Backblaze has saved my files (and butt) numerous times
May 27, 2015
Backblaze has saved my files (and butt) numerous times
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
version 4.x
Overall Satisfaction with Backblaze
Backblaze is our automatic remote back-up solution. It's installed on every computer in and out of the office: servers, laptops, and desktops too. It operates continuously and silently in the background most of the time. It's so good you forget about it until disaster strikes. A failed hard drive, an accidentally deleted file, or something worse - then you realize you've got a reliable, off-site back-up that you can quickly access and restore. We've used it to recover lost files and dead drives. I've personally used lots of backup solutions in the past. Tolis BRU, Dantz Retrospect, Apple's Time Machine, Carbonite are some of them. But I was always disappointed in some manner when a restore was needed - until Backblaze that is. So far, it has not let me down, and it's impressed me again and again and again.
- Backblaze offers unlimited backups for a low-low cost per computer. Essentially, it's $5 for an all you can eat back-up buffet.
- The interface is simple - both on the computer side when you're configuring it. But more importantly, the online interface to search through your stored data is simple and efficient. Once you find what you're missing you can restore via downloading a zipped archive, requesting a USB drive, or you can have large data loaded onto a hard drive.
- It has never let me down - which in the world of remote back-up is amazing.
- Occasionally, if you've made lots of changes to your files, Backblaze will kick into action and slow down your computer. Normally you don't notice this but sometimes it does become a resource hog. But... in the latest versions, you can simply pause the running backup or restrict backups to run only off-hours.
- One feature I'd like to see added, the ability to pay for long term storage regardless if you connect your drive / device every 30 days. That's their cut-off time frame - if you've backed up a computer - but don't connect it to the internet once very 30 days - they actually delete all the data stored for that device. They give you plenty of warnings - but it'd be nice to have an option to pay for unlimited or longer retention.
- I'd also like to see an easier way of "swapping" a device inside of their system. For instance, if you upgrade your computer, you can't convert your old computer into your new one and simply append data to what is already stored. You have to start from scratch and your old data is probably lost for good after 30 days unless you keep the computer around some how and connect it once per month.
- An intern deleted a work project that went unnoticed for a few months until the job started up again. It was an innocent mistake but one that would have been costly - since rebuilding the project files would have taken dozens of hours if not days. But once we noticed the project files were missing - we simply searched through that computer's backblaze archive and restored the working files to a zip.
- On a personal side - I maintain a media server at my home - storing my vast iTunes library - and yes it's protected by Backblaze. The media server is in my basement beneath my kitchen. When our dishwasher failed it rained water down onto my fancy server, the 6TB RAID 5 drive, the Apple Time Machine external drive, and the Mac Mini itself. Needless to say none of the devices were thrilled about their impromptu showering and they all failed miserably. After replacing the Mac Mini server I used Backblaze's restore to hard drive feature and had it shipped to me - saving me a trip to the store to buy another hard drive and saving the time to download all the media again.
- Carbonite,tolis bru,Dantz Retrospect Multi-Server
Carbonite gets expensive as you scale your data and the number of devices. Tolis Bru proved too challenging and unreliable to effectively manage multiple devices that are both local and remote. And Dantz Retrospect's Multi-Server license simply became undesireable since it was local storage only onto tapes - so it wasn't truly disaster proof. Sure, we took the tapes offsite for storage but it's not the same nor as simple as Backblaze. Backblaze simply works in the background and more importantly it works when you need it the most - when you're trying to restore.
Using Backblaze
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Remote backups
- Continuous backups