Backblaze

When I discovered Backblaze it was right after Mozy decided it was no longer going to offer an unlimited backup plan to it's customers. Prior to Mozy I had used Carbonite which to my dismay greatly reduces its customers upload speeds as soon as their trial period ends (of course after they pay). So along comes Backblaze. First off; the backup speeds have been excellent (I backed up 2 Terabytes) in just over a week. Recover was not quite as smooth however. When trying to return a folder to it's state as of a specific day it only allows you to recover the files that were backed up on that day not the entire folder as it was at that point and time. So for instance lets say I deleted the "My Documents" folder by accident. If I want it back the way it was I would have to download all of the files that were ever present in that folder since I started backing it up even those files that have long since been deleted. I guess on the plus side it only goes back 30 days for deleted files.

Backblaze is a data backup service that I have had a subscription with for about three years. I keep almost all my documents in digital form. The process is simple. Just download the Backblaze software and pay the subscription fee. The software scans your files and does an initial backup. After the initial backup, the software simply runs in the background to detect and backup any new files. You can see what is being backed up and, if a drive that is backed up isnt seen for a period of time, Backblaze sends you an email. About a year ago, Backblaze stopped seeing my external drive. I renamed the drive, which seemed to get the Backblaze software past the glitch but the change forced a new initial backup. Since the initial backup generally only takes about two weeks, this restart didnt worry me. About a week ago, I dropped my external drive. It didnt die but became increasingly slow and unresponsive over the next day or so. So, I went to Backblaze to download my data to put on a new drive. I quickly downloaded what was there but was surprised to discover that only about 40% of my files were available for download. I tried multiple times and then contacted customer service. After repeated efforts to get a response, customer service responded that the drive had over 30,000 files totaling ~22 GB of data in queue and awaiting upload. Those files were not available because the initial backup (begun over a year earlier) was not yet complete. Backblaze then marked my issue resolved and closed the ticket. My external drive is now in diagnosis with a data recovery service. If my data is easily recoverable, this will cost me $250. If the data is not easily recoverable, pricing begins at $1,435. If you want your data to be there when you need it, I do not recommend using Backblaze.