Comments on: Backblaze: Backing Up Your Files Online

By: Anna

Anna — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 03:30:04 +0000

I am paranoid about loosing data after working in IT for years and also having several of my own hard drives crash – and they were only a few months old. I backup to both a USB hard drive as well as online using AmazonS3. People who don’t back up are just fooling themselves. Their hard drive or computer will crash. It is just a matter of when.

By: ***Dave

***Dave — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:58:55 +0000

The inability / unwillingness to back up external USB drives is what’s kept me from a few other very good products out there (Carbonite, Moby). I am definitely going to try Backblaze.

By: cooper

cooper — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:44:32 +0000

I am bad about this and have lost a lot of files, everything on my last computer as it conked out all of a sudden in February and tool most files with it as the only things I backed up were academic files.

I’m going to check this out.

By: Jagad Guru Chris Butler

Jagad Guru Chris Butler — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:47:29 +0000

Hello Dale, thanks a lot for the info. I actually just ordered an external hard drive the other day for back up…but I’ll look into Backblaze as well as Synctoy and see if they’ll work for my needs.

By: Billy

Billy — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:35:10 +0000

Cool, Dale! Let us know if you have any more questions.

By: Dale

Dale — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:38:24 +0000

Billy,

Just letting you know that I tried the restore several times again this evening, and it worked fine — the download had the correct extension. I’ve updated the post to remove references to the error.

Thanks!

Dale

By: Dale

Dale — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:42:17 +0000

Billy,

Thanks for coming by and commenting on my article about Backblaze. I definitely like the service; it’s still crunching away on my initial backup and is doing a great job.

I’ll try the restore again, document the steps, and submit a support case as you suggested. What an excellent approach to support, I’m really impressed.

Thanks again,

Dale

By: Dale

Dale — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:35:42 +0000

Hi, Rod, you’re welcomed, of course.

I hadn’t really thought about ISP bandwidth limits, so I checked my ISP’s terms of service and couldn’t find anything that sounded liked a restriction. I wonder, too, if Backblaze handles that to some extent because it makes a local copy of the file then transmits the copy a little at a time. I can also pause the backup if I want, and I think it pauses or slows down on its own when the computer is in use. And there is a “throttle” setting that Backblaze provides, allowing me to adjust the upload speed if I want to. Not sure if any of these things would get around a bandwidth cap, but I’ll bet they would all help.

Thanks again for commenting,

Dale

By: Billy

Billy — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:01:18 +0000

Thank you for writing the review, Dale! I’m so glad you like the service. In fact, I am working at Backblaze and I would like to help you out the issue of the missing extension on the zip file. Would you please send us a support request at https://www.backblaze.com/support_cs.html

Again, thank you very much!

By: Rod

Rod — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:10:13 +0000

Thanks for the info, Dale. Backup is something which it’s easy to neglect – until you lose something important or valuable to you. Not sure an online solution is what I need right now, as I’m somewhat constrained by my ISP’s bandwidth limits, but sounds great apart from that.