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From another blog post: "Funny thing about providing an online backup service that is currently storing over 100 Petabytes of customer data, sometimes people n

by us0r 12y ago

From another blog post: "Funny thing about providing an online backup service that is currently storing over 100 Petabytes of customer data, sometimes people need their data back. In fact, nearly half (46%) of our customers restored one or more of their files in 2013 and that adds up." https://www.backblaze.com/blog/six-billion-files-restored-and-counting/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/six-billion-files-restored-an...

vidarh 12y ago
That doesn't contradict the earlier point. 46% of customers restoring one or more of their files is practically nothing; assume that many customers only restores a few files and that most customers do nightly backups, and the vast volume of backed up data is likely never touched. So as was said earlier: As long as there are replicas (and presumably a repair process to maintain a reasonable replica count), a dead disk can sit in the enclosure until a high enough percentage is dead that it's cost effective to pull a a couple of them and consolidate into a new one. Not just because it's awkward to pull them, but data centre visits gets expensive when you factor in the cost of ops people so there are definite tradeoffs in terms of how often it is cost effective to deal with.
- brianwski 12y ago
  Brian from Backblaze here. > data centre visits gets expensive Early on going to the datacenter was expensive (and time consuming, the datacenter was a 1 hour drive away from the office). We had some success with training "remote hands" (the datacenter provides some basic services like rebooting servers for hourly fees). Now we employ several full time people who go to work in the datacenter (they don't even have desks at the corporate office). It makes our world SO much better and smoother now that there is enough work that they can be there full time.
Spooky23 12y ago
I use Backblaze to backup something like 400,000 files on my Mac. Worst case scenario, I only care about maybe 100,000 files total. The rest is associated with the OS, apps, etc

by us0r 12y ago

vidarh 12y ago

That doesn't contradict the earlier point. 46% of customers restoring one or more of their files is practically nothing; assume that many customers only restores a few files and that most customers do nightly backups, and the vast volume of backed up data is likely never touched. So as was said earlier: As long as there are replicas (and presumably a repair process to maintain a reasonable replica count), a dead disk can sit in the enclosure until a high enough percentage is dead that it's cost effective to pull a a couple of them and consolidate into a new one. Not just because it's awkward to pull them, but data centre visits gets expensive when you factor in the cost of ops people so there are definite tradeoffs in terms of how often it is cost effective to deal with.

brianwski 12y ago
Brian from Backblaze here. > data centre visits gets expensive Early on going to the datacenter was expensive (and time consuming, the datacenter was a 1 hour drive away from the office). We had some success with training "remote hands" (the datacenter provides some basic services like rebooting servers for hourly fees). Now we employ several full time people who go to work in the datacenter (they don't even have desks at the corporate office). It makes our world SO much better and smoother now that there is enough work that they can be there full time.

Spooky23 12y ago

I use Backblaze to backup something like 400,000 files on my Mac. Worst case scenario, I only care about maybe 100,000 files total. The rest is associated with the OS, apps, etc