5 ms·

Definitely wish I had seen this a couple months ago before I bought two 3TB seagates. Although to be fair I was already pretty sure that seagates sucked (its go

Definitely wish I had seen this a couple months ago before I bought two 3TB seagates. Although to be fair I was already pretty sure that seagates sucked (its good to see data backing that up) but getting two for $85 each was too hard to pass up. I'm a sucker for a deal. I buy HDs in pairs now so I'm not too worried about losing anything. I am intrigued by backblaze's service though. A part of me feels like there must be a catch somewhere. I have a good 10TB I'd be happy to pay $5/month to backup but somehow I feel like they'd pull a comcast and say their "unlimited" claim doesn't apply to the 1% of users (or in this case maybe the .001%).

stdbrouw 13y ago
The catch is that the initial upload can take a while if your internet connection has limited upstream – not something Backblaze can help but I'm sure it has made some people think twice before having their external drives mirrored in the cloud.
- brianwski 13y ago
  One idea that works for some people is to carry your entire computer to a "fast connection", for example your workplace. Plug it in, leave it running for 24 hours to power through the initial upload, then carry your computer home again for the incrementals. Just an idea.
  - arielweisberg 13y ago
    My experience has been that the upload speed is slow no matter what connection you are on. They claim not to throttle, but I am skeptical that you will get more than 1.5 megabit anywhere. I couldn't. They actually ship a bandwidth test that goes to their datacenters. If I ran multiple instances of the test at once I got 1.5 megabits for each instance. It's not a bandwidth or capacity issue... If they documented 1.5 megabits I wouldn't complain, but claiming one thing and shipping a product that throttles, whether explicitly or implicitly, is obnoxious. I did a restore recently and was pleasantly surprised to get 9 megabytes/sec down so that is much better and restore speed is a higher priority. However if I had to upload the entire data set from scratch I would stop using Backblaze.
    - brianwski 13y ago
      I work at Backblaze -> we absolutely do NOT throttle. Inherently each pod has some built in limitations, for example it has a 1 Gbit/sec network card, so you won't be able to exceed that. But many, many customers get 100 Mbits/sec upload speed, I can show you our internal chart if you like. I'm glad you got a fast restore download, we have been BATTLING Comcast in recent weeks, between 5pm and midnight downloading restores from Comcast has been trickle slow. Some people claim this is due to Netflix traffic, but I think some system admin somewhere is not doing their damn job. We think we have finally figured out a work around just this morning...
    - martinald 13y ago
      That's definitely not true, on a 1gigE connection I was uploading at well over 200mbit/sec.
Zirro 13y ago
As a user with almost six terabytes of data, I can vouch for their service. I have never received any messages asking me to limit the amount of data I upload. I do try to compensate, for the sake of my conscience, by recommending the service to people (with much less data) who previously lacked a backup-strategy. http://cl.ly/image/0I0S1M0V0F3t http://cl.ly/image/0I0S1M0V0F3t
rajivm 13y ago
Do you buy the same drive model when buying in pairs? I've anecdotally had 2 identical drives die of the same type (manufacturing batch) at the same time.
- hackinthebochs 13y ago
  I do generally buy the same model. I keep the second one completely offline and do occasional manual backups. I'm hoping a completely offline keeps the likelihood of failure frozen.

stdbrouw 13y ago

The catch is that the initial upload can take a while if your internet connection has limited upstream – not something Backblaze can help but I'm sure it has made some people think twice before having their external drives mirrored in the cloud.

brianwski 13y ago
One idea that works for some people is to carry your entire computer to a "fast connection", for example your workplace. Plug it in, leave it running for 24 hours to power through the initial upload, then carry your computer home again for the incrementals. Just an idea.
- arielweisberg 13y ago
  My experience has been that the upload speed is slow no matter what connection you are on. They claim not to throttle, but I am skeptical that you will get more than 1.5 megabit anywhere. I couldn't. They actually ship a bandwidth test that goes to their datacenters. If I ran multiple instances of the test at once I got 1.5 megabits for each instance. It's not a bandwidth or capacity issue... If they documented 1.5 megabits I wouldn't complain, but claiming one thing and shipping a product that throttles, whether explicitly or implicitly, is obnoxious. I did a restore recently and was pleasantly surprised to get 9 megabytes/sec down so that is much better and restore speed is a higher priority. However if I had to upload the entire data set from scratch I would stop using Backblaze.
  - brianwski 13y ago
    I work at Backblaze -> we absolutely do NOT throttle. Inherently each pod has some built in limitations, for example it has a 1 Gbit/sec network card, so you won't be able to exceed that. But many, many customers get 100 Mbits/sec upload speed, I can show you our internal chart if you like. I'm glad you got a fast restore download, we have been BATTLING Comcast in recent weeks, between 5pm and midnight downloading restores from Comcast has been trickle slow. Some people claim this is due to Netflix traffic, but I think some system admin somewhere is not doing their damn job. We think we have finally figured out a work around just this morning...
  - martinald 13y ago
    That's definitely not true, on a 1gigE connection I was uploading at well over 200mbit/sec.

Zirro 13y ago

As a user with almost six terabytes of data, I can vouch for their service. I have never received any messages asking me to limit the amount of data I upload. I do try to compensate, for the sake of my conscience, by recommending the service to people (with much less data) who previously lacked a backup-strategy. http://cl.ly/image/0I0S1M0V0F3t http://cl.ly/image/0I0S1M0V0F3t

rajivm 13y ago

Do you buy the same drive model when buying in pairs? I've anecdotally had 2 identical drives die of the same type (manufacturing batch) at the same time.

hackinthebochs 13y ago
I do generally buy the same model. I keep the second one completely offline and do occasional manual backups. I'm hoping a completely offline keeps the likelihood of failure frozen.