Backblaze Review

Backblaze is among CommQueR.com's top online backup providers thanks to its stellar ease of use and friendly pricing. However, it lacks customization, meaning that if you're not of the set-it-and-forget-it mentality you may want to look elsewhere. Read our full Backblaze review for the details.

By Aleksander HougenEditor
— Last Updated:
2020-09-09T18:35:18+00:00
(Editor)
Starts from $ 458 per month for Unlimited GB
Save 24 % (All Plans)
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Backblaze has more name recognition than any other service in the cloud backup business, and if you’ve listened to a podcast in the last few years, chances are you’ve heard the name many times over. Although Backblaze features a streamlined service with unlimited storage, the question remains, does it live up to the hype? Keep reading this Backblaze review to find out.

Backblaze clearly prioritizes simplifying the backup process over packing its service full of features and settings for you to manually control. 

Although this does result in a service that’s easy to set up and get going, it also leaves quite a bit to be desired in terms of features and control. On top of this, more advanced features, like image-based backups and mobile backup, are entirely absent.

In this review, we’ll give you a detailed rundown of what Backblaze does well and where it falls short. If a simple setup, unlimited storage and reasonable prices are important criteria for you, then keep reading. 

However, if you’re the kind of person who likes to fiddle with settings and have a large degree of control over your software, then this probably isn’t the backup solution for you. In that case, head over to our list of the best online backup services for a look at some alternatives.

Backblaze Video Review


Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths:

  • Unlimited backup
  • Simple, streamlined experience
  • Reasonable prices
  • Sharing functionality
  • Decent security and privacy
  • GDPR compliant

Weaknesses:

  • Lack of features
  • Limited devices
  • Flawed private encryption
  • Sparse information about backup
  • No image-based backup
  • No mobile backup

Alternatives for Backblaze

  1. 1
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Unlimited Backup
    • Versioning
    • Private Encryption
    Unlimited GB
    $ 458
    Save 24 %
  2. 2
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Unlimited Backup
    • Versioning
    • Private Encryption
    5 GB - 12.5 TB
    $ 579
  3. 3
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Only on Ultimate Plan Unlimited Backup
    • Versioning
    • Private Encryption
    5 TB - Unlimited GB
    $ 4999
  4. 4
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Unlimited Backup
    • Versioning
    • Private Encryption
  5. 5
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Unlimited Backup
    • Versioning
    • Private Encryption
    $ 139

Features

70 % – Decent

As mentioned in our introduction, Backblaze does not place a heavy emphasis on features. Opting instead for an automated and streamlined experience, Backblaze focuses on backing up your computer with minimal effort required on your part. This might be attractive to some users, but it does leave the client feeling remarkably sparse.

Thus, things like image-based, server and hybrid backups are all missing, and you can’t backup mobile devices, either. If these things are important to you, check out our IDrive review, as all these features are included with that service.

When it comes to versioning — that is, the retention of deleted data or previous versions of files — Backblaze is similarly basic, only keeping an archive of files for a maximum of 30 days. This is in stark contrast to SpiderOak ONE, for example (read our SpiderOak review), which lets you recover deleted and altered files with no expiration date.

All that said, there are some Backblaze features worth mentioning. First up is the sharing functionality, which allows you to easily create a link that you can then share in any way you choose. This puts it ahead of IDrive in this regard, as its only option is for you to email the link.

Backblaze-Share-With-Link

Another nifty inclusion is the ability to inherit backup states from previous computers. If you’ve switched devices, this means you can backup your new computer without Backblaze wasting time and resources reuploading files you’ve already backed up.

Backblaze-Inherit-Backup-State

Finally, and somewhat strangely, Backblaze’s web client gives you the option of locating your computer in the event of loss or theft. This is an unusual feature for an online backup service, but it’s welcome nonetheless. 

Backblaze-Find-Computer

In order to use the feature, you need to have the web client’s “mapping” setting turned on and hope that whoever has your device connects to the internet without first doing a complete wipe of your drives.

If you’re handling large files you don’t have to worry about any file size limitations because there aren’t any. This is great for video producers that handle a lot of 4K video files and frequently deal with large backups. 

Backblaze Business Features

Backblaze for business is pretty much the exact same product as the one intended for personal use, with a couple of additional features packed in. The first is the ability to create multiple users under the same main account. These users can be organized into groups and have their access rights and settings controlled by an admin.

However, you still have to purchase an additional license for each user. The business version also opens up for server and NAS backups, but the storage itself is provided by Backblaze B2, which means you don’t get to put these backups on your unlimited storage.

Backblaze Features Overview

  • Backup

    • Backup Scheduler
    • Continuous Backup
    • Incremental Backup
    • Image-Based Backup
    • External Drive Backup
    • NAS Backup
    • Server Backup
    • Hybrid Backup
    • Mobile Device Backup
    • Unlimited Backup
    • Unlimited Devices
    • Speed Throttling
    • Block-Level File Copying
    • Multithreaded Backup
  • Restore

    • Courier Recovery Service
    • Browser Access
    • Mobile App Access
    • Versioning
    • 30 days Deleted File Retention
  • Security

    • Private Encryption
    • At-Rest Encryption
    • In-Transit Encryption
    • AES 256-bit Encryption Protocol
    • Two-Factor Authentication
    • Hardened Data Centers
    • Proxy Server Settings
    • HIPPA Compliant
  • Support

    • 24/7 Support
    • Live Chat Support
    • Telephone Support
    • Email Support
    • User Forum
    • Knowledgebase
  • Misc

    • File Sharing
    • Device Sync
    • 15 Free Trial

Pricing

100 % – Excellent

Backblaze’s pricing structure is as simple as it gets, and the prices are reasonable when compared to other online backup services. 

There’s only one plan to choose from — the personal unlimited plan — which provides unlimited storage for $6 per month. You can save some money by signing up for a full year or two years, in which case the service will run you $60 per year or $110 for two.

Although the plan offers unlimited backup, the same isn’t true for devices. Each plan can only backup one computer, so if you have a lot of devices you’d like to secure, you might be better served with a different backup provider rather than purchasing multiple Backblaze licenses.

That said, if all you need is a single device, then the cost of Backblaze is reasonable, with only Carbonite being able to match it while still providing unlimited storage. If you’d like to see how they stack up against each other, check out our Backblaze vs. Carbonite comparison.

Unlimited Personal
  • Unlimited GB Storage
1-year plan $ 5.00/ month
$60.00 billed every year
Save 17 %
2-year plan $ 4.58/ month
$110.00 billed every 2 years
Save 24 %

Because you can pay per month, you can easily test out Backblaze without committing too much money. Furthermore, the company also offers a 15-day free trial, if you’re on the fence.

Ease of Use

100 % – Excellent

The upshot to Backblaze’s lack of features is that it’s incredibly easy to set up and get going, as long as you’re happy to let the client pick what gets backed up. If all you need is a basic backup of your device, then using Backblaze is a breeze.

Although the UI certainly won’t be winning any awards for aesthetics, it’s functional and simple, resulting in a clean user experience without much room for confusion. 

Backblaze-Main-Panel

Most of the action happens in the main panel of the client. This is where you can see the progress of your backup as well as the button for initiating one. Everything else is located in the settings menu, which is split into eight tabs: settings, performance, schedule, exclusions, security, files scheduled for backup, reports and issues.

Backblaze-Settings

In the “settings” tab, you can set up warnings when you haven’t backed up for a certain amount of time, set a temporary data drive — which is where Backblaze stores the files it’s preparing to transfer — as well as set up backup inheritance and decide what hard drives you want to backup.

Backblaze-Performance

The “performance” tab gives you an estimate of how quickly you can upload files, as well as the options for throttling and multithreading. We didn’t find these estimates to be very useful, as they seemed to fluctuate constantly and rarely reflected our actual connection speed or upload rate.

Backblaze-Schedule

In “schedule” you have a single dropdown that lets you choose between continuous, scheduled (once per day) and manual backup.

The “exclusions” tab is probably the one you’ll end up using the most, as it’s here that you can exercise some control over what files backup to cloud. 

Backblaze-Exclusions

Besides choosing folders to exempt — which is a bit of a hassle because you can only pick one at a time — you can also type in the file extension names of file types you wish to ignore. System files and certain large file types are entered here by default.

Backblaze-Security

The “security” tab is fairly barebones, with its only purpose being to provide you with some information about Backblaze’s security and a button for creating your private key.

Backblaze-Files-Scheduled-For-Backup

The next tab over is called “files scheduled for backup” and includes exactly what it says. This is simply a text list of new or altered files that will be backed up on the next run. Unfortunately, you can’t click the files in the list to be taken to their location, which seems like an obvious feature to include.

Backblaze-Reports

The final two tabs, “reports” and “issues,” aren’t too interesting. Although “reports” sounds like it might contain a log of sorts, all it does is tell you how your backed up files break down in terms of categories, such as videos or documents. Meanwhile, the “issues” tab is where errors are reported.

Backblaze-Issues

The biggest issue is the lack of information Backblaze gives you about your backup. Although you can see what file is currently being uploaded, you’re not told the speed of your upload, how far along the current file is or an estimated time of completion. 

If you’re the kind of person who likes to know exactly what’s happening at any given time, then using Backblaze can be somewhat frustrating.

Backblaze-Backup-In-Progress

By default, Backblaze scans your hard drives when the computer boots up. To force a new scan without rebooting, you have to hold down the “alt” key and click the “restore options…” button. 

This isn’t exactly intuitive, and although we appreciate that Backblaze is designed to be lightweight — which precludes continuously scanning your drives — a dedicated button for a manual scan wouldn’t be out of place.

Backblaze-Force-Scan

Backblaze Web Client and Mobile App

The Backblaze online web client is quite basic. After logging in to your account, you’re given an overview of your devices and files, as well as a menu for restoring your backup. You can also access a list of your previous restore actions and the files that you’ve shared with others.

Backblaze-Web-Client-Restore

This is also where you can adjust your account settings, such as your contact information and two-factor authentication. Finally, the web client also gives you access to the “find my computer” feature, which we covered earlier on in this article.

Backblaze-Account-Settings

The Backblaze mobile app is similarly basic. It’s available for both Android and iPhone, and it essentially only exists to provide mobile access to your backed up data. You can look through your backed up devices and download files, but that’s pretty much it.

Backblaze-Mobile-App

File Backup & Restoration

80 % – Good

Although it’s light on more advanced features, if you’re just looking for a straightforward backup, Backblaze gets the job done. Keeping in line with the general philosophy of the company, you’re not given too much control over the process, other than setting up exclusions and changing the options for throttling and multithreading.

Backblaze-Install

As mentioned in the “ease of use” section above, Backblaze automatically chooses what files on your computer need to be backed up. By default, this is basically everything barring system files and certain file types that are usually very large, such as ISOs.

Backblaze-Default-Exclusions

If you do want to exercise some control over the backup process, doing so is fairly tedious. Excluding file types is simple enough — simply type the file extension in the text box located in the “exclusions” tab of the settings — but excluding folders is more of a pain. You can do so in the same tab, but the client only allows you to choose one folder at a time.

Backblaze-Exclude-Folder

For your backup plan, you can choose between continuous, scheduled or manual backup. The scheduled backup can only be set to perform once a day, which is a bit limited. To perform a manual backup, you simply need to click the “backup now” button on the main page of the client.

Backblaze-Scheduling

By default, Backblaze will automatically handle throttling and threading. If you don’t like this, you have the option of manually setting how many threads the application should use for the upload, and also whether or not the speed should be throttled on slow connections to save bandwidth for other software and devices. 

Backblaze-Throttle-And-Threading

Backups are performed using a block-level algorithm, which means you won’t waste time or resources reuploading entire files, but rather just the parts that have changed.

Although you can backup external drives, you need to do so at least once every 30 days to avoid Backblaze deleting the files. 

To avoid this happening accidentally, Backblaze sends you a warning after 14, 21 and 28 days to remind you to reconnect the drive and run a backup. In a similar vein, you can also get Backblaze to notify you when seven days have passed without a backup.

Other forms of backup — including NAS drives, mobile devices and servers — are not included in Backblaze, and there’s no way to perform a hybrid backup, which is a mix between backing up your data locally and on the cloud. 

Backblaze Drive Cloning

You also can’t create a clone of your drive, which would allow you to replicate your system on a new device. If these features are important to you, we recommend checking out IDrive, as it includes everything we just listed and more (read our IDrive vs Backblaze comparison).

Instead of restoring through the desktop client, Backblaze requires you to log in to its online platform in order to retrieve your data. This presents some serious security and privacy implications, which we will cover later on in this article, and it also feels a bit clunky.

Backblaze-Web-Client-Restore

If downloading your data directly through the browser doesn’t appeal to you, you can also install the “Backblaze downloader,” which is a standalone application that lets you download the restored files you prepared in the web client.

Backblaze-Downloader

The default restore option is to download a zipped folder containing your data. If your backup is large, you can also opt to have it physically shipped to you. This can take the form of either a USB flash drive — if your backup doesn’t exceed 256GB — or an external hard drive with a capacity of up to 8TB.

Backblaze-Recovery-Options

However, both of these options carry additional charges, with the flash drive costing $99 per restore and the external hard drive coming in at $189.

Speed

90 % – Excellent

Speed is an incredibly important criterion when selecting a cloud backup service, especially when uploading a large amount of data, which is common, at least for the initial backup.

To test its speed, we uploaded a 3.61GB folder over a 20Mbps download and 10Mbps upload connection. 

In theory, if the connection was perfectly stable and there was little to no other traffic to Backblaze’s servers, then that would mean our download would take about half an hour, and the upload roughly an hour. Realistically, we’d like to see them done within one and a half and three hours, respectively. As always, we ran both the upload and download twice, and averaged the results.

 First attempt:Second attempt:Average:
Upload time:06:24:0003:17:0004:50:30
Download time:01:23:0001:46:0001:34:30

As you can see, the download time pretty much matched our expectations, but sadly the upload to cloud storage took longer than we hoped. For the initial backup, we let Backblaze handle the throttling and multithreading, while for the second attempt we manually set it to maximum performance and four threads, which seemed to help.

Note that this test was performed in Asia, about as far away as you can get from the U.S. data center we were using. When performing a cloud backup from North America or Europe, you should get better results. If you’re curious what your connection speed would be, you can use Backblaze’s test tool to figure it out.

Backblaze-Test-Tool

Security

80 % – Good

Backblaze features pretty good security, both in terms of its network and physical data centers. However, encryption is not as good as it could be, especially considering its implementation of private keys is seriously flawed.

When backing up your data with Backblaze, your files are secured using AES 128-bit encryption both at-rest and in-transit. When your files are being transferred to the cloud, SSL is used to ensure it remains private. 

Although 256-bit encryption would be ideal, AES 128-bit should still be sufficient for the vast majority of users. If you want to learn more about the difference, check out our description of encryption.

Backblaze-Provide-Private-Key

Private encryption is not enabled by default, requiring users to set this up manually. Regardless, there is a fundamental flaw — at least from a security standpoint — in how Backblaze implements it. The only way you can restore your files is via the web client. This means you have to provide Backblaze with your private encryption key in order to recover your data.

Backblaze-Provide-Private-Key

Although Backblaze claims that the key is flushed from its systems the moment it has been used, this still leaves the door wide open for things like man-in-the-middle attacks if your network or Backblaze’s servers have been compromised.

Besides this significant caveat, Backblaze’s security is top-notch. You can enable two-factor authentication to make it more difficult for cybercriminals to access your account. Additionally, the physical data centers themselves are secured against unauthorized access using biometric security and against natural disasters, such as fire or earthquakes.

Privacy

75 % – Good

Much like with security, Backblaze offers decent privacy hampered by its flawed implementation of private encryption, as well as the location of its data centers.

As mentioned in the previous section, the way Backblaze handles its restore process means that you are required to give up your private key if you want to recover your data. 

We won’t waste your time by repeating why this can have disastrous results, but suffice it to say that it’s just as damaging to privacy as it is to security. It also means Backblaze is not a zero-knowledge service.

Furthermore, most of Backblaze’s data centers are located in the U.S., a country infamous for its poor online privacy laws and willingness to circumvent what protections there are in the form of programs like PRISM or laws like the Patriot Act

Furthermore, the existence of the Five Eyes spy network means that if U.S. authorities intercept your data, it could be shared with other countries, as well.

That said, you do have the option of tying your account to Backblaze’s data center in Amsterdam. However, this isn’t exactly ideal, either, given that the Netherlands is the most wiretapped country in Europe (which you can read more about in our guide to the best VPN for the Netherlands). 

The choice to change your region is incredibly easy to miss, as it’s an optional field at the very bottom corner of the signup form when you first create your account. If you don’t pick a region, it will default to the U.S. west coast, and there’s no way of changing this later without creating a new account.

Backblaze-Sign-Up-Region

Backblaze Privacy Policy

All that said, Backblaze does seem to genuinely care about the privacy of its users. The privacy policy is clear and concise, and it states that Backblaze will never share or sell the metadata it collects to anyone unless it’s a trusted partner involved in providing the service or to comply with a law or regulation. 

These caveats are standard across the cloud storage and online backup industries, so Backblaze is no outlier in this regard. When it comes to that metadata, it consists of your email address and password, as well as your billing information. 

Certain details about your device, such as your operating system and usage statistics, are also collected, but these are stripped of personal identifiers. This data is used internally for development and analysis, which again is pretty standard across the cloud backup industry.

Backblaze-Privacy-Policy

As for your actual files stored on Backblaze’s servers, these are entirely confidential, and the terms and conditions state quite definitively that they will only be accessed with your consent and to provide the core functionality of the service. 

That said, Backblaze does reserve the right to remove your files for any reason, though it would probably only do so to remove illegal materials.

Backblaze-Terms-And-Conditions

Backblaze is GDPR compliant and adheres to the EU/Swiss Privacy Shield for international data transfers, but it is not HIPAA compliant. Thus, if you need to backup any confidential medical records, you’ll need to use a different service, such as IDrive or SpiderOak ONE.

Bacbkblaze-Privacy-Shield

Support

95 % – Excellent

Backblaze provides several options to help you solve any problems you have with the service. With a helpful and responsive customer support department, as well as extensive self-help resources, there’s not much we can complain about in this category.

Although there is no phone support, you can contact Backblaze for assistance by either submitting an email request or using the live chat function. The chat is open from Monday to Friday, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. PST. 

Backblaze-Support-Page

To test the responsiveness of its support, we sent an email request and received a response within a day, which is really as much as you could ask for, as there’s a chat option if you require more immediate support.

Backblaze-FAQ-Page

The Backblaze FAQ page is also excellent, providing you with solutions to a whole host of the most common issues with the service, all neatly organized into categories that are searchable.

The Verdict

That concludes our review of Backblaze. Without a doubt, it’s a strong cloud backup contender, although Backblaze sacrifices features for a more streamlined experience. This makes it an excellent choice for those who simply want to use Backblaze to run regular backups on their system without having to worry too much about the details.

However, its focus on providing a simple experience hurts Backblaze in the way of features, as many common backup options are not included. 

Similarly, Backblaze can be frustrating at times due to the low level of control over the backup process and how little information you’re given about its progress. If these things bother you, make sure to find an alternative.

What did you think of our Backblaze review? Do you agree that it’s a good online backup service for those who are looking for a simple and streamlined yet unlimited backup plan? Or do you prefer a service that offers more control, backup for more than one computer and better private encryption? Let us know in the comments below. Thank you for reading.

Backblaze FAQ

  • Is Backblaze Any Good?

    If you’re looking for a streamlined backup experience and unlimited cloud storage, then yes. If you’d rather have more manual control over your backup, Backblaze is not ideal.

  • Is Backblaze Really Unlimited?

    Yes, Backblaze offers unlimited storage space. However, you can only backup one device per license.

  • How Long Does Backblaze Keep My Files

    Files that have been deleted or previous versions of files that have been changed are archived by Backblaze for 30 days.

  • How Secure Is Backblaze?

    Backblaze features decent security, but with a major caveat. Because file recovery requires you to share your encryption key with the company, it cannot truly be said to have private encryption.

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66 thoughts on “Backblaze”

  1. Hi,

    I have been using Backblaze for quite a while now and I am totally happy with it. I actually almost forgot that I was backed up at all until last week my PC crashed and just wouldn’t start. Fortunately, I could recover all my data thanks to this amazin piece of software.

    I had, however, some trouble with installing Backblaze but support helped me (it was some weird configuration I had no idea about). Could have been a little faster (waited 3 days) but they contacted me as soon as I reached out to their social media team.

    Reply
  2. overall i will give backblaze 4 stars – there are a couple of things that i miss and that i think could be done better for example file restore can only be done via the web client and give you very little control over your restore. i was very satisfied wiht the speed of the backup (backed up 100gb in aournd 10 days). I had one little issue wiht my backups and contacted their support their response time could be improved it took them 4 days to get back to me but anyway – overall great service i feel like my files are pretty safe now.

    Reply
  3. Hi,

    I’m actually a long time user of Backblaze and overall I’m quite happy with how my backups are running so far (that’s why I gave 4 stars). Backblaze does everything it should – it backs up everything you have automatically and it does it in the background. Their client is very light weight so you don’t have to worry about getting into trouble with your system resources.

    Performance is OK. You guys say it took you 9 hours uploading everything of your 10GB folder – for me it took longer but I don’t care as it runs in the background anyway and I can get my local backup on my NAS.

    Speaking about NAS: I’d love for Backblaze to have the ability to back that up, too, then it would certainly be the perfect online backup service for me. Instead, I have to look for other solutions that will back that up, too.

    Even though the software runs in the background, sometimes I’d love to have more options especially when it comes to back up scheduling but then again, this is online backup for absolute beginners and I’m just using it as a secondary backup solution for my files.

    I highly recommend Backblaze for people who are afraid about backups and don’t know where to start. If you have some technical background probably a different provider like Crashplan would be ideal.

    Reply
  4. I’ve been using Backblaze for several years and have a few TB backed up so far. I love the lightweight client and how it is very unobtrusive in the recommended “continuous mode”. I don’t even know its there backing up all my data while I’m working. The performance is fantastic as it maxes out my 5Mbps upload speed when I’m not otherwise using it. I’ve backed up almost 50GB of photos in 24 hours before. That’s a lot of piece of mind. The incremental back ups are also great as I’ve had to restore files to a previous version before.

    For users that are wanting to back up a NAS to Backblaze, just connect the NAS to a computer locally via USB and set it up as an external drive for that machine. Then install the client and pay your $5/month to back up your NAS.

    Reply
  5. The Backblaze downloader does not work. If you want more than 2 gig of your data back this forces you to buy the $189 drive, which is not 3 TB as advertised if your data will fit on a smaller drive.

    Support was unresponsive to my questions about known issues with the downloader.

    I lost my C drive. I’ve downloaded the same 9 gigs of critical data three times now. The files fail to unzip correctly. The data is corrupt and unusable. Backblaze support failed to respond to my yell for help.

    Reply
    1. I personally haven’t run into this issue in my test with restoring large amounts of files. Large zip files could be the culprit in your situation. Maybe you should try requesting smaller chunks of files?

      Reply
  6. Here in New Zealand, we have monthly data caps.
    This renders cloud backup effectively useless for users with large amounts to back up – to back up my desktop Mac would require 11 months of my entire monthly allowance!
    ADSL is also very slow upload – only 1 mbps – so it would probably take 11 months too!

    I do successfully use Backblaze for my Macbook Air when travelling, however.

    Reply
  7. I tried using backblaze to backup my personal photos and files. It would take 66 days to upload to backblaze and during that time I would need to have my computer running 24 hours/day. This is not acceptable. I did not attempt a restore but if my internal HD crashed, it would be almost impossible to download a complete set of files from their website. It would take forever. Backblaze charges $189 to send a flash drive no matter how many or few files you need to restore. That is a very expensive way to restore. There has to be a better way.

    Reply
    1. Unfortunately, that’s a general problem with cloud backup and pretty much the bottle. You can consider yourself lucky with only 66 days. But this is not Backblaze’s fault. Transferring files over the internet takes time and it depends a lot on your internet connection. You should always make a local copy first and then start your cloud backup, that way you can access all of your files in case of emergency.

      Reply
      1. “Always make a local copy first.” Many of us newbies could use suggestions as to how to do this. Can you be of any help? Thank you.

        Reply
        1. For local backups, such as to an internal drive or an external (USB) drive, you could try the ACRONIS program. I have been using it to backup my computers for many years. It works well. I have successfully used ACRONIS to recover my full system, when I screwed up some disk partitioning. The thing I like most about Acronis is that you can restore individual files from a disk image backup.

          Reply
    2. It uploads in the background and is dependent on the speed you purchased from your ISP. When you download the data it transfers much faster than uploading. A huge file that takes 20 minutes to upload will likely download in less than 5 minutes. This is the internet and not a limitation of backblaze. If you want to backup and/or restore data in a few hours, the cloud method isnt for you unless you have a 1 gig up and down connection to the internet backbone. As far as restoring a computer image – you would simply boot to a linux usb drive and download the zip files that way. The only better way way would be for backblaze to provide a bootable linux image. But you would still need to download that to a USB drive.

      Its easier if you have multiple computers – but I have restored a system image just using a bootable usb stick. If you are worried you should create that stick now. Otherwise you will need to use another computer to download the linux recovery image and put it on a usb.

      Other than that – they could have you install a hidden recovery partition which would boot you into linux or something. But if your hard drive completely fails – that partition would also be gone and you would be back to the usb boot option again.

      Maybe a bootable usb recovery stick is an option they should sell. Maybe for 10 or 20 bucks for those that dont feel comfortable making one (Though its not that complicated). People like completely packaged solutions. In all for people just backing up data like photos, documents, videos, etc – it’s a real no brainer – reinstall your OS then download your backup and restore.

      Its also a good idea to make sure you have your OS restore disks. If you dont have them, many manufacturers have a way to burn them right on your working computer. But you’ll need to do it while its still working. If you dont have these – you will likely have a recovery partition. You simply make an image of that and burn it to DVD/CD. Because again – if you have a total drive failure – that recovery partition wont be there after the fact.

      You can of course backup that restore partition and/or disks to the cloud as an extra protection in case you lose the DVDs.

      In a perfect world you would turn on your PC and it would be backed up to the cloud. (We have that part down). Then if it detected a change in a system file, it will pull the correct one back from the cloud and replace it. If your main hard drive failed – no worries – there would be a small flash drive that held the OS – so you would just simply select restore where the OS would be restored and then then your data would begin restoring from the could. But until we all have 1 gig up and down internet – there will be a bottleneck that no software can overcome.

      I have 4 Terabytes of data uploading now. Its been uploading for a week and halfway done at this point. I really dont care that it takes that long. My upload speed is 25 Mb – download is 500 MB. So if your backup was going to take 66 days – you either have way more than my 4 Terabytes or you have really slow internet, router or PC.

      I recently moved from an area where by download speed was 20 and upload was 2 MB. I’m loving the 25 MB up – but I am a bit jealous of those that have 1 gig or even 100 mb up. And I come from a time before the internet where the max speed was 300 baud and there were no graphics other than ASCII and ANSI.

      Reply
  8. You talk about the ‘tedious process’ of selecting your test files for backup. Couldn’t you just move it to it’s own partition and then only select that “drive” for backup?

    Reply
    1. Hi Atakartal,

      more than 4TB is absolutely no problem with Backblaze. But it will take its time depending on your internet connection.

      Reply
  9. I’ve had a Backblaze subscription for 6 months and I have to say that it works fine to backup your data and do an occasional restore. It’s not a big deal that file permissions are not backed up, because I’m the only person who can access the backup anyway. But I do have a problem with the fact that Backblaze insists on making a local copy of each file that it wants to back up. That means that the amount of free space you need is the size of your largest file. At least it warns you when you don’t have enough space, but it doesn’t tell you which large file is being skipped when there’s not enough space available.

    The big problem that has me on the lookout for another solution is that restoring large amounts of data completely sucks. You can pay them to send you a USB stick or hard disk with your data (which makes me wonder how safely encrypted my data is, by the way), and it appears that they deliberately keep their free download-restore feature crippled to encourage people to pay 4 times the annual subscription rate to get a hard disk.

    If you want to download your data for free, you can select the files to download from a (slow) web interface that prepares a ZIP file from your data and then sends you an email when the ZIP file is ready. It recommends that you don’t create ZIP files of more than 20GB or so, and you can only create 10 restore-zips at a time. Once you create a ZIP file, you can’t see what’s in there, so if you have a large tree of big files to restore (let’s say a disk full of movies), you have to somehow manually keep track of what goes in each ZIP file.

    Creating a ZIP file goes pretty fast (though you can’t check for progress: it only says whether the file is available or not) but downloading it through the web interface is extremely slow. I think the web interface is throttled to 1 megabit per second or so, which is about 1/50th of the capacity of my connection. You can only download one ZIP at a time and various download managers that would normally be capable of creating multiple simultaneous download connections to increase speed, don’t work because the download is handled from a script.

    They have a downloader program that helps you download the ZIP files faster. I could download a 20GB file in less than an hour using the downloader. But that program has to be downloaded separately (it’s not part of the main user interface), and it doesn’t come with an installer, you have to just drop it on your hard disk somewhere and run it from there. Every time you want to download a ZIP, you have to restart the downloader, and every time you start it, you have to enter your account information, password, and restore location, and set the number of download threads (they recommend 1, I recommend 10). You can’t use common key combinations (such as Tab to navigate from the user name to the password field) so you have to use the mouse. But worst of all: the downloader always downloads only the latest ZIP file you created; you can’t simply choose which prepared ZIP file to download, and there’s no button “next ZIP file” or even a button to start over without re-entering everything.

    I was in a situation where I had almost 2TB on an external drive, which I lost in a move. When BackBlaze doesn’t see the external drive every so often, it deletes the data from the server (it warns you about this every few days) so if you lost the drive and need to restore its data, the clock is ticking. Fortunately I had most of my data on other disks, too, so I only had to restore a few hundred gigabytes. But I imagine people with slower internet connections would really have a race against the clock in situations like that, which is exactly what you DON’T want in an emergency situation where you lost a lot of data at once.

    As long as the restore process is as cumbersome as it is now, I have to say I can’t recommend BackBlaze as a primary backup solution.

    Reply
  10. Backblaze is easy to use and it works quietly in the background updating my files. 5/5

    Reply
  11. I would be careful about relying on BackBlaze to be there when you need it. I have seen instances of files being uploaded and never making it to their servers. I uploaded over 500 GB of data that just disappeared due to bugs in their program. If you have a slow internet connection and lots of data I would NOT use BackBlaze at all since their code is so flaky.

    Reply
    1. Hi Kolya,

      have you contacted their support? I have more than 1TB with them and never experienced any issues. They might resolve your problem quickly. It does take longer when you’re behind a slower Internet connection no matter the service you use (without wanting to take sides for Backblaze).

      Reply
      1. I did contact support. I provided extensive data showing that the amount of data available for restoration was not increasing even though I was uploading > 75GB per day. Initially they said everything was fine. Eventually they admitted that there was a bug in their client code (versions 4.0.X before 4.0.2). But they would not consider that more bugs remained or pay much attention to my observations. From this interaction I learned two things: 1 – BackBlaze is not transparent about their problems with their customer base. 2 – BackBlaze is not receptive to bug reports from their customers – especially about complex bugs affecting a small portion of their customer base.

        I don’t trust this company any more – I will probably do my own archival using Amazon Glacier or Google Cloud Storage Nearline since I do not trust consumer grade online backup companies to be competent enough at handling my data. They are “best effort” outfits – most of their customers probably never attempt significant restores and when they do are not likely to notice missing or corrupted data unless it is very obvious. There are few online sources for information / reviews about these companies so they can get away with shoddy service.

        BackBlaze’s motto should be: we’re cheap, we’re friendly and we are better than nothing. Unfortunately I need better than nothing.

        Reply
  12. I wanted to give 2.5 stars but rounded up.

    I have worked with many cloud backup service providers and while BackBlaze has it’s place it is not my solution of choice.

    BackBlaze is cheaper than most other providers, but this is reflected in their product in a number of ways. While for the most part it does the job to back up your files, it is an extremely no-frills solution.

    In short it is fine if you have a few users, (I’d say 10 or less). If you have more than that however, BackBlaze lacks the reporting, permissions, support, and other features needed to make it a viable solution and it will become a big administrative burden.

    Reply
  13. I began my search for a cloud backup service for my MacBook Pro (mid-2010 model now 6 years old, but with upgraded 1TB hyrbid drive) about 5 weeks ago. Carbonate was my first thought as it has been advertised in podcasts I have listened to for years but after 4 weeks of it sucking 45% of the CPU turning the fans on loudly, there were only numerous upload errors such that just over 100GB of data made it online and the tree mapping was all messed up so I just said no thank you and canceled it. Immediately after canceling it I tried BackBlaze and like this article says, I set it and could forget it. It uploaded all the 300GB of data I wanted it to very quickly, in less than 3 days! I averaged over 100GB a data essentially leaving my Mac on 3 days straight, but it only took up about 3% CPU so m MacBook Pro was still silent while it churned away, even with setting the upload speed in the settings to max and using all 10 threads. After Carbonite I was very impressed.

    Tommy I just checked again and BackBlaze does not permit the backing up of the Applications folder. Did you put your apps in another folder to “trick BackBlaze into uploading your apps or something? If you know a way to get the Applications folder backed up, please share because as of May 2016 this version of BackBlaze cannot.

    Since my initial upload just finished today, I do not have any experience with recovering files, but if 300GB can upload in less than 3 days, Iw would expect the download to be at least as fast if not faster, plus there is the option just to get a hard drive mailed to you.

    I am very happy with my BackBlaze experience through the initial upload process.

    One thing to note is using the iOS app it will not show any files larger than 30MB, but since you have to download any file to your phone to view via the app, this does not bother me.

    Give BackBlaze a chance and avoid Carbonite as I was told by their tech support 45% CPU usage is forever, not just during the initial backup!

    Reply
  14. I am very disappointed with Backblaze, I keep all my pictures on an external drive backed up by Backblaze.
    I have been traveling this summer and now I find that the data is no longer backed up at my storage at Backblaze and there is no way to recover it. The 30 day rule for external drives is the opposite of backup! I assumed that backup means keep it safe for me whatever happens, not just for the next 30 days. Any service where the core functionality is not available to those that don’t read the small print should be considered a scam.

    Reply
    1. This is not about the fine print, you did not understand the service at all, if you disconnect the external drive but still use the sottware on your computer it assumes the data was deleted. If you don’t plug the external drive in again in the next thirty days the data is gone. Or what do you think how many unplugged devices should be backed up eternally? Don’t blame others for your lack of understanding.

      Reply
      1. I agree, it’s not fine print at all – they’re very up front about the 30 day limit. However, the other guy has a point – backups are not just for catastrophic recovery, they’re for rolling back a change. 30 days is not nearly enough for that.

        Nevertheless, I’m giving Backblaze a try. Since I mostly care about the catastrophic recovery. But I would like to be able to recover an older version of a file if I discover I mistakenly overwrote it. Are they doing incremental then? Can I do that at least within the 30 day window? I guess I will find out. 15 day trial, we’ll see.

        Reply
  15. Backblaze is based on the idea “users are dumb, they don’t make backups because they find it too complicated to select folders and so we backup all”.
    This makes things very slow, not to mention that stuff will be included you don’t need/like. Files can be excluded but this make things not easier.

    Backblaze doesn’t support many platforms because they don’t use some cross-platform framework or some newer technologies for the GUI.

    They don’t support sftp which could be a workaround if people like to backup from (or to) other machines eg. Linux.
    They don’t support other cloud providers.
    To sum it up: featureless.

    I don’t like the the idea of Backblaze, tested and uninstalled.

    Reply
  16. Since some time Blackblaze is offering B2 for backup. I think this can be your answer to backup your NAS.

    Reply
  17. I have used Backblaze now for awhile, and tested several random restores with everything being really good. It took about 3 weeks for my initial backup to get done, but it happened in the background anyhow, so what’s the difference? I did have one question, which they answered the next day. Now, I have the peace of mind that my data’s safe if something happens and I need it. Of course, I have local backups as well – Clones of my hard drives and Time-machine of my system disk as well, but what if…? If I ever needed a lot of data from my backups at Backblaze, I can get it on a hard drive, and since they welcome me to return that hard drive later, to get my money back, it’s the best of all situations! I know I need to plug-in my external hard drive at least once a month, so that’s no problem. I really don’t want to spend a lot, but I also don’t want to lose any files! I really can’t complain.

    Reply
  18. I’m considering Backblaze for a single home/business computer with one external USB drive.

    If I go travelling without my computer (hence not doing any backups) for more than 30 days, will Backblaze delete ALL my file backups?

    I noticed the comment by someone who travelled for more than 30 days and the backup of their external USB drive was deleted, but I’m assuming their computer itself was connected to Backblaze at some point during their travels.

    Reply
    1. Yes. Backblaze will delete everything if it cannot detect the original location of the drive being connected to your computer.

      This is the reason why I lost precious times uploading several GBs of data. I was just lucky that I forgot to delete the contents in my external drive after I uploaded everything in that drive to Backblaze thinking that they would stay there forever.

      Unlimited? Yes. But it comes with some caveats.

      The only truly unlimited storage that does not delete anything if it cannot detect the drive at $59.99 a year is Amazon cloud. Note however that Amazon cloud is different from Amazon AWS. You can also store an unlimited amount of data in Amazon S3 or Amazon Glacier (or Google nearline) but it will cost you.

      Reply
  19. Terrible experience. Had a 3TB Seagate drive failure. It took over 72 hours to download a 455gb zip file which when unzipped 9 could only be unzipped with a particular product), I was left with 155gb of gibberish.
    Data lost

    Reply
  20. I’ve been using Backblaze for a few years now, and I have been very pleased with the service. But there are definitely both pros and cons.

    PROS:
    – You can set it and forget it. Rest at ease knowing that all your files are being backed up in the cloud without any further intervention on your part.
    – You can back up an unlimited number of files
    – Backblaze keeps a backup of several different versions of your files. If you realize that you made an undesirable change to a file, you can quickly revert to a previous version (up to 30 days old on the normal plan)
    – Great value for money

    CONS:
    – No matter how fast your internet connection might be, the backup process will be quite slow. This is most notable for your first backup. After that the incremental backups can keep up nicely.
    – The download restore process is quite slow (if you need to restore an entire hard drive, you can overcome this limitation by ordering a USB stick or external hard drive containing all your files)
    – You will eat up lots of bandwidth because you are essentially backing up everything. If you have an unlimited bandwidth plan, then this is not an issue.

    Reply
  21. I like these guys primarily because they have outsourced their pods and their whole procedure which does show bona fides unlike the hard core corporate demeanor taken by Amazon and the rest of the clan, who never hesitate to change plans and bills at a second’s notice caring little about the customer and long term plans, and which does say a lot about reliability. What good does durability and redundancy do if the company you save your precious files changes attitude at a moments notice with their interests taking precedence. On the other hand a company which does show its good will via these small gestures gets very high scores in my book.

    As to online backup in general, perhaps for a US resident with gigabit connections this does make sense but for us in Europe with 8/4 cable lines, it takes a mammoth time to have a decent backup considering that one will avoid destroying the whole bandwidth availability in the process.

    Whatever the case, thanks backblaze

    Reply
  22. My experience has not been good. My RAID failed while I was away on a three week trip. When I returned, I went back and forth with the manufacturer troubleshooting it and finally needed to send in in for repair. This took another couple of weeks. Ultimately it could not be repaired and I lost all of the data on it. Fortunately everything was backed up by Backblaze. But, if your drive has not been backed up for 30 days, Backblaze purges your data. I went back and forth with their customer support to find out how to stop this. They told me that if I turned off continuous backup and changed it to manual, the data would remain for 6 months. Nothing on their website speaks of this and I continued to receive messages that my data would be deleted. It was hugely stressful, like playing Russian Roulette. There is no way to to see from their dashboard when the data will be purged.

    I requested a hard drive of my backup, which was 4 TB. This took almost 2 weeks for them to “prepare” the drive to send it to me. I think that is outrageous. Nevertheless, I did receive the backup and restored it. However, when I went to re sync my files with their servers, that is when they decided to purge all of my data. Now I am faced with having to re upload it online and the estimated completion is three months!!. They will not accommodate my request to send them a drive to upload to their servers. Throughout this nightmare, their customer support has not demonstrated the least bit of concern for my problem. I would not recommend them to anyone.

    Reply
  23. We purchased 5 licenses and in the progress of testing Backblaze. As we intend to purchase for all laptops, it is important for us to be able to do silent installation with command line. While testing, found out if we uninstall and reinstall backblaze with ‘same’ user email, we receive error ‘account already exists’. I found out the fix from FAQ which can skip that problem (normal installation) but could not find the fix for command line. I contacted backblaze support team and they could not give me the answer. Seems like the guy I met from support team do not have enough knowledge for the software. Following is the marvelous reply from him.
    1) Hello there,
    Thank you for taking the time to write in,
    If you already have Backblaze installed on one machine, it will prevent you from installing it again. If you’re trying to reinstall Backblaze you will need to uninstall first.
    Let me know if you have any further questions.
    Bob
    The Backblaze Team
    2) Robert, Nov 3, 09:04 PDT:
    If you’re receiving the error message “account already exists” What you’ll need to do is when the installer asks you if you would like to create an account or sign in to an existing account you will need to sign in using the email and password you used to originally create the account.
    If you have any further issues, let me know.
    3) Robert, Nov 6, 16:29 PST:
    We don’t have a command line for installation.
    The issue you are experiencing is being caused by attempting to create a new account instead of logging into your existing one during installation. Please follow the directions from my previous email.

    Reply
  24. I’ve used Backblaze for several years but am finally trying to find a more reliable solution. I’ve had to re-upload all of my data four times because of file corruption issues. I have three external drives connected as well as my main hard drive, so it is a lot of data to have to upload.

    I recently had a system crash and needed to restore my data and found that random folders of files had not been backed up, even though BB was telling me that it was. Luckily I had my Time Machine backup to use. BB support said:

    “This was caused when a large number of files on your computer ended up having the same ID numbers that we assign them in our indexing file. We normally resolve this issue by reassigning those IDs and re-uploading those files, but it happened for many files just in the one log that you showed us. We are worried this may have happened to many more files, which can cause major problems with your backup in the future. So the best and safest thing would be to start over in complete new backup.

    This issue can sometimes be caused when the indexing file is deleted for whatever reason, by the user or by an overzealous security software or simply when the file gets corrupted. Starting over a new backup will create new clean indexing file.”

    The Backblaze pricing is great, the unlimited storage is great, and even the support is speedy, if not always that helpful. But, I don’t trust that it’s working as it should, at least not when you have large numbers of files like I do. Now being faced with re-uploading everything yet again, I’m looking for another solution. I’m considering Cloudberry with AWS storage.

    Suggestions anyone?

    Reply
  25. Cloudberry with AWS is a good choice. Though it will cost you quite a bit more, you should definitely see a speed advantage, especially since you can choose to backup to a data center near you. Acronis True Image, which we should have a review up of pretty soon, is also pretty impressive.

    Reply
    1. Ah, yes. I just checked and my storage costs for AWS WOULD be way higher and then restoring data (if it’s needed) costs way too much. I just looked at Acronis and it looks really good. I’m very interested in your review.

      Reply
  26. This review fails to mention a huge problem with Backblaze. But most reviews do, I assume because they all just test the backup, not the restore.

    In short: Backblaze’s private key encryption feature, which is central to their claim of security and privacy, is just a farce. Private key encryption only makes sense if the encryption key never leaves your hands. This is fine at Backblaze while you upload your backups. However, come the time you’re in need of a restore, there is NO OPTION of restoring your files without HANDING OVER your private key to Backblaze. THEY will decrypt your files on THEIR servers before handing them out to you, circumventing and nullifying the entire point of the encryption. This is true (as of January 2018) whether you do your restore yourself over the Internet, or have them send you a USB or HD drive (they will re-encrypt those for transport, but only after decrypting them using your “private” key).

    This may sound like a technical detail to those without any knowledge of information security, but you should be aware that to anyone who understands how private key encryption works, reading what I described above will make their toes curl. It’s a gross violation of the most fundamental rules and principles of the concept. What may be most worrying about that is the implication that whoever implemented it the way it has been over at Backblaze, obviously didn’t have even a basic understanding of information security. It makes you wonder what other parts of their system are in such a sloppy state.

    It ultimately makes most of Backblaze’s claims of privacy and security moot. Their claims only hold up if you never ever need to restore any of your backups, which is not really the point of doing backups.

    If you are still fine with doing a cloud backup considering that all your files will be essentially unencrypted and readable to anyone, then Backblaze can still be an option for you. Otherwise, hope that word spreads about this gargantuan flaw of theirs (bordering on false advertising, considering how much they boast about their encryption and security) and that they will finally wise up and FIX their broken restore process.

    Reply
  27. Thank you for pointing that out, Daniel — good spot. I no longer have my test account setup, but I do see that Backblaze verifies what you’re saying on its website. I’ll update the review and adjust our ranking.

    Reply
  28. This is a horrible service run by horrible people. Have used it because I have a Mac Mini and its limited to 750GB. I’m a photographer. So I’m in regular need of more space. And Timeline does not back up external drives. I believe I’ve been with them over 2 years. I started to hear noise from my drive and immediately got a new drive. Couldn’t get data off that drive. Whenever I opened the software it would greet me with “You’re backed up”. That’s false.. You dig deeper and I find out that only 1/3 of my day in 2 YEARS was backed. The rest was waiting in line.Smallest files first so my raw files are still waiting. And so I go to call them up and all they have is an answering machine. Then I go to their chat service and spent a wonderful time with Christopher telling me it was my dying drive. But Chris, the drive was not always dying. You’ve had two years to ul 1 TB. But you didn’t and you didn’t inform me of the failure. I’ve left numerous VM’s on their machine. But know call back. I will use all my energy to get this message out and see this company out with the rubbish. That’s 18 years of images. Hopefully a data recovery service will save me. And then I’ll be looking for both an onsite and online backup service that works for a Mac and external hard drives. Avoid Backblaze only if your files matter. Otherwise they’re an excellent choice.

    Reply
  29. I found the restore with a flash drive to be horrible. I’ve been a paid customer for 4 years and recently needed a restore. I paid the $99. for the flash drive to be sent to me because it was supposed to be faster than downloading on my own. It took 2 weeks to get the drive and unlock code did not work. Customer service just said, oh, we must have sent you the wrong code. How do I know that they didn’t send me the wrong flash drive? Mine could have been sent to someone else.

    They suggested that I pay $99 to order a new one and said they would refund the first $99, which they never did. I didn’t order a new one because what’s the point? We deleted the data on the one they sent and I did a zip file download to put on it. I plan to send it back to get my $99 back and then to cancel the service. They offer false security.

    Reply
  30. I used to backup with Carbonite, then the company was bought out. I didn’t bother to pick an alternative backup company for a long time because I dreaded the speed drain on my entire household network the initial backup causes. And it’s not just for a day–it’s for up to a week.

    So last WEEK I started a trial with Backblaze. I have about 200 GB of files (movies, text, music), likely a lot less. It’s been nearly a WEEK now and the backup proceeds painfully slowly. I use two computers on my home network, only one of which is being backed up. That machine is ethernet cable connected to my modem/router and I’m trying to work on my other machine. Web pages load so slowly I keep checking to see if something’s wrong with my machine. Forget streaming anything. I’m giving Backblaze two more days to complete the backup & my machine to return to normal Internet access speed. If that doesn’t happen, I’m ending my trial with Backblaze & will find another backup solution. The drain on my network is just unacceptable.

    BB looks great on paper, but so far in practice, I’m not impressed. I’d happily pay more for a faster service as speed is just as critical to me as security.

    Reply
    1. Hi, you have to log into the Backblaze interface and share files from the view/restore files tab. This feature isn’t available on the desktop client.

      Reply
  31. Disaster.
    I live with limited bandwidth. I drove to a Google fiber city two weekends in order to complete a backup. Upon return, Backblaze hiccuped and lost the bulk of my backup. No explanation other than I must have done something. Can I restore from an earlier backup? No, I can get it via a hard drive mailed to me, and then I can upload all over again! No indication of any concern about my situation.

    Reply
  32. For years I had been giving Backblaze my $$ to back up my computer and external hard drive and 2 weeks ago they deleted all of my stored data from my external drive because it “hadn’t connected with their servers for 30 days”. Due to travel I wasn’t able to resolve the problem (my drive had died) until I returned but figured “everything is OK!! Backblaze has all my data!!”….and they did, but what they didn’t tell me was that they were going to delete it ALL on June 26th.

    They didn’t send me a single email telling me they were going to delete my data. The last email they sent me was on June 14th staying my “drive was missing”.

    I know I know. It’s just data. But it’s also all of my photos taken with my non-phone camera including scores of baby and photos from both girls, it’s also $$$ of digital sewing patterns and my research from my fellowship among many other things.

    Backblaze told me they were “Sorry for the inconvenience”.

    If you are using them — switch! Other companies back up and store data INDEFINITELY.

    If you need a back up solution — choose anyone but Backblaze. Data back ups shouldn’t be drowning in details and terms and conditions and arbitrary rules out of your control. It’s your data. You are paying them to keep it safe.

    Reply
  33. Security key handling is the reason why I’m rejecting BackBlaze. If I ever need to recover anything, I will need to hand over the password to all of my content. As someone who works in IT, that’s a complete no-no. It’s surprising that they haven’t figured this out yet.

    Reply
  34. Never trust your data to Backblaze!!

    Their app is really buggy!

    After a long time I was finally able to backup my 7tb of data. Then the software started to use the complete RAM of my computer, making it completely useless.

    I contacted support and they wrote me: “Sorry but you have to delete your backup and start again from scratch”.

    When I asked why this would happen, their explanation was that “I shouldn’t rename folders which contains many files” (??)

    Stay away from Backblaze!!!

    Reply
  35. I have been using BackBlaze personal with no issues for myself and several of my clients PC’s/Laptops. As a consultant I attempted to have one of my clients use BackBlaze B2 for their servers and PC’s but had an issue with B2 installation for servers which support did not help much at all – actually no help as it turns out. My client went to iDrive with their 14 servers (385 Tb of data) and 85 PC’s and all works well. An Image backup was desired but BackBlaze could not provide one. Too bad since I like BackBlaze but only for personal backup as it turns out.

    Reply
  36. Backblaze personal plan totally saved my bacon. Restored 4TB of media – on a failed drive – over an internet connection in less than 6 days. No fee to download. Backed up newly formatted drive overnight through deduplication process, no errors. At $6 per month for unlimited storage, and access to B2 for zero knowledge object storage at a very reasonable additional charge, I have wholly no complaints.

    Reply
  37. I do a three-tier backup: 1) Time Machine (my machines are all Macs) on an external drive; 2) Carbon Copy Cloner (a daily bootable image backup) to an external drive; 3) Offsite cloud-based backup. I am considering BackBlaze as an alternative to CrashPlan.

    I started out with CrashPlan’s “home” plan, then switched to business when they dropped home, and now my cost (after one year) has jumped to $20/month for two computers. So I’m looking to reduce cost, while still retaining good backup functionality.

    BackBlaze is looking good (I’ve been using the trial version), but am a bit disappointed by some of the con’s pointed out in the review (poor implementation of security, web-based restore, and single-computer backup per account). That said, I do want “set-it-and-forget-it” backup and BackBlaze looks especially good in this regard.

    Reply
  38. I really don’t recommend this service. It is pointless and by the time I needed it, the restore was not available because the disk somehow stopped back up and all data which was backed up deleted. I got stupid answers from support that sounds like cheap excuses.

    Reply
  39. I thought this was a decent service while I was just relying on it for back-ups during the LOOONG period of time I’ve been a subscriber. I will be cancelling before my annual renewal comes up because it turns out, Backblaze is completely worthless.

    I hadn’t needed to restore any files in the years I’ve been a subscriber until one day last December I had a complete failure of a drive in my MacBook Pro. I installed a new drive and OS and then tried to connect my MacBook to Backblaze in order to recover my data.

    This turned out to be a largely unsuccessful process.

    Backblaze would not recognize my machine (apparently they don’t use MAC addresses but instead, some other method for connection to a new drive). To get your Backblaze account working on your computer, you must sign up for a trial rather than simply logging into your existing account and then re-download the files – but Backblaze doesn’t work like that. I tried over multiple months to get my 1TB of files back using the trial but was never able to get a complete download nor could I get my computer attached to my account.

    Eventually the trial ended and while it did back up my computer during the trial, it really didn’t need to since I HAD NO DATA YET ON MY COMPUTER TO BACK UP!

    Warning to people thinking Backblaze might be a good solution for recovering from a catastrophic drive failure:

    1. The method by which Backblaze connects your computer to your account is simply idiotic. Requiring a trial subscription that will expire that you need to connect to your original account did not work for me. I tried working with their support staff but they were unable to get me a solution. I could never get my MacBook Pro to reconnect to my account – only the trial.

    2. You can’t select your entire back-up and download all at once. You must do it in smaller steps. Trying to figure out how much of your back-up you can download at any one time is tedious and likely to result in not being accurate in choosing which files you have already downloaded vs. what you haven’t. You have to drill down into your folder structure on their web client and choose bits and pieces to download, then later reconstruct your structure once you have downloaded. You have to write down the files you have downloaded so that you don’t waste time downloading them again. I tried maintaining a spreadsheet of what I’d grabbed but the other problem is that Backblaze gives you the data in Zip files which you then must unZip then go through and verify which files you downloaded. And keep in mind, you have to do this for tens of thousands of files.

    3. The Backblaze downloader is junk. It would continually give me errors. It would start a download then I’d come in the next day to my office to find that the download had failed. I finally gave up on it and went back to their website.

    4. Their website process for populating your available backup data is SLOOOOW. Plus, every time you choose the download source, it has to repopulate. If you are trying to download a terabyte of data, this process of choosing the backup, waiting for it to populate the available files, downloading the available files (in small chunks) and then going back and doing that again, can take you weeks or maybe never (as it did with me).

    Bottom line, paying for a service that doesn’t deliver when you absolutely need it is infuriating.

    If I could give this service negative stars I would.

    Reply
    1. Jamie, I totally agree. I’m with crashplan and looking for a more efficient replacement. Seems I should be happy with CP as it is nowhere as bad even after their recent price rise to $16/mthUSD. At least CP can download fairly well for a restore. be happy with what I have. CP is fine – can recommend after reading the disasters here with BB!

      Reply
  40. The 30 day limit puts me off. No chance my backup will complete in 30 days with our upload speeds. And I highly doubt I could do a full restore within 30 days either. So net result would be lost data.
    I had hard drive issues in Feb that took 6 weeks back and forth with support to determine nothing could be done and the data is lost – had my backups been with backblaze, my backups would have expired too so all data would be unrecoverable. that’s just totally ridiculous!

    Reply
  41. I left Backblaze, very poor communication, they froze mij pc twice without giving a reason, then they force you in a trial of 15 days, and restart to backup my 700 GB’s, these days are too short for all files, then they kick you out again en demand a new payment, but I payed 2 years in advance. No communication. Bad company…

    Reply
  42. Last month I suffered the “blue screen of death”. MY computer screen was completely empty of all icons, If I ever have that situation again how do I download my backedup programs etc???

    Reply
  43. I tried Backblaze and a major competitor. The initial backup of 280G took about 36 hrs, which seemed a bit slow. The competitor took a couple of hours. The reason why the competitor was so much quicker is that the competitor only backed up a fraction of the data. It took 5 days interacting with tech support to determine that there was a fundamental wall about backing up certain file types (crucial to me). Backblaze on the other hand made it trivial to get a full backup; and responded within 2 hours to a technical question (not 48 hours) with a clear answer.

    Reply
  44. DO NOT USE FOR HOT CLOUD STORAGE! I kid you not, it takes them 12 SECONDS to load 2 images totaling 12kb. Absolutely unacceptable.

    Reply
  45. I am still in the trail stage of Backblaze, but I am increasingly not-impressed. After an initial uploading of data at a reasonable speed, two weeks down the line it is consistently slow upload – indeed very very slow, when backing up my remaining data. They say in the blurb that it is nothing about them controlling this, giving the impression it’s ‘your’ problem. But I know this is not the case [a] the first batch uploaded very quickly on the first day, [b] my uploads of large files to other sites is much quicker. So it’s not me, it seems to be some controlled ‘gateway’ allowing only so much max data a day to upload. Other people have also pointed out that once your data is up, you cannot just ‘download’ it all again – there are limits to size of downloads and for larger data EXTRA costs will be charged. I am now looking for alternatives.

    Reply
  46. Restore for large amounts of data is incredibly slow. Takes forever to create zip files of any size. Getting the mailed drive also takes many days or in my case weeks just for the drive to be prepared and mailed. You can send the drive back for full credit, you’re out only the postage. I use it for the unlimited storage. I have tens of terabytes.

    Reply
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