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Disclaimer: I'm biased because I work at Backblaze. I'm also one of the founders. Backblaze started in my living room in Palo Alto. Backblaze is A LOT LESS L

Disclaimer: I'm biased because I work at Backblaze. I'm also one of the founders. Backblaze started in my living room in Palo Alto. Backblaze is A LOT LESS LIKELY to exit out of providing consumer online backup anytime soon as it is our primary business. I don't fully understand what just occurred with CrashPlan, but they had two separate "clients" - one for consumers and one for businesses. As far as I can tell, CrashPlan is discontinuing one of their two clients but doubling down on the "business client". I don't understand how they got into that situation, but Backblaze only has one backup client so we can't really abandon the one true client we have. :-) Finally, Backblaze is profoundly different than CrashPlan in that we never really raised any bank financing or VC financing. We're 90% employee owned, and there are no deep pockets. CrashPlan raised something like $150 million which comes with "pressure to grow fast or die". Backblaze is free of any such pressure, we own our own fate. In a final note: I have ALWAYS liked CrashPlan and I am sad to see them go. Realistically they were never a "competitor" to Backblaze. Our biggest competitor was customer apathy and customers not realizing that online backup was a good option. The more money companies like Carbonite and CrashPlan poured into advertising INCREASED Backblaze sales merely by raising awareness of online backup. CrashPlan (and Carbonite) have been absolutely wonderful to Backblaze because we didn't have the gigantic amounts of money to advertise that they had and they essentially advertise on our behalf (for free). We also know some of the CrashPlan people and I believe they are good people who want the best for their customers.

SpikeDad 9y ago
Thi is a nice ego boost for you but I wish you had answered some of the questions that folks have posted. What good is a backup tool if you a) can't restore using the native tool and b) you can't restore files from more than 30 days.
- brianwski 9y ago
  > What good is a backup tool if you a) can't restore using the native tool I am so confused by your question? With Backblaze, you can get 100% of you data back in two ways: 1) you can get a free external USB hard drive sent to you with all your data on it, or 2) You can prepare a free ZIP file with all your data and download it. We provide a restartable native bzdownloader to help you download the recovered files. > What good is a backup tool.... Isn't the goal to get all your data back? Backblaze does that. Maybe I'm mis-understanding your question? > you can't restore files from more than 30 days. With Backblaze, you can recover files for more than 30 days. You can ALWAYS get "the most recent version" even after 9 years. What you cannot do is get all the "intermediate versions" (like if you change a text document, we retain all versions for 30 days, then we only keep the most recent version forever). I do agree that would be a better product (retain infinite versions of every file). Unfortunately we would need to charge more for that, and many customers only want the most recent copy of all their documents. I understand if Backblaze is not a good solution for you. I just want to be absolutely clear what we provide and what we do not provide.
  - geostyx 9y ago
    Wait, if I delete a file you will keep the latest version forever?
  - domador 9y ago
    I just posted a long reply to your original message, without first seeing that you'd replied to this comment (made by someone else). If this is how the 30 day policy works, it is slightly more appealing than what I thought. However, it's still not enough peace-of-mind for me. This means that recent files are vulnerable to corruption during their first month of existence (through accidental overwriting, and some kinds of viruses and ransomware). The "most recent version" that is backed up may end up being a corrupted, useless version. I agree that retaining infinite versions of every file would be cost-prohibitive. However, you may be able to find a healthy compromise. Maybe you could retain a ton of versions of small files and fewer versions of large files. Maybe you could provide users with a space allowance for versioning and allow them to decide which versions of which files to delete (if they reach the allowance limit) or to pay more to increase the allowance. To summarize: You need versioning in order to be an awesome backup service (and an awesome backup service is the only thing I'll happily settle for!)
  - brianwski 9y ago
    > if I delete a file will you retain it forever No. We consider a file deletion as "the final version of the file you wish to retain". In that case you can get the deleted version for 30 days, then it is gone forever.
    - alphapapa 9y ago
      I'm sorry but this is a complete no-go. As much as I like Backblaze's attitude and pricing plans, this is unacceptable for a backup service. It's way too easy for files to be accidentally, unknowingly deleted, and for this to not be noticed for months or years. Any backup system that deletes missing files is not a backup but a mirror.
  - domador 9y ago
    Without some form of versioning, there's always the risk that the only backed-up copy of a file is a corrupted, useless version. This is the best summary of everything else I've said here.
domador 9y ago
Thanks for sharing that fascinating insider insight regarding non-zero-sum competition and advertising! This whole CrashPlan Home episode deepens my skepticism about services that claim to offer an unlimited amount of a physical resource (atoms on a hard drive, in this case) for a fixed price. Code42 has mentioned certain reasons for exiting the home user market, but I wonder if an unmentioned reason is the cost of providing service to an excessive number of users who consume more hard drive space than is profitable. As a current Crash Plan Home customer, I might be one of those users, given my 2.2 TB data set. It's felt like a steal for me, but in the future, I'll likely seek an option where I can get a good deal, a good, fair price instead of a steal (which in the end results in pain and hassle and ends up costing more than what I bargained for). Is the cost of disk space the reason why BackBlaze expunges files deleted on a backed-up computer from the backup on your servers after 30 days? Though I think you guys are cool, this policy is a deal breaker for me, as far as a Crash Plan Home alternative is concerned. At this point, I'd rather pay a reasonable price for the disk space I use rather than have an "unlimited" plan where I have to constantly look over my shoulder at my files, to make sure important files haven't been inadvertently deleted within the past month. If the cost is too much for me, I'd rather be the one that makes the decision as to which files to exclude from my online backup, rather than have the backup service do it for me. P.S. and Disclaimer: I developed a backup companion utility (Bitrot Detector) that happens to be more relevant and useful to users of a service like Backblaze which performs file mirroring than one like CrashPlan Home which performs file versioning. However, I'd prefer it if every backup service did versioning rather than mirroring, as version-preservation is what allows you to set-and-forget a backup, rather than to set-and-constantly-worry. Though of course I want more customers for my product, I'd rather have relatively fewer if it meant I lived in a world where every backup service did versioning and fewer people experienced data loss and the resulting grief.
- brianwski 9y ago
  > Is the cost of disk space the reason why BackBlaze expunges files deleted on a backed-up computer fromthe backup on your servers after 30 days? The original reason was to prevent customers who owned a single 1 TByte hard drive from filling it with content, backing it up to Backblaze, writing down the date, then emptying the hard drive and filling it with DIFFERENT content, backing up to Backblaze, writing down the date, repeat 50 times. The idea was this: if the data is not important enough for you to keep a local copy, Backblaze is not going to keep it either. You aren't allowed to go down to just "one copy in Backblaze". We chose the 30 days as something we thought of as "reasonable". For example, we expected that within 30 days you would realize your laptop was stolen so you could request a full restore. That sort of thing. However, and now we're all furiously debating the 30 days based on the enormous amount of feedback we are getting today. We will do an analysis and if we can afford it, we will be increasing that number.

SpikeDad 9y ago

Thi is a nice ego boost for you but I wish you had answered some of the questions that folks have posted. What good is a backup tool if you a) can't restore using the native tool and b) you can't restore files from more than 30 days.

brianwski 9y ago
> What good is a backup tool if you a) can't restore using the native tool I am so confused by your question? With Backblaze, you can get 100% of you data back in two ways: 1) you can get a free external USB hard drive sent to you with all your data on it, or 2) You can prepare a free ZIP file with all your data and download it. We provide a restartable native bzdownloader to help you download the recovered files. > What good is a backup tool.... Isn't the goal to get all your data back? Backblaze does that. Maybe I'm mis-understanding your question? > you can't restore files from more than 30 days. With Backblaze, you can recover files for more than 30 days. You can ALWAYS get "the most recent version" even after 9 years. What you cannot do is get all the "intermediate versions" (like if you change a text document, we retain all versions for 30 days, then we only keep the most recent version forever). I do agree that would be a better product (retain infinite versions of every file). Unfortunately we would need to charge more for that, and many customers only want the most recent copy of all their documents. I understand if Backblaze is not a good solution for you. I just want to be absolutely clear what we provide and what we do not provide.
- geostyx 9y ago
  Wait, if I delete a file you will keep the latest version forever?
- domador 9y ago
  I just posted a long reply to your original message, without first seeing that you'd replied to this comment (made by someone else). If this is how the 30 day policy works, it is slightly more appealing than what I thought. However, it's still not enough peace-of-mind for me. This means that recent files are vulnerable to corruption during their first month of existence (through accidental overwriting, and some kinds of viruses and ransomware). The "most recent version" that is backed up may end up being a corrupted, useless version. I agree that retaining infinite versions of every file would be cost-prohibitive. However, you may be able to find a healthy compromise. Maybe you could retain a ton of versions of small files and fewer versions of large files. Maybe you could provide users with a space allowance for versioning and allow them to decide which versions of which files to delete (if they reach the allowance limit) or to pay more to increase the allowance. To summarize: You need versioning in order to be an awesome backup service (and an awesome backup service is the only thing I'll happily settle for!)
- brianwski 9y ago
  > if I delete a file will you retain it forever No. We consider a file deletion as "the final version of the file you wish to retain". In that case you can get the deleted version for 30 days, then it is gone forever.
  - alphapapa 9y ago
    I'm sorry but this is a complete no-go. As much as I like Backblaze's attitude and pricing plans, this is unacceptable for a backup service. It's way too easy for files to be accidentally, unknowingly deleted, and for this to not be noticed for months or years. Any backup system that deletes missing files is not a backup but a mirror.
- domador 9y ago
  Without some form of versioning, there's always the risk that the only backed-up copy of a file is a corrupted, useless version. This is the best summary of everything else I've said here.

domador 9y ago

Thanks for sharing that fascinating insider insight regarding non-zero-sum competition and advertising! This whole CrashPlan Home episode deepens my skepticism about services that claim to offer an unlimited amount of a physical resource (atoms on a hard drive, in this case) for a fixed price. Code42 has mentioned certain reasons for exiting the home user market, but I wonder if an unmentioned reason is the cost of providing service to an excessive number of users who consume more hard drive space than is profitable. As a current Crash Plan Home customer, I might be one of those users, given my 2.2 TB data set. It's felt like a steal for me, but in the future, I'll likely seek an option where I can get a good deal, a good, fair price instead of a steal (which in the end results in pain and hassle and ends up costing more than what I bargained for). Is the cost of disk space the reason why BackBlaze expunges files deleted on a backed-up computer from the backup on your servers after 30 days? Though I think you guys are cool, this policy is a deal breaker for me, as far as a Crash Plan Home alternative is concerned. At this point, I'd rather pay a reasonable price for the disk space I use rather than have an "unlimited" plan where I have to constantly look over my shoulder at my files, to make sure important files haven't been inadvertently deleted within the past month. If the cost is too much for me, I'd rather be the one that makes the decision as to which files to exclude from my online backup, rather than have the backup service do it for me. P.S. and Disclaimer: I developed a backup companion utility (Bitrot Detector) that happens to be more relevant and useful to users of a service like Backblaze which performs file mirroring than one like CrashPlan Home which performs file versioning. However, I'd prefer it if every backup service did versioning rather than mirroring, as version-preservation is what allows you to set-and-forget a backup, rather than to set-and-constantly-worry. Though of course I want more customers for my product, I'd rather have relatively fewer if it meant I lived in a world where every backup service did versioning and fewer people experienced data loss and the resulting grief.

brianwski 9y ago
> Is the cost of disk space the reason why BackBlaze expunges files deleted on a backed-up computer fromthe backup on your servers after 30 days? The original reason was to prevent customers who owned a single 1 TByte hard drive from filling it with content, backing it up to Backblaze, writing down the date, then emptying the hard drive and filling it with DIFFERENT content, backing up to Backblaze, writing down the date, repeat 50 times. The idea was this: if the data is not important enough for you to keep a local copy, Backblaze is not going to keep it either. You aren't allowed to go down to just "one copy in Backblaze". We chose the 30 days as something we thought of as "reasonable". For example, we expected that within 30 days you would realize your laptop was stolen so you could request a full restore. That sort of thing. However, and now we're all furiously debating the 30 days based on the enormous amount of feedback we are getting today. We will do an analysis and if we can afford it, we will be increasing that number.