Overview
The CrashPlan app is designed to make minimal demands on your computer's resources, and favors quiet background operation over outright speed. There may be times that you need to reduce the bandwidth you allow the CrashPlan app to use, such as:
- If you have limited bandwidth or a bandwidth cap.
- If you are using voice over IP (VoIP).
- If the CrashPlan app backup activity is competing with other network applications, and you would prefer to allocate more bandwidth to those applications.
This article outlines some adjustments that allow the CrashPlan app to use less bandwidth, as well as some items to consider before changing any settings.
Considerations
- By adjusting the settings described below, the CrashPlan app will use less bandwidth, but it also slows down your backup.
- Results of changing settings may not be immediately apparent. You may need to wait a short time before noticing improvements.
- You can return to the default bandwidth settings at any time.
Configure the CrashPlan app to back up to more than one destination. Usually, one destination is local, such as an external hard drive, and one destination is off-site, such as on the CrashPlan cloud. Backing up to a local drive is generally faster and ensures that your files are safely backed up even as your offsite backup is in process.
Before you begin
Review your file selection to ensure that you have only selected files that you need to back up. Backing up system files or application data can dramatically increase your bandwidth usage.
Steps
By default, the CrashPlan app has limits in place to prevent it from using too many system resources. If you have limited bandwidth, a bandwidth cap, or utilize VoIP, there are several settings you can adjust in the CrashPlan app to reduce the impact of the CrashPlan app on your bandwidth. Changing these settings reduces the system resources available to the CrashPlan app, but extends the amount of time required to backup your files
Try the options below in the order presented. If you see enough reduction in speed after one or two changes, avoid making more changes.
Schedule backup
If there are certain times of day during which you want to reduce the CrashPlan app's bandwidth usage, you can schedule specific days and times that you want the CrashPlan app to back up. For example, you may want to schedule backups to occur overnight, when you aren't using the Internet.
To change your backup schedule:
- Open the CrashPlan app.
- Select
Settings.
- Select Backup Sets.
- Next to Backup Schedule, click Change.
Note: Your administrator may prevent editing the backup schedule settings. - Select Only run between specified times and set a start and end time for your backup window.
- Click Save.
Change bandwidth settings
To reduce the amount of network bandwidth the CrashPlan app uses, you can lower the rate at which files are sent from the CrashPlan app to the backup destination.
To change the sending rate in network settings:
- Open the CrashPlan app.
- Select
- Select Network.
- In Bandwidth Settings, click Change for WAN or LAN. WAN is for sending data over the Internet and LAN is for sending data over your computer's local network.
- For both WAN and LAN, change Limit sending rate when away to or Limit sending rate when present to as needed. (On Linux, you can only change Limit sending rate to.) Start by setting the limits to 100 kbps.
- Click Save.
When setting network sending limits, do not set a rate lower than 0.10 Mbps or 100 Kbps. Rates lower than 0.10 Mbps can prevent devices from communicating with the CrashPlan server, which can stop backups. To stop backup entirely, do not adjust sending limits. Instead, you can pause backup or only allow backups at specified times.