

http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/getting_started/attached_drive_shared_folder

Then take this drive, plug it into the other computer and copy off the archive into the folder configured as the backup location for that computer. The article below shows you how to change the location for each connected computer, but you can also use that to determine what the location is:

http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/how_to/change_archive_location

Once you've done this then only diff's will be transferred between computers over the internet - which should speed things up considerably as you won't have to transfer gigabytes of content just to get started.

A little bit more information about this process can be found at:

http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/how_to/seed_archive

Richard
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