
How Backblaze Got Started (2017) - slyall
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-backblaze-got-started/?hn=1
======
aikinai
I see a lot of praise for Backblaze’s services and support and I just wanted
to warn that I’ve had the opposite experience and am in the middle of
switching to another service.

I’ve used Backblaze since 2010 and in the past year contacted support twice.
In both cases, they were only interested in quoting esoteric policies and
technical limitations rather than actually solving my issue. As in, “Oh that’s
because our system works like this and this and has this limitation.” Ooookay,
that’s not what I asked; I asked how to solve this problem of mine that your
poor system is causing.

For example, the most recent time was when I started getting emails warning
that all of my external drives were offline and my data would be soon deleted.
Instead of “Very sorry about that, here’s how to fix the issue,” I got this
long response about the ways their system looks for new files in serial and it
can get jammed and start ignoring everything, with no apology, no
acknowledgement this was their issue, and no solution. I had to go fishing for
solutions and drag the information out of them to finally figure out what I
needed to do. Which it turns out is to get back an internal drive (totally
unrelated to the other drives Backblaze abandoned) I had physically removed
and repurposed, put it back the computer, wait a long time for Backblaze to
see it, then uncheck that drive in Backblaze and remove it again. This was a
good example showing how the client design is poor and the support is worse.

The other two major technical issues that convinced me I need a new service
asap are:

1\. The client will lie to you and you never know what’s really backed up.
Even if you use the secret alt-click to force a full drive scan, it can still
miss files and tell you fully backed up when files from days ago are still
nowhere to be found. Luckily I’ve never actually needed to do a restore, but I
almost thought I did one time and would have been furious at all the missing
files I noticed.

2\. This might not matter to some people but absolutely no meta data is backed
up.

I hate to badmouth them since the company seems like a really good citizen,
they project a very positive image, and their software seems good on the
surface. But when you dig in, there are a lot of issues with the software and
service, and I recently realized having Backblaze wouldn’t actually reassure
me in the event of a local disaster, so migrated away and I wanted to warn
others too.

~~~
timcederman
I had an extremely disappointing experience with Backblaze's support team
(documented here - [http://www.cederman.com/2016/12/tracking-down-rogue-
bandwidt...](http://www.cederman.com/2016/12/tracking-down-rogue-bandwidth-a-
story-of-comcast-data-caps-and-offsite-backup/)), and in the process of
researching the issues I was having, discovered a rabbit hole of reports of
folks having issues restoring their data.

Backblaze have not acknowledged my issues at all, even though I have tried to
engage with the team numerous times.

I switched to CrashPlan, and have had to do two full restores since doing so,
both of which went flawlessly and quickly. The Java client is a bit
cumbersome, but it's reliable, and I am much happier with the performance and
support I've received from them.

~~~
icebraining
Crashplan is killing off their home service, though. I've switched to Arq +
Backblaze's B2, we'll see how that goes.

~~~
tedmiston
I gave Arq a go but usability wise it has some catching up to do. It's hard to
find an arbitrary file that's been deleted to restore unless you know exactly
where it lived on disk. The search didn't work too well for me.

------
ohhhoh
> Then one of our co-founders Tim wondered, "what if we didn’t ask any
> questions and just backed up everything?"

But that is not what they do exactly:

"we do not backup your operating system, application folder, or temporary
internet files that are transient and would not be useful in the future.
Backblaze also excludes podcasts in iTunes."

[https://www.backblaze.com/remote-backup-
everything.html](https://www.backblaze.com/remote-backup-everything.html)

Is there an online backup service that makes a complete image that you can
just pop a boot CD in, and restore from online? That seems like the holy
grail.

~~~
atYevP
Yev from Backblaze here -> Backblaze isn't intended to be a bare-metal
restore, just the data that's on the machine. In addition to the ones listed
below, you might also take a look at Acronis - they do good work. Not sure if
they have an offline component, but you could use their software to make a
system image, and then toss that image in the cloud (like with Backblaze B2)
and then grab it whenever needed. Might work well for what you're looking for!

------
abalone
The rise of cloud storage has totally transformed the "backup" problem. Just
by using cloud storage, you get near-realtime offsite backup without thinking
about it. Vendors like Apple have built it into the OS. It's really one of the
nicer things that's happened in personal computing lately.

Granted, there's still benefit to doing a traditional "snapshot" style backup.
Something like Backblaze is still a good idea. But arguably it's more of a
belt-and-suspenders thing at this point. (Especially if your cloud storage
offers version history.)

While I've loved Backblaze's blog posts over the years, seems like this was
not on their radar ten years ago. They were seeing it just as a traditional
backup/restore problem. I see they've since introduced a cloud storage product
(B2), but it doesn't sound that competitive.[1] Here's iCloud for comparison:

\- $0.005/gb/mo (2TB plan) with unlimited data transfer

\- Baked deep into the OS, totally automatic

\- Intelligently purges local files when storage runs low

\- Integrates with Photos app for optimized media storage

\- Syncs _while the device is asleep_ (Power Nap)

\- HSM-protected keychain backup (geeky but _groundbreaking_ security
feature)[2]

(Not so nice: doesn't do version history. Dropbox does.)

Again, I've really enjoyed Backblaze's posts and hope they continue thriving
in this new landscape.

[1] [https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-
storage.html](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html)

[2]
[https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Krstic.p...](https://www.blackhat.com/docs/us-16/materials/us-16-Krstic.pdf)

~~~
mintplant
> The rise of cloud storage has totally transformed the "backup" problem. Just
> by using cloud storage, you get near-realtime offsite backup without
> thinking about it

Then an unaccountable algorithm closes your Google account, and suddenly all
that data is inaccessible. Your cloud storage provider's backups are not your
backups.

~~~
cm2187
I agree. Cloud is OK as backup, as in if it goes away that’s ok, I can still
create a new backup from the live data. But not for live data. I found having
a synology NAS to be a good solution. I sync my data mostly from home anyway
so it is fast (runs locally) while also being accessible from the outside.

~~~
atYevP
Yev from Backblaze -> we're seeing a lot more folks go the NAS route, and so
we're trying to work with all of the NAS providers to get B2 integrated into
their ecosystems. We love the idea of having "working files" on the computer a
"local archive" on the NAS, and then files forked off to B2 for an offsite
component. 3-2-1 Backup at its finest!

------
pgrote
Backblaze is one of the few companies where I pay for a service and am 100%
satisfied. I've never had an issue with the service and when I've had
questions they are prompt and informative. I use them for personal and
business backups.

They are more than happy to share what they build and we've used their storage
pods plans to build 2 for work.

~~~
gogopuppygogo
I felt that way until I needed to complete a restore of a backup that was
roughly 500GB in size. It took around two weeks to restore on their servers
for me to download as a zip. I posted on here about it at the time and the CTO
reached out to let me know the server the restored started on was very old and
they were going to decommission it afterward. I hope they did. I hope others
don't wait that long.

I also really wish they would let customers buy a hard drive with multiple
backups on it instead of one hard drive per backup. It would be great to
purchase one drive every year with all the backups on it and not have to worry
about downloading backups for retention.

~~~
scarface74
Wouldn't just asking them to send a hard drive of your backup have been
faster? You could have either kept the hard drive or returned it and got your
money back.

~~~
icebraining
Since the server (and not the Internet connection) was the bottleneck, it
wouldn't have helped, as they would still have to read the files to copy them
to the new drive.

~~~
brianwski
Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze

> Since the server (and not the Internet connection) was the bottleneck, it
> wouldn't have helped

As Yev mentioned above, we MASSIVELY sped up restores fairly recently (August
2017). We understood waiting for restores for a few days was an inconvenience
for customers and I'm personally very proud of the results. Would LOVE for you
to try it again, but I fully understand if you don't want to. Here is the blog
post about the faster restores (and faster backups):
[https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-backup-5-0-rapid-
access...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/cloud-backup-5-0-rapid-access/)

------
gallerdude
There's a good moral here. Everytime they had a question, they asked their
users. Users don't lie.

~~~
atYevP
Yev from Backblaze here -> That's right! For better or worse they usually tell
it like they see it, and that helps us inform decisions!

~~~
dhbanes
Yev, I’m a new Backblaze customer and am worried by some of the negative
reports by other HNers above.

Would you mind taking the time to respond to the less positive comments about
Backblaze rather than just thanking the two positive commenters? That would
make me feel much more comfortable relying on Backblaze in the future.

~~~
atYevP
Hey there sorry - if you look at my reply history you'll see I try to hit most
topics, but when I looked last night those were the only comments there :D
I'll get to the rest!

------
mikestew
Such a great service that I’ve never used it for its intended purpose
(thankfully, except for very occasional verification), and forget about it
until I get the “we’re charging your credit card” email. I then delete the
mail, happily let the charge go through, and proceed to forget that it’s
there. I backup to a NAS, from which important stuff is backed to another,
single drive. Backblaze is a small price for the “house burns down” scenario.
Yeah, I could rotate drives offsite, but I’m not going to do that, and neither
are most of us after a couple months, if at all.

~~~
atYevP
Yev from Backblaze here -> glad to see you're at least trying the restore
process! You'd be surprised how many folks forgo that in its entirety and then
panic should they need to restore. Always good to check the system out from
upload to download! Kudos!

------
kup0
I use B2 (sparingly so far) for personal storage and it's been a good
experience. I prefer B2 since it's permanent and very inexpensive per GB.

------
dkd903
I cancelled their account. It has a weird policy of deleting backups from hard
drives that have not been connected within the last 3 months. Very weird
policy.

~~~
aikinai
It’s one month, not three, but the policy is totally reasonable since they
charge one flat rate to back up your whole computer (not everything your
computer has ever seen). If they didn’t delete disconnected drives, they’d be
offering unlimited storage for $50/year which is obviously unsystainable. The
plan is already as impressive as it is considering how much data you can
easily connect to one computer.

I also have plenty of complaints about the service (posted above), but there’s
nothing weird about this policy as written.

What’s weird is when permanently connected drives get classified as
disconnected (see my other post).

~~~
dpwm
Whilst I agree the policy is reasonable given the amount they charge per
month, it's something I've only learnt about from reading comments and not
from their marketing.

In fact, their marketing claims "Never lose a file again. Get unlimited cloud
backup for your Mac or PC. Just $5/month."

Only on reading the help does it seem that if the client doesn't connect with
the server within 6 months, then all your backups are gone. I'm not saying
this is unreasonable, but it seems a bit counterintuitive given you are still
paying for the service. I just still haven't found the bit about disconnected
drives.

I really like Backblaze's articles on HDDs and they really seem to be customer
focused, but I had to dig in the help to find this.

~~~
newscracker
I don't use Backblaze, but I suspect from the above comments that the client
does not even display some kind of warning saying, "Hey, you haven't connected
this drive for X months. We just wanted to let you know that this data will be
deleted from our systems in Y days. Please connect the drive to make sure we
retain the data." and then proceed to display this warning periodically a few
times, like a countdown (but not annoying enough to be shown on every run of
the client). This kind of warning would be my suggestion to the Backblaze
team. This becomes more important with SSD based machines that generally have
a lot lesser storage than before while people are taking a lot more pictures
and videos and resorting to storing them in cheaper (per GB) external HDDs (at
least the people who do like to have a local copy).

~~~
atYevP
Yev from Backblaze here -> If we detect a missing drive we send a warning
email at the 14-day, 21-day, and 28-day mark to remind folks to plug them in -
or create a restore if they no longer have the drives. If they still don't
plug in the drive after those days, then the backup does get removed, but we
do try to warn them ahead of time!

