that sucks about backblaze, hopefully they can fix it....
I've been considering offsite "cloud" backup for a while now....i researched them all, crashplan is the only one who gives enough space, AND allows an external drive to be backed up on osX....carbonite WOULD work for me, but you cant backup an external drive (on mac)...
so i decided to pull the trigger and try the 30 day trial....well like someone else said, to upload 500gb of data would take over a month....and the seeded backup option is $125 by itself...
ANDD i read something about Crashplan losing someone's data as well...
Soooo to say the least, i'm back to square one....thinking about just getting one of those swappable drive docks, 2 internal drives, and just sending one to work with the wife every day, and swapping them every night....
so if your computer was lost/stolen/broken and you needed to get your files back, would you be able to get your backups downloaded? seems like the answer is no since you'd be doing it from a different computer with a new install of their software. that would suck and totally defeat the purpose.
I'm very happy managing my own backups the manual way. I use two 3TB drives that get dropped in a hard drive dock twice a month or after any important shoot. One stays in my office and one goes out to my car so that even if my place burned down I'd have a copy.
brett maxwell wrote:
so if your computer was lost/stolen/broken and you needed to get your files back, would you be able to get your backups downloaded? seems like the answer is no since you'd be doing it from a different computer with a new install of their software. that would suck and totally defeat the purpose.
Dear Backblaze,
I am in the process of investigating different options for my own backup solution and from recommendations on this forum, Backblaze was my lead candidate. However, after reading this thread I am very concerned about how Alex's situation has been handled. If this isn't remedied quickly, I will have to take your company out of consideration and won't recommend your service to friends, colleagues, and business partners.
Thanks in advance,
Dave
Same here. Rotating 2 local clones regularly and with a third offsite on a monthly schedule. We substitute safe deposit box for car though. Especially after having a car stolen in broad daylight while parked in Beverly Hills!
brett maxwell wrote:
I'm very happy managing my own backups the manual way. I use two 3TB drives that get dropped in a hard drive dock twice a month or after any important shoot. One stays in my office and one goes out to my car so that even if my place burned down I'd have a copy.
Hello, Alex. Ken forwarded me this support ticket and having read through it and checked your account I am afraid that Ken is correct, the data needs to be reuploaded.
I sincerely apologize for the need to reupload. In reading your interactions with Ken you were very proactive about making sure that this behavior could have been avoided and in confirming that your backup state could be maintained. Regretfully this was not the case and a reupload is necessary.
When users have hard disk or device crashes we absolutely recommend that they create a complete restore before taking any other actions so that we can preserve their data. This is done not so that they can maintain their previous backup state, but so that the data that they are worried may be lost can be preserved. Since you did not lose any data, we recommended uninstalling and reinstalling Backblaze. With the latest version of Backblaze that would have absolutely resulted in a creation of a new "trial" installation, which you could then have transferred your backup state to and not had to reupload your data. In your case, this resulted in your installation going back to an "Initial Upload" state, and starting to re-upload all of your data from your machine. Again, since your system is healthy, there was no data loss, there was only the need to re-upload your data so that we can maintain a backup of your system.
You have a very healthy internet connection and have already reuploaded over 13GB of data. If you have Backblaze running continuously (currently on Once Per Day) on your machine and have us set to 100% speedthrottle (which I see we are currently set to), we should be able to reupload the data fairly quickly (a matter of weeks), and then keep your backup current as intended.
I apologize again for the need to reupload your data, and hope that you will continue backing up with Backblaze. We appreciate the two years that you have been backing up with us and we hope that we can continue being your backup provider.
I understand that reuploading can be an inconvenience, and if you do wish to cancel your account with us, you can do so by doing the following: https://help.backblaze.com/entries/20203686-how-can-i-cancel-my-account and we can issue you a prorated refund for the remaining time on your license.
So, then, what do you suppose that means for Backblaze customers who have their computers stolen or destroyed?
Is not the purpose of offsite backup to protect against events that would cause the user to have to take precisely the actions Alex took? I don't understand this response, from either a technical view (surely the data are still present on their systems) or a customer service view.
Hell, I don't even understand it from a practical view. Of what possible use is this service?
Hi guys,
This is Gleb, CEO of Backblaze. Sorry to see some of the confusion here. Let me try and just clear up a bit of info:
If you backup your data with us and lose your computer or it dies, we absolutely still have your backup. That is the whole point of the service and how we recovered about 600,000,000 files for users who lost data last year alone. To recover data, you do not need to install any software (though we have optional downloader apps to help with big restores), you simply download data from the website or have us FedEx a USB hard drive or USB flash drive with your data on it.
Before uninstalling, you should always request a full restore if you have lost data. (During the uninstall, the system pops up a warning about this.) Even if you uninstall, we will still have your data. Even if your computer is lost/dead, we still have your data. Even if you install us on another computer, we still have your backup. Only if you uninstall and reinstall on the same computer is there even the slightest risk - and that should only be done after requesting a restore if there is any data loss.
We started Backblaze because we had friends lose data and wanted to help. We care tremendously about both making sure your data is safe, and making the service easy to use. Sometimes something we do isn't as easy as we would hope and we actively want to improve that.
Providing an online backup service that provides totally unlimited storage, totally unthrottled bandwidth, backs up all data, and backs up external drives for a flat $5/mo has obviously made us quite popular with photographers. We absolutely want to make sure that the service continues to perform well for all of you.
My email address is gleb.budman at backblaze.com. If you ever have problems that you can't resolve with support or simply have feedback for us, feel free to email me directly.
glebbudman wrote:
If you backup your data with us and lose your computer or it dies, we absolutely still have your backup.
Hi Gleb,
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I think the quote above though is what has me rilled, it appears that for the next 2 months if I loose my computer or it dies you DON'T have my data. And that is a fairly major problem as a professional photographer.
/don't even get me started on "unthrottled uploads" - my connections tops out at 12Mbits to Amazon S3 however, like pretty much everyone else I know, I can only get 3Mbits to BB.
Hi Alex,
I understand that not being being at risk of data loss during the time it takes to get fully backed up is nerve racking. (It pains me deeply to sometimes find people that have a TB of data to backup and have a really slow connection as they may think they are safe immediately, but it will take them a really long time to get fully protected.) In general, we often recommend that people make a local hard drive copy immediately - especially if they have a lot of data. It's suboptimal, but better than risking losing data.
As for "unthrottled uploads" - we really are completely unlimited. We don't put any restrictions on the system and have people regularly backing up at 50 Mbps+. (This is different than most other companies that either explicitly, or in some hidden way, throttle backups.) However, we have found that some people on some networks cannot max out their connection to us. Sometimes some router along the path between that user and us is throttling them. Sometimes it's a weird network issue. However, we do nothing to slow people down; on the contrary - our v2.0 release was specifically targeted to helping people backup faster.
I understand you're frustrated for having to upload again and I do apologize for that. Hopefully we can help you with your backup but please do make a local copy regardless of who you go with so that you will be at least protected to that level.
Just emailed this to Gleb but I thought I'd post it here for everybody as well. Will be interested to see the result.
"Hi Gleb,
Firstly, thanks for taking the time to reply to my thread on Fredmiranda, I really appreciate your input and what you guys do.
Now as I'm sure you're aware this has become a pretty major problem for me. As a wedding photographer I capture what many people believe is the most important day of their lives. As part of my job it's my duty to safeguard these images and until yesterday Backblaze was an intrinsic part of my backup solution.
Yes I use multiple redundant hard drives however as I found out when my parents-in-law's house burned down last year they really can't protect you in the worst case scenario. As such I've invested a great deal of time uploading my data to Backblaze to safeguard against this possibility.
I'm sure you've read my email exchange with Ken, in it I double checked that reinstalling wouldn't loose my backup set. To me, maintaining a good offsite backup is more important then a fast computer. If I'd known there was any chance of loosing my offsite backup I wouldn't have reinstalled (well certainly not without getting an alternative offsite in place first).
While I may not have lost any data I certainly am now exposed and to me this is a huge problem. Due to backblaze's failure I've spent a lot of time and money over the last 2 days trying to reinstate an offsite backup. Currently the majority of my data is still not offsite and this causes me a great deal of worry. Backblaze currently believes it will take 30 days to backup only the most critical parts of my data. If I multiply that by all my data, that's 3 months without a proper offsite backup, which is really unacceptable.
In my mind there are 3 things which backblaze could do to make this all right:
1) Recover my data
2) Overnight me a 3TB drive to seed the backup.
3) Vastly improve my upload rate (I currently only manage 3Mbits upload to BB whereas I can get 13 Mbits up to Amazon S3) - This wouldn't totally solve the problem but it would ease my pain.
Or you could just bury your head in the sand. I'll leave it up to you.
Looks like the biggest problem with BB is their $60/year fee. It's impossible for them to offer what they claim to offer for so little money and stay in business for any appreciable length of time. So corners will be cut. You can argue they owe you this or they owe you that, but they can't offer a $200 solution (your option #2) when it will take them 4 years to fund it.
Tell them your computer was destroyed and will send a USB hard drive and expect to have the files back on it. Im sure they could do it - which means they have the files somewhere....
Dont fall for one lazy person's crap. First prove that they DO have the files, and then after you prove they do - tell them to find a way to get those files linked back to you.
I have my own backup strategy and control all of it. I have 4 copies of each file. One off site.
When people ask me about an internet solution such as Backblaze my answer has always been I don't trust some company in virtual land. If they loose it I have no recourse. If they go bankrupt I have no recourse. Even if I sue them it won't get the images back. They can say "hey this was one in a million". I say that's why we buy insurance (backup service).
I have stated that no one can guarantee anything 100%. my thinking is if they do loose your data what will the company do? Nada, zip, nothing. Well almost, in this case they made lots of excuses and offered nothing to help.
jdben622 wrote:
Looks like the biggest problem with BB is their $60/year fee. It's impossible for them to offer what they claim to offer for so little money and stay in business for any appreciable length of time. So corners will be cut. You can argue they owe you this or they owe you that, but they can't offer a $200 solution (your option #2) when it will take them 4 years to fund it.
Its not a $200 solution, it is the cost for them to ship back and forth. They get the HD back.
Also, sometimes the negative consequences are worse than spending a few dollars in preventative measures.
I have my own backup strategy and control all of it. I have 4 copies of each file. One off site.
When people ask me about an internet solution such as Backblaze my answer has always been I don't trust some company in virtual land. If they loose it I have no recourse. If they go bankrupt I have no recourse. Even if I sue them it won't get the images back. They can say "hey this was one in a million". I say that's why we buy insurance (backup service).
I have stated that no one can guarantee anything 100%. my thinking is if they do loose your data what will the company do? Nada, zip, nothing. Well almost, in this case they made lots of excuses and offered nothing to help.
Same could be argued about any type of insurance, so then you don't insure your gear because they might go out of business at any time? You wouldn't buy health insurance?
People get all hot and bothered about cloud backups, but yeah they are not perfect they are just one piece of a more comprehensive backup solution. Backup multiple local copies, offsite copies AND to the cloud. Its cheap and it works MOST of the time. Don't use any one solution and think it will solve everything.
