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This is not accurate. You are not forced to backup your entire hard-drive. There is a 3rd party program called: rclone That program let's you choose which f

This is not accurate. You are not forced to backup your entire hard-drive. There is a 3rd party program called: rclone That program let's you choose which files/directories get copied over to BackBlaze. We have 150+TB (+10TB/week) stored at BackBlaze and I use rclone exclusively to upload our content for backup. Note, it's a CLI program that works on Linux/BSD. I'm not aware of any other platforms that it works on.

prirun 5y ago
I think the parent post is about the PC Backblaze backup service, not B2. The PC backup service does backup everything, and part of the reason for that is to make it extremely easy to setup. If they allowed selection of what to backup, it would be another user interface, more documentation, and then if the user deselected something important, they'd be mad if they had a problem and something wasn't backed up. Since it doesn't affect the flat-rate price, it's easier just to back up everything.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  You can exclude folders. I use it for a few things where there's no point in backing it up.
  - helloworld11 5y ago
    As far as I know, Backblaze lets you exclude folders from accessory drives and so forth, but not from the main PC drive itself. Also, the selection by exclusion itself is deeply annoying, because, as I said above, if out of many folders you only want to back up a few, selecting just those would be much easier and more intuitive than deselecting a whole pile of them to only leave a few. This was a deal breaker for me.
    - mkr-hn 5y ago
      I definitely have folders excluded on the main drive.
- helloworld11 5y ago
  Noted, but Backblaze's insistence on "simplicity" by obligating a full main drive backup so that users can't later complain that something was missed is silly. Why not just offer this as a default but also offer the choice of creating your own completely custom backup selections, you know, on the assumption that some users of the service might actually know what they want and how to select it.
  - tehbeard 5y ago
    If you want to get hired by them, propose it, get it approved, implement and test this 2nd code path, and maintain it for foreseeable futures, go right ahead. Idk about on first run, but I'm pretty sure you can pick and choose which drives it scans, including boot drive, and set up excludes as needed (handy to avoid backing up .git or node_modules)
- UI_at_80x24 5y ago
  Ahh thanks, I hadn't thought about that. I can't edit my post. I was thinking about B2.
helloworld11 5y ago
Furthermore, in response to the comment above, my reference was to using Backblaze alone and with Windows, as many people without any technical knowledge of computers at all might use it. Having to add in the use of Linux or rclone would mean a very different use case from the usual.

prirun 5y ago

I think the parent post is about the PC Backblaze backup service, not B2. The PC backup service does backup everything, and part of the reason for that is to make it extremely easy to setup. If they allowed selection of what to backup, it would be another user interface, more documentation, and then if the user deselected something important, they'd be mad if they had a problem and something wasn't backed up. Since it doesn't affect the flat-rate price, it's easier just to back up everything.

mkr-hn 5y ago
You can exclude folders. I use it for a few things where there's no point in backing it up.
- helloworld11 5y ago
  As far as I know, Backblaze lets you exclude folders from accessory drives and so forth, but not from the main PC drive itself. Also, the selection by exclusion itself is deeply annoying, because, as I said above, if out of many folders you only want to back up a few, selecting just those would be much easier and more intuitive than deselecting a whole pile of them to only leave a few. This was a deal breaker for me.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    I definitely have folders excluded on the main drive.
helloworld11 5y ago
Noted, but Backblaze's insistence on "simplicity" by obligating a full main drive backup so that users can't later complain that something was missed is silly. Why not just offer this as a default but also offer the choice of creating your own completely custom backup selections, you know, on the assumption that some users of the service might actually know what they want and how to select it.
- tehbeard 5y ago
  If you want to get hired by them, propose it, get it approved, implement and test this 2nd code path, and maintain it for foreseeable futures, go right ahead. Idk about on first run, but I'm pretty sure you can pick and choose which drives it scans, including boot drive, and set up excludes as needed (handy to avoid backing up .git or node_modules)
UI_at_80x24 5y ago
Ahh thanks, I hadn't thought about that. I can't edit my post. I was thinking about B2.

helloworld11 5y ago

Furthermore, in response to the comment above, my reference was to using Backblaze alone and with Windows, as many people without any technical knowledge of computers at all might use it. Having to add in the use of Linux or rclone would mean a very different use case from the usual.