Hi everyone,
I’ve started pushing backups of media important to me (family pictures, video etc) to backblaze with client-side encryption.
However, are they a reliable storage provider? I can’t help but compare them to something like Amazon who likely has a better chance of maintaining my files but they are so expensive that I don’t even bother.
What do you think? Yes, I’ve heard of 3-2-1, however for now I only have backblaze and a local backup. I’m trying not to spend too much on this.
Thanks!
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Backblaze is a great backup solution. They publish drive stats and even show you the hardware they use.
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/hard-drive-test-data
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/storage-pod
I’m worried about reliability; what are the chances that they will lose my data? I have a local backup but I’m also feeling paranoid
The person you’re replying to linked their literal reliability stats lmao
Bottom line, there’s always a possibility a cloud/service provider could lose you data. That chance is (/should be) exponentially smaller on their environments however than the likelihood of your own local stores.
If you’re really serious about preserving your data, consider the 3-2-1 Backup Rule:
3 copies of your data 2 different types of media 1 copy stored off-site
I am a happy backblaze user and generally I’ve only heard good things about them.
They do have multiple data centers and they are operating B2B products too.
Is there anything in particular that would make you think they could be unreliable?
I’m just afraid of data loss, but I also know that that is unlikely. I have a local backup but sometimes I feel like that’s not enough, unfortunately my budget is also tight which means I can’t spend too much on replicated buckets/another cloud provider with a complete backup etc.
Also, have you ever faced the issue where you’re pushing files to backblaze with rclone and there are many failed uploads (rclone retries them eventually after reaching the end of the queue), which is something I’ve never had with S3. Well, you get what you pay for I suppose.
I’ve used backblaze b2 for almost 8 years now and it just works. I’ve never had any data lost by them in that time.
I just recently switched over to Storj.io as it a bit cheaper at only $4/TB as compared to B2 at $6/TB. Both are S3 compatible and work with just about every backup software out there. I have used Borg, Kopia and now Restic to do backups of important data. All 3 tools deduplicate all your data and reduces the amount of storage used. They also do encryption client side and are open source. They also have a built-in verification mechanism that checks the data is intact.
There definitely isn’t a docker container that will let you run Backblaze in WINE so that you can get the cheap unlimited plan working on Linux. You shouldn’t go looking for such a thing to save money. /s
Awesome and hopefully they never find out as that’s against their TOS. Sticking it to the man for what? ~$20 a year, potentially losing your backups and not having any if they find out? Why would you want to potentially lose your backup service over this? Idk why but this seems dumb. The point of 3-2-1 is to reduce points of failure and you are increasing your potential of data loss by doing this.
You are massively oversimplifying the situation. They are discriminating against which operating system I use, and not addressing that data is data. If I ran a windows VM on the same machine and put my data in there, it would be exactly the same as running the Backblaze container.
And it isn’t a $20 per year difference—if I backed up the same amount of data on the B2 plan, it would be around $3000 per year. Seems like a pretty steep increase to back up the same amount of data through Debian as opposed to Windows. They’ve never complained, never even tried to sell me the B2 plan, and I haven’t even seen anything telling me I’m storing an overly large amount of data for my plan.
Lastly, I read their TOS, and I don’t consider myself to be breaking them. I’m only backing up personal files at home and the program is technically running through a windows environment. That is what their unlimited plan was designed for. If they wanted it to be different, they could call it a 10TB plan.
I’m sure some will disagree with me. To each their own.
I see your valid points. However, my point regarding backups being in a trust worthy area still stands. Idk why you would chance it by doing this. Besides that there are other reasons I will point out which I assume is their reasoning, statistically, is that Windows users tend to be a ton less savvy than Linux users, so they would be only backing up what is available on their system, and I bet on average they don’t have more than 1TB drive with maybe 300gb if storage used that needs to be backed up, like pictures which is equivalent to the 1TB a month plan which I am assuming is the cost of the windows unlimited plan. If you want to screw over companies with exploits, please do so the evil/terrible companies; otherwise this makes you look like an asshole. My 2 cents, and no I don’t work for them.
TL;DR - average windows user most likely uses no more than 300GB so offering an “unlimited plan” to them to make money on under-utilized plan makes business sense.
Then sell me a 1TB plan—don’t call it unlimited.
I’m not screwing anybody over. I am using an available plan from a large company, and they have not had any issue with my usage that they have deemed necessary to bring to my attention. I cover multiple machines with their service, and my other machines have far less data on them—likely below their average. I am using it as a personal backup, as intended. Even if I trend above their average, they had to expect that some users would fall into that category if the option was available.
You are the only party that seems to have a major issue with how I’m using the service. I don’t understand why you seem to have such a strong opinion on this.
If a business doesn’t want a plan to be used as unlimited storage, then they should simply set a limit in the terms.
For my use, it actually cost less to use B2 than the home backup product. The bulk of my data is Linux isos so I’m not really worried about losing it.
Do you use zfs? Something that I am unsure if is whether people are making ZFS backups to backblaze, or if they’re backing up files directly.
Ie: Do I need the same filesystem as the source in order to recover the data?
Personally I’m using
rclonewith thecryptbackend of top of the usualb2remoteI do use ZFS and I just backup the files with restic. To restore a file in a zfs snapshot I would have to download the entire thing to a spare HDD, even if I only need to recover a few files. Restic has snapshots too and is designed to be used with cloud providers like B2.
I think the main thing is for you to try doing a test restore of your data before you need to (and you already have a local backup anyway if your test goes wrong)
That will give you a better understanding of the whole process - they might be 100% reliable in storing data which is totally unusable by you because you’ve lost your decryption key, weren’t backing it up correctly, etc (for example).
I’ve never really understood the logistics of how to do a test restore.
Do you have to buy a 2nd computer?
You dont need a second computer, just replace the drive with an empty one.
No, you can jusy restore to a second location…it depends on whether everything was backed up, or just a few test files.
I prefer backing up specific folders rather than “everything”, so it’s easier to test. (I’d just reinstall the OS if that was nuked)
Let’s say I want to do a test restore of all my photos. I just rename that folder to simulate that it’s been accidentally deleted… then I just do a normal restore - and do a bit-by-bit comparison of the two folders and check it all went well.
I just have a smaller dataset using the same settings, which I try to recover a couple of times/year.
It’s not perfect as recovery exercises go … but it feels safe enough for me.
I really need to do a test restore. I’ve been backing my NAS up to B2 for about a year now and haven’t done one yet.
Yeah, that was me a couple years ago… I’d read some blogs, watched some yoochoobz and had data going from my NAS to Backblaze… encrypted…so… ok… is it restorable? No idea.
I’ve used backblaze for years and regularly run recovery exercises. Never had a problem.
However, to avoid any fears, I store remote backups in two locations (the other one being OVH, a large French cloud provider).
My data retention regime:
- Mirrored disks in local NAS.
- Continually (every night) copy to Backblaze(US) and OVH (DE).
- Once/year, copy all local NAS data to offline disks (ie disks that are plugged into a tray only during the copy) to avoid a file locking/encryption infection that could spread to the online files.
How much does OVH cost you for storage?
I pay about £2.50 for 700+ GB storage, with about 2-10 GB of ingress every month. Storage alone is only £1.40. That’s using OVH’s “Cloud Archive” product; they also have a product called Cold Storage which is a smidge cheaper but doesn’t offer updating of existing data, so according to my projections based on the class of data I am archiving it wouldn’t be cheaper in the long term.
I use them as my backup backup provider. Crazy cheap, my bill was like $1.50 for a month. Their backup command line tool is pretty solid also. I would definitely use them if you need a new backup provider.
Yeah well I have over 3TB to store
So… $18 a month? That’s a Netflix subscription homie.
And that’s more expensive than a lot of other providers
It’s more expensive than one other provider, iDrive. But iDrive doesnt provide nearly the same level of service. Back laze is the cheapest full featured B2 service on the market. If you are concerned about data integrity of your backups but you cannot afford $18 a month, then you cannot afford to have that much data.
I admit that Storj is less expensive but it has egress costs which B2 + cloudflare doesn’t (the latter with a free account)
That’s personal pictures, ripped media, documents, some sensitive information etc. Netflix can go to hell
I wasn’t saying to use Netflix that doesn’t even make sense. I was saying that’s the same price as a Netflix subscription…
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How was it so cheap? How much data are you storing
It is $6 a TB. I use less than a TB. Their whole sthick is being cheaper than others. It is a very basic service overall. But does it’s job.
Also they publish drive stats which is pretty cool to have that transparency.
Oh ok. $6 a TB but if you use the computer backup instead its $10 for infinite storage which is great
US based provider so eww
It is encrypted
Doesn’t matter.
The US stores to decrypt later
ignore the removeds downvoting you, what privacy-respecting alternatives do you suggest?
Backblaze but you encrypt your data before uploading it?
I’ve recently switched from Backblaze to a Hetzner Storagebox. 5TB for only slightly more than I was paying for Backblaze.
They support BorgBackup out of the box, so super simple to set up encrypted, differential backups
Is there an SLA on the Hetzner storage boxes? What do you think about their reliability (will they recover if their underlying hardware fails?)
Any storage provider with client-side encryption
Any provider outside of the 5 eyes
there’s also the 14 eyes, when you consider this, you don’t even want to do or put anything online as everyone and everything wants to violate you for some profit
i’m now considering South America and Russian services as alternatives, but of course I’ll be encrypting my data before it leaves my device
not the op of this comment. I know there’s Infomaniak that is an independent host based in Switzerland, and they have a service called Infomaniak Swiss Backup. I might use their services in few times, so will come back to this comment to tell what I think of them in a few weeks if you wanna know
You could still encrypt your backups tho to make them private.
Just saying, but swiss privacy laws are a huge marketing hoax and amongst the worst in Europe.
I know - it’s unreal how much people confuse Swiss banking privacy with Swiss privacy laws in general. FADP is weaker than GDPR IMHO.
I didn’t know that, could you give an example?
A few (German language)sources: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/der-geheimdienst-will-auch-die-internetkabel-anzapfen-895734682308
https://www.republik.ch/2024/01/09/der-bund-ueberwacht-uns-alle
Basically: The Swiss Intelligence Agency do monitor all traffic going in and out of Switzerland(including incountry routing that uses external routes)and have the right to safe as much traffic as they want for 18 months- and can force swiss companies to give them access to their infrastructure even when they do not provide a service for non-swiss customers. Coming from a Intelligence agency that had the highest amount of files of their citizens of all democratic nations once (see Fichenskandal) it is more than troublesome.
Additionally swiss privacy law itself,while improved in 2023 after years of doing nothing, is still inferior to the GDPR. Unlike the GDPR it is not necessary for a person to explicitly consent to data collection unless the data is deemed especially sensitive. Unlike the GDPR there is no time-limit to notify authorities of data breaches and it is only mandatory for high risk breaches. And the right of data deletion is severely limited as the company can refuse to delete the data if it is still deemed “necessary” for the original purpose.
For me this is also why I can’t take Proton and Threema seriously. Whoever uses “swiss privacy law” as a marketing catchphrase without lobbying for improved laws (especially before 2023). And Proton openly lies on their “Why Switzerland” page.
Thank you for the very detailed response
It’s alright. I use both their desktop backup service and B2 extensively. Their desktop client and web interface is very basic and a bit rough, you don’t buy their service for the well-developed UI. The service works as advertised though.
Tbf I think a 2-2-1 is sufficient for home users.
I would only recommend 3-2-1 to some that has a business behind themself.Until your house burns down
2-2-1 still insinuates having a remote backup. I don’t see how this particular threat destroys a 2-2-1 setup.
I use them as well. Cheap, reliable and easy to use. I only had trouble once, where I was caught in some sort of anti-spam measure and they blocked my account. An email to their support fixed the problem pretty quickly though.
One thing to look out for is to determine where you want your backups. You can’t change your account’s server location after you create your account afaik.
Used them since the company started but stopped this year due to the cost going up. Never had an issue.
I have used them since januar 2019, and I don’t have any complaints. I have only needed to restore backups once - it worked as well as could be expected.
Any issues with backups have always been on my side
Can you explain the situation around you restoring a backup? Did backblaze lose your data?
AFAIK AWS replicates your data across buckets for reliability in case their datacentre goes down, which (from what I understand) is the cost of a whole another bucket with B2. That’s my concern. I don’t think Backblaze is going out of business any time soon but I’m afraid of data loss (I do have one local backup but my budget is unfortunately a bit tight right now - I’m going to have to pick and choose important bits from all of the data and add a second backup I guess)
AWS has multiple teirs of storage options in s3, some replicate and some dont. by default those that do replicate do so in multiple availability zones, but not across regions. unless you turn on cross-region replication (CRR) which is an additional charge.
So, for example without CRR if your bucket is in us-east-1 and 1 availability zone goes down you can still access the data, but if all of us-east-1 is down, you cannot.
I’ve got my mom setup on their PC backup service, no complaints so far (on the Backblaze side that is, she still insists that she doesn’t need continuous backups even though I’ve had to restore multiple times for her).
I switched my backups from Crashplan to B2 as it was significantly cheaper than going to AWS. B2 is more expensive than what I was paying for Crashplan Pro Unlimited (about 8x for the amount of data I have), but I have more peace of mind with it not relying on Crashplan’s terrible Java client.
A reminder that the only good backup is a tested backup.
I would not use them, they have bad ratings on Trustpilot.
Most reviews seem to be related to the “personal backup” service, but still good to consider. I’ve only read positive things about their B2 storage on self-host communities.
That’s true. Though there are reviews saying their support is terrible, which I assume applies to B2 as well.
