I am a convert!
Updated June 23, 2019

I am a convert!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Backblaze

I use Backblaze for backing up important files in my home office. It serves a couple of purposes:
  1. I am trying to go more paperless, primarily as a way to increase my flexibility. But with that comes increased risk that there is a computer issue and then you lose important documents. Yes, there is always a risk with paper that there would be a fire or something, but with modern construction techniques, fires are relatively rare. It is more common, unfortunately, for computers to one day just stop working altogether (including, potentially, a hard drive).
  2. With the passage of time, more and more critical documents are received in a digital native format rather than paper. So each year, the number of important documents that I have digitally seems to be increasing.

Pros

  • Regular updates: I like that it sends me e-mails confirming everything has been backed up.
  • Simple: it just seems to work in the background really well.
  • Comprehensive: I have been converted to the Backblaze approach of just backing up the entire hard drive.

Cons

  • File sharing: I know they have a Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage option where users can upload some files to the cloud, but it is not as user-friendly as some other options (which is fine -- you don't need to compete with every product).
  • Backblaze has been more cost-effective than paying for extra storage on a freemium service (Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, etc.).
  • Data back-up is a form of insurance, and I think the "premium" I am paying for Backblaze is very fair.
  • It serves my overall objective of going paperless, which makes it easier to take my files anywhere, reduces the amount of space I need to work, etc.
So there are two ways in which Backblaze stacks up well against its competition.
  • For a while I backed-up files at my home office using a combination of free or "freemium" services, depending on the relative storage limits. These limits are typically less than 100 gigabytes. When I started looking at the cost of paying a monthly subscription fee to one of those services, Backblaze started to be much more cost-effective, with no limits on file size storage.
  • While I was originally skeptical of backing up my whole system, it turns out this is a better model than just dragging and dropping files to a specific folder that gets uploaded to the cloud. I guess I was originally worried that backing up my whole hard drive would be a giant drag on computing resource (slowing my computer down), but that has not been the case with Backblaze.
Backblaze is well suited to individuals who have a relatively large volume/size of critical files, so that they exceed the file size limits of the "free" or "freemium" backup solutions (such as Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive and MEGASync).
I think it is also well suited to individuals who are relatively "forgetful" and would not drag and drop (or save) their files to the applicable back-up folder. For a long time, I was skeptical about the structure of backing up my whole hard drive -- there are lots of system files or program files that I don't actually need backed-up. But now I have a little bit of a piece of mind that, even if there is important data saved deep in the crevices of Windows, that it has been backed-up should I ever need to recover it.

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