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Comment by jfrunyon | Hacker News Reader

Per their support, there are known issues which can cause the client and their servers to become "out of sync". If this happens, your backups will stop occurring (even though the app will indicate that the all files are backed up successfully through the current date). The only notice you will receive that this has occurred is after 14 days when they send you an email to warn you that they'll delete your backups if you don't fix it.

They don't seem to recognize why backups silently failing is a very bad thing.

I stopped using Backblaze after that revelation.

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I think this is exactly what happened here. Or at least extremely similar.

You know what, I had Backblaze tell me that I had a drive missing on Friday that had been disconnected for 14 days. My external USB drive failed to startup up correctly after a power outage. However, I had 3 or 4 notices from Backblaze in that time of successfully completed back ups. I think the default is to warn after not successfully backing up for 5 days. I set that to 2 instead. Some of the checks seem disconnected from each other.

I’ve also had issues with downloading my 2TB of data the Backblaze has. Takes about 3 or 4 days, if you’re successful. With retries and failures, wall time was about a week. And I have a 1G/1G internet connection. And doing the work to break it into 500GB chunks sucks.

I’d like to back up more of my files but I worry I would not be able to get it back.

Do you have a local friend who would like to swap backup services with you? Each of you buys and configures a Raspberry Pi with a 2TB disk. Encrypt a storage filesystem. Load up your first backup, then swap boxes. Now you each have remote rsync/rsnapshot/rclone/ZFS/whatever targets, and if you run into big trouble, you can go get the box back for a really fast restore.

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze so I'm biased and you should keep me honest.

> if you run into big trouble, you can go get the box back for a really fast restore

Backblaze provides this service for our customers! Customers can ask for an 8 TByte encrypted USB attached external hard drive to be prepared in the Backblaze datacenter with all their data beautifully restored on it, then we FedEx this anywhere in the world to them. This is a free service as long as the customer returns the USB drive to Backblaze in a reasonable amount of time (a couple months, and we can work with customers if they need longer). Or customers can pay $189 (which includes the drive, the data, and world wide shipping) and keep the 8 TByte USB drive.

You can read more about the USB hard drive restores here: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/usb-hard-drive-restore/ and why it is a free service here: https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/217665948-Resto...

What we often see is that if a customer's laptop is stolen or crashes, they sign into the Backblaze website to download the 3 or 4 individual files they were working on when the laptop was stolen. Let's say that is a term paper due the next day. That way they are back up and running IN SECONDS. Then the customer orders a free USB drive with 8 TBytes of their data which will show up in a few days. They can live without their wedding photos and their music for 3 days, but that term paper has to be handed in.

incredible business answer..

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