Weirdly, reading this had the net impact of me signing up to Backblaze.
I had no idea that it was such a good bargain. I used to be a Crashplan user back in the day, and I always thought Backblaze had tiered limits.
I've been using Duplicati to sync a lot of data to S3's cheapest tape-based long term storage tier. It's a serious pain in the ass because it takes hours to queue up and retrieve a file. It's a heavy enough process that I don't do anything nearly close to enough testing to make sure my backups are restorable, which is a self-inflicted future injury.
Here's the thing: I'm paying about $14/month for that S3 storage, which makes $99/year a total steal. I don't use Dropbox/Box/OneDrive/iCloud so the grievances mentioned by the author are not major hurdles for me. I do find the idea that it is silently ignoring .git folders troubling, primarily because they are indeed not listed in the exclusion list.
I am a bit miffed that we're actively prevented from backing up the various Program Files folders, because I have a large number of VSTi instruments that I'll need to ensure are rcloned or something for this to work.
> Here's the thing: I'm paying about $14/month for that S3 storage, which makes $99/year a total steal. I don't use Dropbox/Box/OneDrive/iCloud so the grievances mentioned by the author are not major hurdles for me. I do find the idea that it is silently ignoring .git folders troubling, primarily because they are indeed not listed in the exclusion list.
A big difference here is that Backblaze only keeps deleted/changed files for 30 days. Deleted files can go unnoticed for some time, especially if done by a malicious app or ignorant AI.
I do notice in their GUI that they offer a >30 memory for extra $:
30-Day Version History (Current)
Included
1-Year Version History
Forever Version History
$.006/GB/Month for versions changed or deleted more than 1 year ago
They are not giving much information here at all. The above is not a pasting artifact; their page literally doesn't give any indication of how they price the 1-year history. Presumably it's not just as simple as click to 12x your retention for free.
Meanwhile, it's even more unclear whether that $.006/GB is assessed for change deltas or for the total file size. Indeed, it's not clear if it's assessed against your entire fileset or just files that changed.
(Ironic that their ex-employee wrote: "In this case, it is always kind of scary for Backblaze to just quietly change a setting from one setting to a different setting in the product for the customer without the customer taking that action themselves." — when that's what happened in this case.)
I don't use Backblaze, but I found the Version History doc for you:
About 2 years ago now, we started including the 1-Year Extended Version History for all accounts.
We did not automatically turn it on for everyone, as it is not something everyone wants.
But there is no longer an extra charge for the 1-Year Extended Version History option when enabled.
You can also enable the Forever Extended Version History option, which will keep any deleted/changed/updated file for a year as part of the base plan, and then after that year that file will begin accruing a storage cost at our current B2 per GB storage cost.
So if you have 1TB of files in the Forever Extended Version History plan, it would cost you an extra $6 per month on top of your current plan.
The storage charge is only charged on files that have not been seen on the customer's computer in over 365 days.
I hope this helps, but please don't hesitate to email us still if you have questions. We are here to help.
This happened to me, a drive I rarely use silently died, and backblaze gave no indication that suddenly the whole drive was missing. Customer support explained to me how "backup" doesn't actually mean "backup"
I'm happy to pay an annual fee for a one-size fits all approach that I don't have to think about. I read the post and I'm just saying that his blockers are not blockers for me.
I would ask you: what is the better alternative? That's not a rhetorical question; they don't have my credit card details for another two weeks.
Right. If you read what I actually said, I am not captured by Backblaze.
I said that I want a solution that I don't have to think about. I'm happy to pay for not thinking about it. If that's not Blackblaze, do you have any good suggestions?
You lose a bit of control. With S3 you can preprocess (transform, index, filter, downcode, etc) before storing. You can index metadata in place (names, sizes, metadata) for low-cost searching.
As for testing recovery, you can validate file counts, sizes + checksums without performing recovery.
A few shell scripts give you the power of advanced enterprise backup, whereas backblaze only supports GUI restores.
> I've been using Duplicati to sync a lot of data to S3's cheapest tape-based long term storage tier.
There are actually a lot of cheaper S3-compatible services out there, (like Backblaze B2, or Cloudflare R2). They pricing may work out to just backup to these directly. Certainly gives you far more control than Backblaze Backup.
The comments are full of people saying the restore didn't work. If that's not important to you, you could save the extra $99 and just not bother backing it up. Given your use case and space, I'd just get a storage box from hetzner and enable nightly zfs snapshots
I've read through the comments, and the vast majority of them are folks who are justifiably angry about Git, cloud storage and VeraCrypt exclusions that were quietly introduced. All fully legit points that don't represent blockers for me personally, though I would have to eat my hat if they arbitrarily decided to stop backing up something like MP3s and didn't tell me.
I checked out what it would cost to store my data on rsync.net and it's ~1500/year.
There are a few folks who lost data to corrupted files on the BackBlaze side. That is much more worrisome, but still, the point is to go in eyes open. It's clear that it should not be used as an "only" backup! I already backup locally and rsync critical data offsite. I'm all about adding several "third option" lifelines that I hope will keep me covered in extreme situations.
You should consider Backblaze B2. It's not unlimited, but it's S3 compatible storage at a competitive price, without the limitations of Personal Backup.
I had no idea that it was such a good bargain. I used to be a Crashplan user back in the day, and I always thought Backblaze had tiered limits.
I've been using Duplicati to sync a lot of data to S3's cheapest tape-based long term storage tier. It's a serious pain in the ass because it takes hours to queue up and retrieve a file. It's a heavy enough process that I don't do anything nearly close to enough testing to make sure my backups are restorable, which is a self-inflicted future injury.
Here's the thing: I'm paying about $14/month for that S3 storage, which makes $99/year a total steal. I don't use Dropbox/Box/OneDrive/iCloud so the grievances mentioned by the author are not major hurdles for me. I do find the idea that it is silently ignoring .git folders troubling, primarily because they are indeed not listed in the exclusion list.
I am a bit miffed that we're actively prevented from backing up the various Program Files folders, because I have a large number of VSTi instruments that I'll need to ensure are rcloned or something for this to work.