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So much facepalm here. A Backblaze rep is in that thread confirming that they do have a failure case where they can lose backup data -- or at least, it'll becom

So much facepalm here. A Backblaze rep is in that thread confirming that they do have a failure case where they can lose backup data -- or at least, it'll become inconsistent. Ok, that's bad. I don't think they're idiots, but it'd be interesting to know what's so technically challenging about the index problem that they haven't been able to solve it. But ... 17 TB total? For online backups? That's just not what they're designed for, unless you've got one hell of an internet connection. The complainant says it's going to take over a year to re-upload the 13TB. That's insane. I think you have to give up on online backups for that use case and settle for a pretty beefy home rig in a fire-resistant box. Moving that kind of data up and down an internet connection just doesn't work real well yet.

strict9 9y ago
It's not insane when it's incremental. I don't have any kind of special connection, but when I switched computers had to go through the process of deleting my entire online backup in order to use my new machine. Took a few weeks (not a year) for 5TB from scratch, all the while on pins and needles hoping nothing happened to my local disk. I love Backblaze, but their confusing and weird policy re: switching machines made for a nail biting and slow, painful process. After reading this, I'm now considering alternative offsite backups.
atYevP 9y ago
Yev from Backblaze here - as far as the technical aspects, it's tough for me to say b/c I don't know what happened in this case, but we do have use-cases where we need to "Freeze" backups (more info: https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217666178-Safety-Freeze-Your-Backup-is-Safety-Frozen- https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217666178-Safet...). I would venture to guess that since this occurred on their C: drive, something similar to that happened here, and they needed to re-upload the data (in most cases, previously uploaded data is still available for restore - but with 13TB of data to re-upload and not a lot of bandwidth, it would have taken them way longer than our 30-day history to do that).
arielweisberg 9y ago
I could do it in 13 days if Backblaze supported backing up at line rate. If you have gigabit it's even less. This isn't too much for online backup in general. 17t is not so bad in a lot of cases. It might be too much for Backblaze. I don't know. I don't know if they can effectively back up at line rate. They couldn't for me.
deleted 9y ago
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true_religion 9y ago
> That's just not what they're designed for unless you've got one hell of an internet connection. 3 days on a 500 mbit/second connection---which is about what you'd really be able to get if you had a 1-gigabit line. It's fairly easy to get them in any US metro area so long as you are willing to spend. It's also percolated pretty well through out Japan and Korea.
pavement 9y ago
The nature of the data isn't given, but ~20TB of video wouldn't be unthinkable. A video operation, backing up original masters for safe keeping, offsite is pretty reasonable for a variety of scenarios.

strict9 9y ago

It's not insane when it's incremental. I don't have any kind of special connection, but when I switched computers had to go through the process of deleting my entire online backup in order to use my new machine. Took a few weeks (not a year) for 5TB from scratch, all the while on pins and needles hoping nothing happened to my local disk. I love Backblaze, but their confusing and weird policy re: switching machines made for a nail biting and slow, painful process. After reading this, I'm now considering alternative offsite backups.

atYevP 9y ago

Yev from Backblaze here - as far as the technical aspects, it's tough for me to say b/c I don't know what happened in this case, but we do have use-cases where we need to "Freeze" backups (more info: https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217666178-Safety-Freeze-Your-Backup-is-Safety-Frozen- https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217666178-Safet...). I would venture to guess that since this occurred on their C: drive, something similar to that happened here, and they needed to re-upload the data (in most cases, previously uploaded data is still available for restore - but with 13TB of data to re-upload and not a lot of bandwidth, it would have taken them way longer than our 30-day history to do that).

arielweisberg 9y ago

I could do it in 13 days if Backblaze supported backing up at line rate. If you have gigabit it's even less. This isn't too much for online backup in general. 17t is not so bad in a lot of cases. It might be too much for Backblaze. I don't know. I don't know if they can effectively back up at line rate. They couldn't for me.

deleted 9y ago

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true_religion 9y ago

> That's just not what they're designed for unless you've got one hell of an internet connection. 3 days on a 500 mbit/second connection---which is about what you'd really be able to get if you had a 1-gigabit line. It's fairly easy to get them in any US metro area so long as you are willing to spend. It's also percolated pretty well through out Japan and Korea.

pavement 9y ago

The nature of the data isn't given, but ~20TB of video wouldn't be unthinkable. A video operation, backing up original masters for safe keeping, offsite is pretty reasonable for a variety of scenarios.