• The Roadster Factory Recovery Fund - Friends, as you may have heard, The Roadster Factory, a respected British Car Parts business in PA, suffered a total loss in a fire on Christmas Day. Read about it, discuss or ask questions >> HERE. The Triumph Register of America is sponsoring a fund raiser to help TRF get back on their feet. If you can help, vist >> their GoFundMe page.
  • Hey there Guest!
    If you enjoy BCF and find our forum a useful resource, if you appreciate not having ads pop up all over the place and you want to ensure we can stay online - Please consider supporting with an "optional" low-cost annual subscription.
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this UGLY banner)
Tips
Tips

Backblaze - Anyone using?

Share this page

Basil

Basil

Administrator
Staff member
Boss
Online
I heard about a cloud-based backup service from KelbyOne (a pay-for-play Photography site). Scott Kelby, in one of his many training tutorials, mentioned a backup service called Backblaze. I am trying the free 14-day trial. The service allows you to backup your entire computer HD plus any external drives you have connected (except network (NAS) drives). It runs in the background and you can either set it to do scheduled backups or just have it perform continuous backups in the background (I've seen no noticeable degradation in computer performance (so far) while it's backing up in the background).

The service is only $5 per month for unlimited storage or $50 per year ($10 savings). If you ever need to do a restore, you can log pin and do individual file or directory restore over the internet, or you can have them send you either a flash USB drive (up to 128GB) or a full hard drive for larger restores. You pay a fee for them to send you a Hard Drive by FedEx or similar service, then once you have completed the restore you send the drive back for a refund.

Anyway, I'm trying their free 14-day trial. Has anyone else heard of them or using them?
 
Brooklands

Brooklands

Yoda
Gold
Country flag
Offline
No Basil. I have been using Crash Plan Home, and recently had to go over to Crash Plan for Small Business. Somehow they have duplicated files on their end, but they are allowing me to keep my original files there, and right now my total backup is 7TB. I think the iMovie libraries are there multiple times due to transitioning to a new library, but as long as they don't mind...

I received the recommendation to go there several years ago from a professional photographer in Boston, and I have been happy so far, but I have only restored a few files in the past years.
 
OP
Basil

Basil

Administrator
Staff member
Boss
Online
If Crash Plan works the way BB does, the older versions of files that have been moved to a different location will be deleted from their server after 30 days. Crash Plan and BB are, from what I gather, very similar. Does Crash Plan allow you to also back up an unlisted number of external drives?
 
Brooklands

Brooklands

Yoda
Gold
Country flag
Offline
Yes it does if you have extensive files. I have several hour long videos, and thousand of photos, many in multiple formats, so I might not get the entire library uploaded in the free trial period. Even now, when I load my photos from a trip on my photo drive, it can take a day or two in the background to catch up. At least I do not back up my TimeMachine drive to CrashPlan.
 
drooartz

drooartz

Moderator
Staff member
Gold
Country flag
Offline
I use Backblaze. Used to use CrashPlan until they dropped their personal plans to focus on the business/commercial market. CrashPlan was a solid product, but the new plans didn't make sense for me.

Backblaze has been just fine. I'm backing up three laptops and a desktop (all Macs). The desktop has almost 1TB of data on it. First backup did take a while, but wasn't too bad. Once it's done, all it's doing is tracking changes so it's not intrusive. Their web client is decent, easy enough to pull down a file if you need it. I've not needed to do a full restore yet, but have pulled a few files down and it's been easy to use.

A nice feature with Backblaze (CrashPlan was similar) is that you can create your own encryption keys that you store. This way Backblaze can't retrieve your data from their end as they never have the keys. If you loose your key your backup is lost so be careful with them, but this is a critical security and privacy feature for your data.

I believe Backblaze is licensed on a per-computer basis, unlimited data. As it happens I'm only doing one drive per computer, but when you go to pick what is backed up on the machine you pick from a list of your drives, and it looks like you can pick as many as you need to.

I'd not hesitate to recommend Backblaze.
 
OP
Basil

Basil

Administrator
Staff member
Boss
Online
drooartz said:
I use Backblaze. Used to use CrashPlan until they dropped their personal plans to focus on the business/commercial market. CrashPlan was a solid product, but the new plans didn't make sense for me.

Backblaze has been just fine. I'm backing up three laptops and a desktop (all Macs). The desktop has almost 1TB of data on it. First backup did take a while, but wasn't too bad. Once it's done, all it's doing is tracking changes so it's not intrusive. Their web client is decent, easy enough to pull down a file if you need it. I've not needed to do a full restore yet, but have pulled a few files down and it's been easy to use.

A nice feature with Backblaze (CrashPlan was similar) is that you can create your own encryption keys that you store. This way Backblaze can't retrieve your data from their end as they never have the keys. If you loose your key your backup is lost so be careful with them, but this is a critical security and privacy feature for your data.

I believe Backblaze is licensed on a per-computer basis, unlimited data. As it happens I'm only doing one drive per computer, but when you go to pick what is backed up on the machine you pick from a list of your drives, and it looks like you can pick as many as you need to.

I'd not hesitate to recommend Backblaze.
Click to expand...

I did create a private key but you’re right - you’d better not lose it! I also like the two-factor authentication (optional) so you have to enter a random code sent to your iPhone in addition to username and password. I just pulled the trigger on a 1 year s
 
drooartz

drooartz

Moderator
Staff member
Gold
Country flag
Offline
I use the 2-factor as well. Works cleanly, never think about it.
 
OP
Basil

Basil

Administrator
Staff member
Boss
Online
drooartz said:
I use the 2-factor as well. Works cleanly, never think about it.
Click to expand...

When I did the encryption key, in addition to storing it electronically in several places in a way that no one would know what it’s for, I also printed it and keep it locked in a safe.
 
Top