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Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

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Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#51

Post by sib »

atYevP wrote: post #45
sib wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Yev - sorry to jump in here; I've been a customer for a long time and would like to understand the best way to move some particular directory structure from an internal disc to an external disc (both of which are backed up by Backblaze) without causing that entire directory structure to be fully uploaded again. This has happened more than once and it's not pleasant.

Yev here -> You're saying that when you moved data over without it changing, the data was re-uploaded? It should deduplicate as long as there's been no changes. If you do see that behavior, please ping support so they can investigate -> https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Yes, that's exactly what happened. It required re-uploading more than 300GB of data.

Will reach out to support.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#52

Post by yreg »

pfranz wrote: post #35
zomg wrote: post #4

i've been a customer of backblaze for a about a decade now. everyone has their opinion, but for me, it's always just hummed along in the background, doing it's thing. i've had to restore almost a terabyte of data (on more than one occasion, derp) -- and had no issues. it's up there (again, for me) as one of the annual software subscriptions that's worth every penny, if not more.

I'm curious how you did the restore and roughly how it went? I've done a few restores years ago. I don't know if this reflects the current process, but my experience was a bit rough. However, I'm still a long term customer with little interest in going elsewhere. In late 2016 my laptop's drive died suddenly. I tried to restore everything via a shipped drive. I'm not sure if it was because of copy on their website (at…

For me the restore experience was painful.

I attempted to restore about 1TB of data (on macOS). Since I have 500mbit internet I assumed I'd be able to download it through the app, but that didn't prove easy. Even when split into smaller zip archives, the download would go terribly slow. Often, the archives would be corrupted and I'd have to re-download them.

In the end I had to order a drive to Europe (and pay the tariffs), which is a pain in the ass. (But they did return the deposit even though I missed the 30 day window.)

Edit:

Oh yea, and when you loose your data you have only 30 days to get it back before Backblaze deletes it as well! That's what happened to me right before a multi-week trip, so I was pretty unhappy that I wasn't able to download my backup in the 5-or-so days I had at my disposal, thus having to order the physical drive.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#53

Post by CharlesW »

scarface74 wrote: post #18
CharlesW wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, I know the history and what they've said in the past, and also know about their B2 product. I'm hoping for a real answer from Yev, but if not I've been reasonably happy with CrashPlan (which is a NAS-friendly solution).

TIL: Crashplan doesn’t support backing up NAS on Windows but does for Windows and Linux. Interesting.... That being said, I think if I had a NAS, I would want a solution that runs directly on the NAS instead of depending on a host computer.

> …I think if I had a NAS, I would want a solution that runs directly on the NAS instead of depending on a host computer.

Yeah, you could totally do that using a VM on the NAS. The only downside is that it'd be charged as an additional device, assuming you still wanted to back up your main workstation.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#55

Post by brianwski »

sib wrote: post #51
atYevP wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yev here -> You're saying that when you moved data over without it changing, the data was re-uploaded? It should deduplicate as long as there's been no changes. If you do see that behavior, please ping support so they can investigate -> https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Yes, that's exactly what happened. It required re-uploading more than 300GB of data. Will reach out to support.

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.

> It required re-uploading more than 300GB of data.

What should occur is that it must READ all of the files to make sure it has transmitted them already, which can take hours sometimes, but only a tiny, tiny amount of data is actually transmitted to the datacenter. The client basically shows endless streams of files flowing through it and saying "Currently Backup Up: puppy.jpg" but it isn't really transmitting the files, just verifying the contents haven't changed.

One way to realize it is doing this is watch a network monitor of some kind. Another is if it is going "impossibly fast", like you only have a 10 Mbit/sec upload pipe and it appears to be uploading at 100 Mbits/sec.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#56

Post by buildzr »

yreg wrote: post #52
pfranz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how you did the restore and roughly how it went? I've done a few restores years ago. I don't know if this reflects the current process, but my experience was a bit rough. However, I'm still a long term customer with little interest in going elsewhere. In late 2016 my laptop's drive died suddenly. I tried to restore everything via a shipped drive. I'm not sure if it was because of copy on their website (at…

For me the restore experience was painful. I attempted to restore about 1TB of data (on macOS). Since I have 500mbit internet I assumed I'd be able to download it through the app, but that didn't prove easy. Even when split into smaller zip archives, the download would go terribly slow. Often, the archives would be corrupted and I'd have to re-download them. In the end I had to order a drive to Europe (and pay the ta…

> when you loose your data you have only 30 days to get it back before Backblaze deletes it as well!

Uhhh... this one could be a significant issue for me right now. I've got a laptop that's been offline for about 2 months now due to a motherboard failure due to liquid damage. I haven't bothered dumping the drive yet because I figured even if it's got issues Backblaze has a copy.

You're telling me that if I login to my account right now, the data is gone? If so, they really need to make that one more obvious.

EDIT: Just checked Backblaze, still looks like the data is there after 70+ days. Has this policy changed at some point?

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#57

Post by clSTophEjUdRanu »

calcifer wrote: post #46
cweagans wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

B2 isn't really a solution for people that are looking for a robust computer backup service like Backblaze currently offers for Mac and Windows. I went down that road and ended up very frustrated. I ended up buying a Synology NAS (which does offer the same computer backup features + revisioning and all that), and then syncing the backup out to B2. It's not an ideal solution by any means, and I would get rid of my NAS…

I imagine the problem isn't closed vs open source, but the fact that on Linux it would be trivial to mount a massive NAS (think dozens of TBs) in a way that's completely invisible to the Backblaze client and pay $6/month for unlimited backups. There were people on /r/datahoarder who stored petabytes on Amazon's "unlimited" backup before the whole product got canceled.

You can do that on Windows too can't you?

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#58

Post by brianwski »

yreg wrote: post #52
pfranz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how you did the restore and roughly how it went? I've done a few restores years ago. I don't know if this reflects the current process, but my experience was a bit rough. However, I'm still a long term customer with little interest in going elsewhere. In late 2016 my laptop's drive died suddenly. I tried to restore everything via a shipped drive. I'm not sure if it was because of copy on their website (at…

For me the restore experience was painful. I attempted to restore about 1TB of data (on macOS). Since I have 500mbit internet I assumed I'd be able to download it through the app, but that didn't prove easy. Even when split into smaller zip archives, the download would go terribly slow. Often, the archives would be corrupted and I'd have to re-download them. In the end I had to order a drive to Europe (and pay the ta…

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.

> when you loose your data you have only 30 days to get it back before Backblaze deletes it as well!

Not anymore! As of this morning's 7.0 release, you can always switch your backup to one year retention EVEN FOR JUST ONE OR TWO MONTHS and for an extra couple of dollars you can keep the data around for a year (or forever). You can switch it back to "30 day retention" at any moment, all through the website.

Also, you can always do a "Restore to B2" to make a complete copy/snapshot of all your files entirely on the server side, and we'll keep those as long as you don't delete them. This will cost you $5/month to store 1 that entire duplicate 1 TByte copy in B2 (in addition to your original $6/month bill), but it's an option available to customers.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#59

Post by calcifer »

clSTophEjUdRanu wrote: post #57
calcifer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the problem isn't closed vs open source, but the fact that on Linux it would be trivial to mount a massive NAS (think dozens of TBs) in a way that's completely invisible to the Backblaze client and pay $6/month for unlimited backups. There were people on /r/datahoarder who stored petabytes on Amazon's "unlimited" backup before the whole product got canceled.

You can do that on Windows too can't you?

I'm not familiar enough with Windows to answer that, but I imagine HTPCs are much more likely to use Linux and would make a $6/month backup a very attractive target.

Re: Backblaze 7.0 – Version History and Beyond

#60

Post by therealx »

cweagans wrote: post #48
calcifer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine the problem isn't closed vs open source, but the fact that on Linux it would be trivial to mount a massive NAS (think dozens of TBs) in a way that's completely invisible to the Backblaze client and pay $6/month for unlimited backups. There were people on /r/datahoarder who stored petabytes on Amazon's "unlimited" backup before the whole product got canceled.

I'm reasonably sure you could do the same on macOS.

The MacOS market is big enough to support that - they prob manually call out the outliers.
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