•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."
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.
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.
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.
Assuming that storage costs are halving every 18 months, I would assume that charging $N/mo for backup (amortized over a lifetime of say, 4 years) would be a really reasonable business model.
As they say, there's always going to be outliers, all you need to do is cover the average cost of backup for the average user. This seems easy to me, and very easy to plan & estimate what your costs are.
Demand isn't static.
Your costs decrease by the storage equivalent of Moore's Law, but your customers demands increase by roughly the same amount.
In short -- The first digital camera I used had a floppy disk that fit about 20 photos. (Maybe 75KB). My camera now takes 7.5MB Photos (higher if I shoot in raw) and rather than taking 20-40 in a session -- I'll take 100. The first computer I connected to the internet had a 4GB Hard Drive. I currently have around 3.9TB of storage connected to the internet.
This isn't a gmail play. Barring celebrity status -- you can only recieve so many emails... (Dunbars number and all that). As my storage costs decrease I use more storage and need more backups. They mention that these roughly balance out. The problem they have is that costs like electricity/cooling/staffing are not likely to be going down any time soon.
That's exactly what I keep thinking about BackBlaze (I am one of the "hogs" they talk about on whom they don't make money) but they seem to indicate they are profitable, for now...
I guess it's viable as long as they don't become too popular and start attracting more "hogs".
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
I personally had a bad customer service experience from them and switched. It's not obvious to me if you can generalize from one person's experience -- however -- the crux of my issue is their choice to not allow you to call them on the phone. It looks like this is still true (but I'm not certain). As a result of their cheapo policy, and the particular problem I was having, I switched.
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.
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.
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).
"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."
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.
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...
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? 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?
The system requirements say "Intel Mac". How much clearer would you expect them to be? Just ask for a refund and take it as a lesson to read reqs before software purchases.
"
•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."