Prevent CrashPlan from de-duplicating data on a Mac. Improves transfer speed! #mac #blog #crashplan

crashplanFixup.sh

#!/bin/bash
#
# crashplanFixup.sh for Macintosh OS X 10.9 (and probably earlier versions)
#
# This script will prevent CrashPlan from de-duplicating data on files greater than 1k.
# Based on information from http://networkrockstar.ca/2013/09/speeding-up-crashplan-backups/
#
# NOTE:  Must be run with sudo!  IE: $ sudo sh ./crashplanFixup
#
# v1.1 2014-03-13 by [email protected]

# This is the path to your my.service.xml file
FILEPATH='/Library/Application Support/CrashPlan/conf/my.service.xml'

# Sets the <dataDeDupAutoMaxFileSizeForWan> key to 1 - to prevent all files greater than 1k from being deduplicated
sed -i .bak 's/\(<dataDeDupAutoMaxFileSizeForWan>\)[0-9]*\(<\/dataDeDupAutoMaxFileSizeForWan>\)/\11\2/' "${FILEPATH}"

# Restart CrashPlan
launchctl stop com.crashplan.engine
launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist
launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist
launchctl start com.crashplan.engine

# Launch CrashPlan Menu Bar Extra - Comment out the next line if this is undesired behavior
open -g "/Applications/CrashPlan.app/Contents/Helpers/CrashPlan menu bar.app"

v1.1 changed the way I called the $FILEPATH variable.

After I ran this, my CrashPlan initial backup estimate went from over 24 hours (which it had been holding steady to for some time) to under 8.

It is possible that you are not running into the de-duplication bottleneck, and are better off without these changes. De-Duplicaiton is a killer when dealing with large files. Also, I don't put much stock in the estimate, how long does it actually take?

Line 25: It looks like as of CrashPlan 3.6.4, this path has changed. It should now read /Applications/CrashPlan.app/Contents/Helpers/CrashPlan menu bar.app

@thewellington looks like @alexiscordova is right.
It should now read /Applications/CrashPlan.app/Contents/Helpers/CrashPlan menu bar.app

Bill, how would this need to change for a headless installation of Crashplan on a Synology NAS? I understand the xml file is in /volume1/@appstore/CrashPlan/conf (post on http://networkrockstar.ca/2013/09/speeding-up-crashplan-backups/)

@formatthis, I would probably just manually edit the file on the Synology NAS and restart the crashplan service. I don't have one of these NAS's (I looked into one because of the CrashPlan backup) but I would use the script as a model.

NOTE: Because of the incident that forced me to write this script, I have abandoned CrashPlan as I do not have any confidence in the software, nor do I have any confidence in Code42 to "do the right thing." Detail here: http://www.wellingtonnet.net/code/2014-02-14/crashplan_deduplication_problems.html I have moved on to a sweet program called Arq form Haystack Software, and using Amazon's S3 for offsite storage

thewellington, link to post shows 404 now, and no sign on your site of article. Have you reversed position on Crashplan, or been forced to take down?
FYI, I have not renewed my Crashplan sub, after 5 continual years. Currently letting it run as per no-sub model, to backup NAS and important docs to colo mini, but only as secondary offsite backup. Using BTSync as main for these files now (to local and office)

It doesn't seem to work here. Maybe something has changed from Crashplans side...