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Weirdly, reading this had the net impact of me signing up to Backblaze. I had no idea that it was such a good bargain. I used to be a Crashplan user back in th

Weirdly, reading this had the net impact of me signing up to Backblaze. I had no idea that it was such a good bargain. I used to be a Crashplan user back in the day, and I always thought Backblaze had tiered limits. I've been using Duplicati to sync a lot of data to S3's cheapest tape-based long term storage tier. It's a serious pain in the ass because it takes hours to queue up and retrieve a file. It's a heavy enough process that I don't do anything nearly close to enough testing to make sure my backups are restorable, which is a self-inflicted future injury. Here's the thing: I'm paying about $14/month for that S3 storage, which makes $99/year a total steal. I don't use Dropbox/Box/OneDrive/iCloud so the grievances mentioned by the author are not major hurdles for me. I do find the idea that it is silently ignoring .git folders troubling, primarily because they are indeed not listed in the exclusion list. I am a bit miffed that we're actively prevented from backing up the various Program Files folders, because I have a large number of VSTi instruments that I'll need to ensure are rcloned or something for this to work.

mvdtnz 6mo ago
You should consider Backblaze B2. It's not unlimited, but it's S3 compatible storage at a competitive price, without the limitations of Personal Backup.
NetMageSCW 6mo ago
If you don’t really want backups you can save a lot more money by not signing up for Backblaze.
- peteforde 6mo ago
  Are they known for accidentally erasing your backups? I get that this is not a restorable image, but for $100 a year I'm not expecting that.
justin66 6mo ago
"Maybe they're only incompetent in the ways that have been enumerated in this blog post" does not seem like much of a sales pitch. Baffling.
- peteforde 6mo ago
  I'm happy to pay an annual fee for a one-size fits all approach that I don't have to think about. I read the post and I'm just saying that his blockers are not blockers for me. I would ask you: what is the better alternative? That's not a rhetorical question; they don't have my credit card details for another two weeks.
  - malfist 6mo ago
    This whole post is saying that you _do_ have to think about it.
    - peteforde 6mo ago
      Right. If you read what I actually said, I am not captured by Backblaze. I said that I want a solution that I don't have to think about. I'm happy to pay for not thinking about it. If that's not Blackblaze, do you have any good suggestions?
tonymet 6mo ago
You lose a bit of control. With S3 you can preprocess (transform, index, filter, downcode, etc) before storing. You can index metadata in place (names, sizes, metadata) for low-cost searching. As for testing recovery, you can validate file counts, sizes + checksums without performing recovery. A few shell scripts give you the power of advanced enterprise backup, whereas backblaze only supports GUI restores.
ValentineC 6mo ago
> Here's the thing: I'm paying about $14/month for that S3 storage, which makes $99/year a total steal. I don't use Dropbox/Box/OneDrive/iCloud so the grievances mentioned by the author are not major hurdles for me. I do find the idea that it is silently ignoring .git folders troubling, primarily because they are indeed not listed in the exclusion list. A big difference here is that Backblaze only keeps deleted/changed files for 30 days. Deleted files can go unnoticed for some time, especially if done by a malicious app or ignorant AI. I'd pay that extra few dollars for peace of mind.
- peteforde 6mo ago
  Thanks so much! That is super valuable input. I do notice in their GUI that they offer a >30 memory for extra $: 30-Day Version History (Current) Included 1-Year Version History Forever Version History $.006/GB/Month for versions changed or deleted more than 1 year ago They are not giving much information here at all. The above is not a pasting artifact; their page literally doesn't give any indication of how they price the 1-year history. Presumably it's not just as simple as click to 12x your retention for free. Meanwhile, it's even more unclear whether that $.006/GB is assessed for change deltas or for the total file size. Indeed, it's not clear if it's assessed against your entire fileset or just files that changed. I'll have to email them, I guess.
  - ValentineC 6mo ago
    It looks like the 1 year option was introduced maybe 2 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/175haik/is_upgrading_from_30day_version_history_to_1year/ https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/175haik/is_upgra... (Ironic that their ex-employee wrote: "In this case, it is always kind of scary for Backblaze to just quietly change a setting from one setting to a different setting in the product for the customer without the customer taking that action themselves." — when that's what happened in this case.) I don't use Backblaze, but I found the Version History doc for you: https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/version-history https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/version-histo... Seems like whatever version is not currently on your local disk would be chargeable.
  - 6mo ago
keeperofdakeys 6mo ago
> I've been using Duplicati to sync a lot of data to S3's cheapest tape-based long term storage tier. There are actually a lot of cheaper S3-compatible services out there, (like Backblaze B2, or Cloudflare R2). They pricing may work out to just backup to these directly. Certainly gives you far more control than Backblaze Backup.
foobiekr 6mo ago
It's a good deal until they silently stop backing up some of your files.
dwedge 6mo ago
The comments are full of people saying the restore didn't work. If that's not important to you, you could save the extra $99 and just not bother backing it up. Given your use case and space, I'd just get a storage box from hetzner and enable nightly zfs snapshots
- peteforde 6mo ago
  I've read through the comments, and the vast majority of them are folks who are justifiably angry about Git, cloud storage and VeraCrypt exclusions that were quietly introduced. All fully legit points that don't represent blockers for me personally, though I would have to eat my hat if they arbitrarily decided to stop backing up something like MP3s and didn't tell me. I checked out what it would cost to store my data on rsync.net and it's ~1500/year. There are a few folks who lost data to corrupted files on the BackBlaze side. That is much more worrisome, but still, the point is to go in eyes open. It's clear that it should not be used as an "only" backup! I already backup locally and rsync critical data offsite. I'm all about adding several "third option" lifelines that I hope will keep me covered in extreme situations.

mvdtnz 6mo ago

You should consider Backblaze B2. It's not unlimited, but it's S3 compatible storage at a competitive price, without the limitations of Personal Backup.

NetMageSCW 6mo ago

If you don’t really want backups you can save a lot more money by not signing up for Backblaze.

peteforde 6mo ago
Are they known for accidentally erasing your backups? I get that this is not a restorable image, but for $100 a year I'm not expecting that.

justin66 6mo ago

"Maybe they're only incompetent in the ways that have been enumerated in this blog post" does not seem like much of a sales pitch. Baffling.

peteforde 6mo ago
I'm happy to pay an annual fee for a one-size fits all approach that I don't have to think about. I read the post and I'm just saying that his blockers are not blockers for me. I would ask you: what is the better alternative? That's not a rhetorical question; they don't have my credit card details for another two weeks.
- malfist 6mo ago
  This whole post is saying that you _do_ have to think about it.
  - peteforde 6mo ago
    Right. If you read what I actually said, I am not captured by Backblaze. I said that I want a solution that I don't have to think about. I'm happy to pay for not thinking about it. If that's not Blackblaze, do you have any good suggestions?

tonymet 6mo ago

You lose a bit of control. With S3 you can preprocess (transform, index, filter, downcode, etc) before storing. You can index metadata in place (names, sizes, metadata) for low-cost searching. As for testing recovery, you can validate file counts, sizes + checksums without performing recovery. A few shell scripts give you the power of advanced enterprise backup, whereas backblaze only supports GUI restores.

ValentineC 6mo ago

> Here's the thing: I'm paying about $14/month for that S3 storage, which makes $99/year a total steal. I don't use Dropbox/Box/OneDrive/iCloud so the grievances mentioned by the author are not major hurdles for me. I do find the idea that it is silently ignoring .git folders troubling, primarily because they are indeed not listed in the exclusion list. A big difference here is that Backblaze only keeps deleted/changed files for 30 days. Deleted files can go unnoticed for some time, especially if done by a malicious app or ignorant AI. I'd pay that extra few dollars for peace of mind.

peteforde 6mo ago
Thanks so much! That is super valuable input. I do notice in their GUI that they offer a >30 memory for extra $: 30-Day Version History (Current) Included 1-Year Version History Forever Version History $.006/GB/Month for versions changed or deleted more than 1 year ago They are not giving much information here at all. The above is not a pasting artifact; their page literally doesn't give any indication of how they price the 1-year history. Presumably it's not just as simple as click to 12x your retention for free. Meanwhile, it's even more unclear whether that $.006/GB is assessed for change deltas or for the total file size. Indeed, it's not clear if it's assessed against your entire fileset or just files that changed. I'll have to email them, I guess.
- ValentineC 6mo ago
  It looks like the 1 year option was introduced maybe 2 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/175haik/is_upgrading_from_30day_version_history_to_1year/ https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/175haik/is_upgra... (Ironic that their ex-employee wrote: "In this case, it is always kind of scary for Backblaze to just quietly change a setting from one setting to a different setting in the product for the customer without the customer taking that action themselves." — when that's what happened in this case.) I don't use Backblaze, but I found the Version History doc for you: https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/version-history https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/version-histo... Seems like whatever version is not currently on your local disk would be chargeable.
- 6mo ago

keeperofdakeys 6mo ago

> I've been using Duplicati to sync a lot of data to S3's cheapest tape-based long term storage tier. There are actually a lot of cheaper S3-compatible services out there, (like Backblaze B2, or Cloudflare R2). They pricing may work out to just backup to these directly. Certainly gives you far more control than Backblaze Backup.

foobiekr 6mo ago

It's a good deal until they silently stop backing up some of your files.

dwedge 6mo ago

The comments are full of people saying the restore didn't work. If that's not important to you, you could save the extra $99 and just not bother backing it up. Given your use case and space, I'd just get a storage box from hetzner and enable nightly zfs snapshots

peteforde 6mo ago
I've read through the comments, and the vast majority of them are folks who are justifiably angry about Git, cloud storage and VeraCrypt exclusions that were quietly introduced. All fully legit points that don't represent blockers for me personally, though I would have to eat my hat if they arbitrarily decided to stop backing up something like MP3s and didn't tell me. I checked out what it would cost to store my data on rsync.net and it's ~1500/year. There are a few folks who lost data to corrupted files on the BackBlaze side. That is much more worrisome, but still, the point is to go in eyes open. It's clear that it should not be used as an "only" backup! I already backup locally and rsync critical data offsite. I'm all about adding several "third option" lifelines that I hope will keep me covered in extreme situations.