
Are the days of unlimited online backup over? Our answer is: No. - BlazingFrog
http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/02/03/backblaze-is-committed-to-unlimited-backup/
======
pella
<http://www.backblaze.com/remote-backup-everything.html>

"

•All Your Data With the exception of your operating system, applications, or
temporary files.

•Files up to 9 GB in Size The default of 4 GB can be raised or lowered in the
preferences. iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom use library bundles that will be
backed up at any size.

•Connected Drives USB and Firewire hard drives and internal drives connected
at the time of the install or added later in the settings panel.

•Not Network Drives Currently we do not backup network drives (NAS drives )

"

"Excluded Files Backblaze does not want to waste your bandwidth or Backblaze
datacenter disk space. Thus, we do not backup your operating system,
application files, or temporary internet files that are transient and would
not be useful in the future. You can see these exclusions by clicking on
“Settings…” in the Backblaze Control Panel and selecting the Exclusions tab.

Some of these excluded files include:

-ISO (Disk Images),

-VMC VHD VMSN (Virtual Drives),

-SYS (System Configuration & Drivers),

-EXE (Application Files).

Backblaze also doesn't backup backups like Time Machine and Retrospect RDB.
Backblaze also excludes podcasts in iTunes."

~~~
phillco
ISOs are pretty useful in the future.

------
FiReaNG3L
A company offering 'unlimited' anything does it either because they want to
attract new customers and switch to a tiered plan later, or because they plan
to go bankrupt in the short term.

~~~
jellicle
This is just not necessarily true. There are plenty of situations where there
are natural limits to the consumption of whatever is being provided. Unlimited
local calling. Unlimited tap water. Unlimited Chinese buffet. The average
consumption of your customers is much more important than the consumption of
your single largest customer in many (not all) cases. The one guy who comes in
and eats 14 plates of buffet food does not change the profitability of the
enterprise.

~~~
FiReaNG3L
The problem comes when your service becomes very popular, and 100 of those 14
plates-eating guys show up.

~~~
amalcon
That's only a problem if the relative proportion of 14 plates-eating-guys
increases. So, maybe if your buffet develops a following specifically among 14
plates-eating guys, this could be a problem.

------
hcurtiss
FWIW, Cloudberry to Amazon S3 works nicely, and super cheap (I guess this is
relative -- ~9 cents per GB). I believe Jungledisk does something similar.

Of course, S3 is unlimited too, but the pricing model is different. With
multi-part upload and large object support (up to 5TB IIRC), I think it's a
pretty good option.

~~~
amock
I don't think anyone is arguing that if you're willing to pay per GB you can't
get as much storage as you want, just that providing unlimited storage for a
small fixed price is not sustainable.

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asnyder
After reading this post I'm tempted to sign up, but I'm fearful, $5 a month is
a great price, I would quickly move our backups over (hundreds of GBs), but it
doesn't seem sustainable... what am I missing?

~~~
amock
I used BackBlaze for a while before I switched to Linux and it worked pretty
well. At one point I wanted to download a lot of my files at once and the 80GB
zip file they provided didn't work, but I was able to download it in smaller
pieces. I think that by limiting file size, not providing a Linux client, and
not backing up network drives they try to avoid some of the largest storage
consumers.

~~~
BlazingFrog
Good point. Also, unlike others I'd tried in the past (iDrive, Carbonite), you
don't have direct access to your backed up data. You essentially file a online
"request" to retrieve this or that file/folder and wait for their email to
tell you where to get it. It probably allows them to store the data in a more
compartmentalized, potentially cheaper, environment. Since most people will
almost never attempt to restore data, it's not a big problem.

------
bambax
What does "per computer" mean? I have some file servers in my home (readynas
and nslu2): how would I use Blackblaze to back them up?

~~~
alextgordon
Essentially you can't. Backblaze doesn't allow you to backup NAS[1], and as
the devices in question can't run the backblaze software, you can't pay for
them as separate computers.

[1]: <http://www.backblaze.com/help.html#nas>

~~~
bambax
Thanks for this answer! (Indeed it would have been too good to be true).

BTW I just installed Tarsnap on the ReadyNAS NV+, it works! It's really slow
because the CPU on the NV+ is quite lame, but for simple text files it's
fantastic and creates peace of mind.

------
jefe78
Where is the native Linux client?

~~~
barrkel
This is why I use CrashPlan. Not just Linux, but my Nexenta machine as well
(Solaris kernel - though it takes some tweaking), which comes in handy as it's
running my NAS (zfs).

------
ipster
"Won’t users store more data in the future? Yes. Users have been creating more
data since people started chiseling stone tablets. We are sure users will
store more data in the future."

haha...

------
daimyoyo
This link is spam. And not the delicious, meat in a can kind.

~~~
BlazingFrog
Not sure why you'd say that. I just wanted to open a discussion on the future
and viability of online backup companies like Backblaze, Mozy... I'm sure a
lot of HN readers use such a service and have an opinion about it.

~~~
salemh
I'm unsure why Google doesn't hop into the space with their incredible
infrastructure and talent pool. A tab in my Gmail (Like Documents, Calender,
etc) with Backup, would be ridiculously nice. You also can't have much faith
if you believe Google would be unreliable in the future as a viable backup
partner.

Mozy seems to be doing well, but has lost of Director / VP level candidates.
Interested to hear about others options in online backup, and a "startup"
especially in regards to the low-pricing / unlimited speak screams caution.

Edit: Just interesting on Backblaze and a failed M&A.

"At this point in the story, the Backblaze team is thinking about how to reach
out to potential buyers.

Spamming every person at every company was not an option as we wanted this
process to remain confidential. Fortunately for sellers, every legitimate
potential strategic buyer has dedicated resources for M&A. Usually it's a
primary function of the corporate development group, although sometimes it's
business development or finance (under the CFO). "
[http://www.horizonpartners.com/article/things-fall-apart-
par...](http://www.horizonpartners.com/article/things-fall-apart-part-ii)

------
shaggyfrog
Saw this link, read up a bit, and then I decided to sign up for Backblaze. It
wasn't until I went to download their software on my Mac OS X Server 10.5 box
that the website alerted me that it isn't compatible with PPC machines
(although it does support 10.5 on Intel machines).

Very annoyed. Cancelled order.

~~~
jakewalker
Very annoyed? Hasn't the tide turned enough that you have to be looking for
affirmative evidence that a company DOES support PPC at this point, rather
than assuming they do until told otherwise?

~~~
shaggyfrog
Why the -1?

And why shouldn't I be annoyed? It didn't tell me I couldn't use their
software until _after_ I had paid them money.

~~~
georgemcbay
Same thing happened to me when I signed up for their service on my Commodore
64.

:(

Why didn't they tell me up front they don't support Commodore 64s?

~~~
shaggyfrog
Your C64 runs Mac OS X 10.5? Neat.

