Backblaze

"As of 3 October 2023, prices for new purchases and renewals will increase to $9 per month, $99 per year, or $189 for 2 years. Existing licenses will be honored for their duration." I advise people to avoid Backblaze in any case. What's the point of backing up if you can't restore? And these dopes tell you to shove off if your restore doesn't work. Aren't they nice. :-P

WARNING: the latest release 8.5.0.634 uses new security libraries that only run on 10.14 or later. Their installer does not check the OS version which is a major flaw. I backreved to 8.5.0.628 which they don't have available on their site. You'll have to contact support if you install this version on a 10.9-10.13 system.

Ok, backing up actually works, but that's it. You better NEVER have to restore anything. After a HD crash I had to restore several TB of data. This is not possible at once, you have to split up the data to actually be possible to download anything. Downloading with a browser is WAY too slow, downloading of one chunk of 300 GB lasts for 2 days, which sucks because of the forced connection restart of internet providers here, so downloading is so slow that it is actually not possible with the browser. Ok, there is "Backblaze downloader" which should be able to reconnect and resume downloading. The problem is, this app does not even start to do anything. Starting to download? Nah, not with this app. So actually you pay for backing up your files but you will not be possible to re-download and restore them if it is more than some GB. Backblaze is a joke. NOT RECOMMENDED!

Incompetent and rude, with no apologies. Look elsewhere.

I was a huge propionate of this service until somewhere in the middle of the night they changed their backup policy to store things for a limited time. Like mentioned in other interviews 30-days as a default. Well 30-days is an insult to the very concept of "backing up" your files. Yet again, another greedy company trying to deceive their customers however they can. Even if you pay the extra money for one-year, which I did, what other choice do I have? The software hobbles your computer 100% when it's running. It also ignores your directives for when and how to backup. Very easy to fix, but even after reporting these issues to the developers, I discovered they are the type of humans who work 12 hours a day to blame it on you instead of eight to fix the problem.

Do not trust Backblaze with your data. Maybe you'll be like me and pay for their services for 6 years, finally need it when my laptop was stolen, and then have my data deleted after 30 days because said laptop was no longer in my possession. And the Data Restore experience is terrible - incredibly slow download times and multiple crashes. This business model is like paying insurance premiums every month and then not actually having coverage when you need it. But hey, at least they gave me a protracted refund on my year subscription after I gave them money for 6 years for absolutely nothing. Thanks guys!

Poor customer service. They lost their encryption key from my key pair, stopping my ability to restore files. They offered no assistance apart from blaming me for losing my key, which I still have on hand. They returned money for the unused part of my service, then told me to get lost and not return. Worthless and rude.

This app has a major failing -- it can't restore files by itself, and most importantly, there's no way to restore files to their original location. Why this isn't a priority for Backblaze is beyond me.

WARNING!. This backup service does not back up applications in the /Applications folder and it does not back up aliases anywhere!. This is inexplicable, especially the alias problem. You have to move your applications to another folder and this can mess up some incorrectly-made applications. Also, the search function on their web site as well as in the iOS app sucks, as does navigating through hierarchical file structures.

Trying trial: says backing up at 2GB/**day**! With 540GB to back up this will take only 270 days??!!! My internet speed is 80-100 mb/sec

Hands down still the best remote backup service around. Only 4 ½ stars, though, because you still can't backup /usr/local. A warning: since one update a few months ago—don't know which—bzserv (and therefore Backblaze) is almost unusable on computers with HDDs; maybe it has quietly been optimized for SSD-based systems, but if you still have an HDD, the system (including online page loading speeds) take a heavy hit, whenever bzserv is working in the background. (Reducing Backblaze upload speed doesn't help, because it's what's happening locally on your boot volume that's the problem.) I've been on an SSD for some time, and all is great, but before the switch one to two months of Backblaze on an HDD was a real pita.

Until ISPs in the USA start providing symetrical upload/download (same speed both directions), online backup for the majority of people is not practical. My ISP provides 200 Mbps down, but only 10Mbps up. Even at 10Mbps, a backup of just my data takes over 24 hours, never mind system images. By the time data is backuped, it's already gone through several local update cycles, in other words, the online is never caught up.

Count me in the group that has had NO problems whatsoever with BackBlaze. I've backed up terabytes of date, and have never had any problems with restores. 100% success so far. And $5/month for unlimited storage is unbeatable. Only downside, and this is inherent of all of these services, is that upload speed can be SLOW. This, however, is a problem with your ISP, and not the software.

AVOID BACKBLAZE – As others have noted, test restores of data have been unreliable. Never assume that your data is safe without restoring data and testing results carefully. Backblaze restores were extremely problematic – and 'customer support' was slow, sketchy and unhelpful. I cancelled auto-renew after a year.

My experience with Backblaze was that they were incompetent and didn't care to discuss the matter. Go elsewhere for cloud backup service. I'm successfully using DropBox and Box. SpiderOak and Arq have good reputations and are both Mac friendly. Box is kind of annoying in that you are stuck using Windows naming characters and they can lose track of which Mac in a mirrored pair is the primary versus secondary. Otherwise, I've had very good success with Box. The encryption dilemma: I have a password protected, encrypted Sparse Bundle Disk Image I use for storing my private data. Because it is a 'bundle', only pieces of the 'bundle' are updated as it changes, versus the entire disk image. I back it up and mirror it via Drop Box and don't have to care if government surveillance maniacs are on the loose busily destroying The Fourth Amendment. They can't get into my Sparse Bundle Disk Image, period. Meanwhile, I have it set to open up and ask for its password each time I boot my Macs. I made the Sparse Bundle directly inside Apple's provided Disk Utility set to maximum encryption.

not bad, but not great either. One very annoying issue is that folders don't appear to be checksumed. Backblaze support says files are checksumed so if you move or rename it is not backed up again. However, if you have a folder with tens of thousands of files (i had to learn this the hard way) and you decide to rename it, it has to be backed up again. So if you are not a big folder mover and renamer, i think it might work for you.

I can't compare it to other similar services, e.g. CrashPlan, because I haven't tried them, but I love it: fast, easy, fair price, works great on El Capitan, satisfying so far. Some things could be improved, though: I get it that system files and directories will not be backed up. But what about additions that the user has made to the system? Third-party extensions, homebrewed and other binaries in /usr/local/? It would be easy for the Backblaze servers to diff a client's system setup against the standard Apple OS X install and only backup the additional files & directories, those that are not OS X defaults. And /Library/Application\ Support/ does contain a lot of important things for the user, not only his home folder. (!) And why not your /Applications folder? As far as I can see, they don't give us a reason. Well, I have other local backup setups, so it doesn't really matter, if all that stuff isn't backed up to the Backblaze pods… well, except when there's a catastrophic event like a fire… and isn't that what Backblaze is supposed to be for? Getting *all* your important stuff back, when disaster strikes? Not the system, of course, but all the rest? Hmmm… Still, it's a great addition to cloning and Time Machine.

Very important: even if you clear the exclusion list, backblaze will still ignore some files as being "cache" or "temporary". This isn't documented anywhere as of today, 22 Sep 2015. This might lead to files being corrupted, especially packages. This alone is enough to make me not use the app.

I've been using Backblaze for over 4 years now and have moved my whole company over to it. So far it has been great, backs up smoothly and test restores always work. I have found support good and new versions ooften add useful features. Also great value. 5 Star from me anyway!

Deeply disappointing. Great on the surface. But from personal experience, a fail when it comes to restoring lost data. Undependable. Poor technical support. I moved on to better services.

I'm done complaining now.