Code 42 Software has announced a new version of
CrashPlan
(http://www1.crashplan.com/landing/index.html),
their personal backup service.

This update offers new controls to enable users
to maximize protection for more recent files,
while minimizing unnecessary versions for older
files. Version retention is the ability to
specify rules for removing versions and files
from your backup after you no longer care about
them.

This can have a huge influence on the size of the
backup volume, making it smaller, requiring less
disk space, according to Code 42 co-founder
Matthew Dornquast.

"In most backup software, the ability to set the
frequency of backups and the number of versions
to keep can be a daunting task for the average
user," Dornquast says. "It's a feature usually
only found in large and complex backup systems.
However CrashPlan has devised an easy-to-use
version retention feature that uses slider
controls to specify versions to retain over
specific periods."

The user can set the frequency of backup, for
example: hourly for the first week, while a file
is being worked on, then retaining fewer versions
as the file gets older. Other new capabilities
include:

° Expanded support for Mac bundles: CrashPlan
supports .graffle, .bnz, and .svxSite bundles;

° An JVM security upgrade to the latest version to address security issues;

° Windows EFS support that provides support for
encrypted files (such as BitLocker).

CrashPlan works on Macs, PCs, Linux and Solaris
systems. It will also back up from any of the
operating systems listed to any other platform it
supports.