Hi, after being disappointed by Backblaze numerous times over the last 4 months, i did a lot of poking around online, only to realize that seemingly all backup solutions are truly undependable. If you scratch the surface of initial reviews, you will find time and time again that there are very well documented cases of users not being able to access files they were told were safe, & backed up. Here is one appalling example: http://homepages.laas.fr/~felix/Backblaze/my_story.html. I have also found similar posts for Crashplan, etc.
I personally signed up for Backblaze Personal roughly 4 months ago, and have been uploading my 7.5TB archive ever since. I have experienced 3 "Safely Frozen" hiccups, which seems to set my backup upload back by about 1 to 2 months each time. 1 to 2 months!!!
**The result:
In the 4 months that I have been continuously uploading files to Backblaze - at "Full Throttle", with "10 Threads" (their fastest option for aggressive bandwidth & computer usage), I have supposedly uploaded roughly 2TB of 7.5TB. My internet speed is very close to advertised at 300Mbps download / 20Mbps up. My upload speed should result in close to 9GB an hour, which uploads my entire archive in 34.7 days.
Atrocious result after 4 months of continuously hogging up my upload bandwidth speed.
But to be fair, i'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that my barely changing archive has caused their system to cautiously "Freeze" my backup, though I have experienced none of the factors that Backblaze says causes "Safely Frozen" backup state. They are very vague on this, and stick to their scripted talking points.
--
Anyway, after reading so many accounts (like the one linked above) of people who thought they were safely backed up online, but being anything but safely backed up -it's obvious that for people with larger archives, there are still no services that can prove that you can depend on them. Backblaze gives us a false sense of security with their finely tuned website & identity. Especially when you look at their blog - it's all a beautifully orchestrated facade. I was completely fooled by all of it.
I personally signed up for Backblaze Personal roughly 4 months ago, and have been uploading my 7.5TB archive ever since. I have experienced 3 "Safely Frozen" hiccups, which seems to set my backup upload back by about 1 to 2 months each time. 1 to 2 months!!!
**The result:
In the 4 months that I have been continuously uploading files to Backblaze - at "Full Throttle", with "10 Threads" (their fastest option for aggressive bandwidth & computer usage), I have supposedly uploaded roughly 2TB of 7.5TB. My internet speed is very close to advertised at 300Mbps download / 20Mbps up. My upload speed should result in close to 9GB an hour, which uploads my entire archive in 34.7 days.
Atrocious result after 4 months of continuously hogging up my upload bandwidth speed.
But to be fair, i'll give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that my barely changing archive has caused their system to cautiously "Freeze" my backup, though I have experienced none of the factors that Backblaze says causes "Safely Frozen" backup state. They are very vague on this, and stick to their scripted talking points.
--
Anyway, after reading so many accounts (like the one linked above) of people who thought they were safely backed up online, but being anything but safely backed up -it's obvious that for people with larger archives, there are still no services that can prove that you can depend on them. Backblaze gives us a false sense of security with their finely tuned website & identity. Especially when you look at their blog - it's all a beautifully orchestrated facade. I was completely fooled by all of it.
"I tried Mozy, Carbonite and Backblaze. They all offered "unlimited" size backup for a fixed fee, but the "unlimited" service had limits. I couldn't back up a network drive, for example. I couldn't keep backups of external drives reliably -- Backblaze promised to delete backups of external drives that haven't been connected for 30 days. They were vague about durability and availability of my backups. And then there was the risk of the backup storage provider closing up shop and me losing all my backups. I'd seen that happen before (Upline, Xdrive, Omnidrive, Digital Railroad)."