Backblaze question (not B2)

Got a trial account and started playing with it today. I am on windows 7. First dumb thing, it won't allow me to remove backup of my C drive. I can remove any other drive but not C drive. Also by default, it includes everything on a drive, I have to manually deselect things that I don't want backed up. The interface didn't look as good either. I am letting it run after manually removing most of my C drive folders. Let us see what happens. What is your take on it? I hear good reviews as it is only $6 per month. I may end up with B2 account which is what actual backups should be like.

Apparently you can unselect the C: drive by holding the Alt key & clicking on the drive letter.

Thanks. Why wouldn't they say so openly.

bobbyz wrote in post #18984058
Thanks. Why wouldn't they say so openly.

Backblaze has a very good presence on Reddit where the developers will answer pretty much any question asked there. I think they have answered this question before and if my memory is correct their answer was something along the lines of them wanting Backblaze (not B2) to be a "set it and forget it" product where a very non-technical person should not have to worry about things like going over a quota (there isn't one) or what to select when backing up (everything). Just install it and forget it and you are backed up.

There are definitely settings that you can tweak to get the most out of the product (I don't backup my C drive and I have some custom exclusions), but I spend more time in settings with my local backup client (Veeam) as that is where I am far more likely to make a restore from. Backblaze is my "break in case of emergency" plan when all else has failed me.

I'm very happy with Backblaze after having reluctantly switched from Crashplan. I had been with Crashplan since it was first launched. I still have emails saved that I had with the founder of Crashplan back in the day when I was trying to get some regex expressions dialed in and was having some issues and he took the time to help me in some lengthy emails. The biggest draw for me for Crashplan was that you could "seed" your initial backup by sending them a Crashplan provided hard drive that you do your first backup to locally which can be much faster than backing up over the internet, especially when you have multiple terabytes of data like I do. But when Crashplan killed that option along with the previously killed option of doing a restore from a hard drive FedEx'd from Crashplan, I was out. In the event of you needing to restore all of your data, Backblaze will FedEx (UPS?) you a hard drive for free (provided you return it within 30 days) with all of your data. That is a killer feature.

Honestly, for me, the biggest failing for Backblaze is that if you use a custom encryption password (and you should) you MUST provide that password to Backblaze in order to do a restore, which is completely fu*&#D-up. There is zero reason for that and every answer they have ever given makes no sense why that is so. I am convinced that the reason is that they don't have the manpower to update existing legacy code. I'm not aware of any other backup provider that would make you do that, because that would be the antithesis of any privacy focused company. But Backblaze requires you to do so. That is one of the main reasons I don't backup my "C" drive because I'm sure that within all the cruft and detritus of my OS drive there are browser passwords and who knows what that contains info that I don't trust anyone other than me to be the keeper of. Plus, I just think that it's good policy to keep all important data off of the OS drive as it makes for a much easier restore if you want to move to a new computer or restore from a complete loss of data.

Thanks Dave. I am playing with Cloudberry and the interface seems simpler and gives me quite a few options. I need to spend more time with restores. I may end up using Cloudberry for a while where I make backups to my USB drives and keep some off site.

CloudBerry is pretty good, I use it for my offsite backups, and to send data up to S3. I also use Restic, which is free / open source software, command line based, and I have to say while CloudBerry has never given me any integrity problems I trust Restic more.

Restic is easy. Here's how I backup from my Windows PC to S3 (note that you have to set up the keys and the policy associated with the keys in advance)

First you have to set up the repo

set RESTIC_PASSWORD=abc123
restic.exe init --repo D:\BackupsLocal\Restic​\
restic.exe init --repo s3:s3.amazonaws.com/s3​-bucket-name

set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIA​XXXXXXX
set AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=​xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
set RESTIC_PASSWORD=abc123

restic.exe -q --repo s3:s3.amazonaws.com/s3​-bucket-name backup c:\Documents

set RESTIC_PASSWORD=abc123

restic.exe -q --exclude C:\Photos\Rejects --exclude C:\Videos\Rejects --exclude "C:\Photos\Lab Test Prints" --repo D:\BackupsLocal\Restic​\ backup R:\Photos

• Multiple excludes
  
• Repo is where the data is stored
  
• "backup" is the command
  
• Immediately after "backup" is the path to backup
  

Bcaps wrote in post #18984581
I'm very happy with Backblaze after having reluctantly switched from Crashplan.

Same evaluation here, but different conclusion: I decided to stay with Crashplan. Mainly because, (i) it works, (ii) full client side encryption (I can live with them seeing my file structure), (iii) more then 30 days of versioning, (iv) clearer (for me) choice of files and folders you want to backup and (v) very easy and reliable recovery of files and their older versions. For me the cloud backups are the 3rd line (for some critical file even the 4th or 5th) of safety. I hope that my local backup(s) will be the most likely source for recovery and only if things are really messed up (or if I am somewhere traveling) I have to recover over the internet from the cloud. This is also what I would recommend most people to use a simple local independent drive in addition to the cloud backup. The Crashplan client (and I am assuming Cloudberry) are supporting this - not sure about Backblaze though.

Thanks Tim.

Now after paying for cloudberry desktop Pro version I find that it is restricted to only 5TB backup. For unlimited backups I need the $300 Ultimate version.

bobbyz wrote in post #18987778
Now after paying for cloudberry desktop Pro version I find that it is restricted to only 5TB backup. For unlimited backups I need the $300 Ultimate version.

The limit is for cloud backup, rather than local backup. Local backup is unlimited. Edition comparison.

Backing up 5TB to the cloud is quite a lot, and would cost $64/month on S3 IA class, $5/month in glacier deep archive class, or $25/month on B2.

I don't back up everything online. I backup the last six months of data to S3, then every six months I convert my images to medium jpeg, videos to 720p, then upload the lower quality versions to S3 Glacier deep archive. The originals I keep on disks in two locations. Maybe something like this could work for you.

Otherwise, I expect you could get a refund on the edition you have, and you could use Restic or similar which I already mentioned.

Thanks. I need to be more selective during the import process and cull lot of images.

Shooting professionally I rate / delete 2/3 of my images, personal it's probably more like 3/4. You need to delete them, even with modern hard drives the files build up over time.