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!
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
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.
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?
I 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?
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 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.
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.
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.
