Upon the write up and coverage of BackBlaze yesterday on TechCrunch, I decided to download and try BackBlaze, the online backup tool. As writen by others, its entering a bit of a tough arena as there are quite a few established competitors, all of whom are probably trying to grow the space. At $5 a pop for unlimited data storage and transfer, however, its a deal I had to check out, particularly as they had a 15 day trial period.
… Man, did I want to like this product.
There are one big problem I had with the trial that made me stop “trying” it out.
You don’t select the files you want to back up. You *exclude* the ones you *don’t*. The problem, I think, is that the well meaning folks behind BackBlaze assume that you have your files organized into a well organized architecture. That way, its *easy* for their users to *deselect* the files or media they don’t want. They would just — for example — go to the “video” folder and unselect that.
If you’re like me, the reality is that you probably don’t. I have different file types of varying importance scattered across my hard drive. For me to find the one’s I *don’t* want to back up, is a such a colossal hassle, its a deal killer, because I obviously don’t want to include every single file on my hard drive (excluding windows and operations-type ones).
The result? On default, BackBlaze *tries* to upload everything it sees, and I got a screen that says that it will “only” take about 82 days to upload all my junk.
The irony, of course is that because I’m too lazy to exclude the files I don’t want to upload, the time it takes to upload vastly exceeds the 15 day trial. In fact, I was hoping to just *include* a few directories (or a few gigabytes of storage) to see how the rest of the service goes.
Sadly I won’t get that chance, as my gerbil-like attention span just killed any desire to do so. If and when Backblaze changes this, I won’t be coming back to it. As it stands there are too many other competitors to try at the moment.
21 Comments
Tony, thank you for trying out the Backblaze service. I wanted to share our thoughts on why we went with the “exlude” model and how you can try the service.
Despite “include” type solutions existing for a decade, 94% of users do not regularly backup. When we asked why, the response we got was “it is too hard.” And the primary reason was exactly what you said – their files were scattered and they didn’t have time to organize, find, and decide which ones to backup. So they just didn’t.
Since our mission was for everyone to backup, we wanted to make it 1-click easy, which led us to our approach: backup everything.
In terms of your 82 days. I assume that means you have hundreds of GB of data, far above the average as most users are backed up in a week or two. If there are media types on your system that you do not want to backup, you can simply exclude them by file type. If you have lots of movies, one or two file type exclusions may bring you down to a couple weeks to backup.
Finally, the 15-day trial was meant to try the service – not to finish the backup. You can try the entire service end-to-end, including doing a test restore at any point.
Again, thank you for trying the service and I hope you’ll consider using it to backup your data. (If not, I just hope you use something.)
Thank you,
Gleb
@Gleb — I agree that the problems I have may not be the same as the majority of your customers, and if that’s the case, that’s great for you.
On the other hand, to reframe the issue I was trying to bring up, the problem is that I would like to back up *some* video files, and *some* audio files, but not all of them.
Since they’re scattered across a few hard drives, and i’m too lazy / busy to collage them into easy-to-find folders, it is quite difficult for me to “exclude” everything else.
And you’re right about the size — its in the hundreds of megabytes. I don’t think that this is an unreasonable size, however, given how many “critical” pieces of data for most families are probably photos and video.
Cheers
t @ dji
I haven’t tested the system, but just based on these comments … why the hell isn’t there an *option* for exclusion or inclusion?
Matt and Tony, our first prototype was actually the inclusion model, but most users rejected it because they didn’t know how or didn’t want to take the time to find all the files they wanted to backup and were constantly concerned they would miss or forget one. The whole point was to make backups happen in a hands-off fashion.
Matt, we considered adding an option for both, but since every option adds complexity, we decided to leave it off for now. At some point we may add that.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Gleb
I came across this post after doing a search for Backblaze reviews.
I’m glad I read this. This inclusion vs exclusion method is a deal killer for me too. There are a small amount of files/directories I want to back up. I don’t want to go around and figure out what NOT to backup.
I hope backblaze adds an option for people like me. Until then, I’ll be looking elsewhere.
I understand that the service wants to make it easier for mom and pops that wants an easy backup solution. But for people that know exactly what they want to do.. well, they are closing the door on them.
too bad.
I also read in another review that the encryption isn’t what you would think it is. Meaning it is stored on the server non-encrypted. Is this true? The website seems to indicate that it is, however this review on the other site said that when you get your USB drive (to restore), the data comes back unencrypted. If this is true, well, then this is an even bigger deal than the inclusion/exclusion situation.
* there’s a private key that you can set in the software preferences on your mac (i have not tried the windows version) and this encrypts your data.
* i actually like the exclusion-only model since it makes it rather simple even though i am a power user. that given, i do have some semblance of organization on my machine although nowhere near pefect.
* im not sure about how the data comes back on drive or disc (if its mailed to you) but would like to know more about whether it arrives encrypted or not.
I also decided to try Backblaze. I just want to back up about 20-30 gigs of family photos and important documents. Backblaze wants to back up about 300 gigabytes and there is no easy way to exclude folders, so forget it. There isn’t even an easy way to see exactly what folders Backblaze is backing up during the initial backup.
I do have a theory though. Backblaze does not want people like us as clients, because we’re more likely to backup more data than people with one hard drive and a few gigs of family photos under My Pictures. So Backblaze has PURPOSELY made it difficult for people with multiple hard drives and lots of data to use their system. It’s the only rational explanation. Unfortunately, that policy makes it pretty much impossible for me to use the service.
thanks for your post and the comments were very helpful. I think the exclusion system works well for me, but everyone is different. hopefully you can eventually find a service that meets your needs.
Exclusion system = no deal…end of story
@Matt – I agree with your theory, we professional data hoarders don’t fit their demographics… I have ~300GB of valuable photographs 2x on a local backup server, and another ~50GB of documents which get synced overnight to Amazon S3, which is getting pretty pricey at that point. I’m a photographer/graphic artist and need to backup only 15 file types, tops. It would take me forever to figure out which file types to *exclude* with BackBlaze.
BackBlaze, please give me an option for inclusion or uploading specific directories in one way or the other… maybe create presets for your app?
I’m doing my research on backup solutions because I’ve been playing with fire long enough, and although I love the look and feel of BackBlaze, I have yet to hear of anyone really advocating the exclusion system over the inclusion system (except BackBlaze themselves)
I’m going to give it a try anyway and hope that I manage to include what I need in some reasonable time..
I read the blog at BackBlaze and was very impressed by their storage solution. I was even ready to try BackBlaze until I read this review. Good thing that I did. I want the inclusion model versus the exclusion model. I have a few folders (Primarily the user documents folder and a few others) that have the data I want backed up. I know what I want backed up. Something tells me that the company has some big egos in where they think they know better instead of listening to what the customer wants. Give the user a choice, instead of the other way around.
Backblaze is making sure that if you need a file, it is in the list and you CANNOT possibly forget to back it up. This is foolproof. If you are sure you won’t need a backed up file, then don’t include it.
Since the storage is free and you are really paying for the service of automatic backup and recovery, then the time it takes to do the initial backup shouldn’t be much of an issue in comparison.
I think it is a great decision to use the exclusionary model, especially for users that are on the less technical side of things.
I’m subscribed to Backblaze’s $50/year plan.
My problem is that the initial backup will take months. This is NOT Backblaze’s fault.
I also use Dropbox. Dropbox’s software is smart enough to realize that a file I am uploading has already been uploaded by another user. Is Backblaze’s software capable of that?
I wish you had a users forum.
I would think this is designed for normal users. I would be less likely to use it but I am recommending it for people who wouldn’t backup and wouldn’t know what to select or where files are kept. The easier for them the better.
I am currently uploading my data to Backblaze and I love the fact that it automatically backs up everything.
It would be far more trouble for me to go through both my entire computer system and external drive and choose each file or folder that I wanted backed up online and move it into a special area for uploading. With my luck, I would most certainly forget to upload something important and lose the data if something were to happen to my computer. I much prefer having everything backed up automatically for me.
There are also other services like Mozy and Carbonite, but I had read about a lot of customer service problems at Mozy, claims of “unlimited storage” but not allowing external drives to be uploaded at Carbonite, failure to retain important metadata and “reticulate spline” problems at Mozy, etc. Ouch!
After a careful review of all of the available services, reading reviews like this one, and considering my own needs, Backblaze was the best option for me.
iskash li da probash ezikat mi?
I love the model – the include-by-default approach is exactly why I like Time Machine so much. BackBlaze looks like a great complement.
Agreed that it’s not for everyone, but maybe that’s the point. People’s differing relationships with data and organization mean that trying to develop a model that’s great for everyone is just Quixotic.
It seems like it’s far better to identify a particular sub-set of users, and tailor your service to them. BackBlaze seems suited to people with lots of well-organized stuff in fairly stable hierarchies.
If that’s you, great. If not, there are plenty of other services out there, with some offering better fits than others.
Mr. Gleb, you simply don’t understand the world. This systems is so misconceived that only people who don’t need the restore their data could continue as your customers.
J. Stone
It seems the criticism that it’s too hard to exclude things because they’re scattered is silly. For an include system, the same argument would be that it’s too hard to find everything you want backed up because it’s scattered. From a data security perspective, backing up by default and excluding specific, unimportant, items is better than missing half the valuable data because you forgot about that folder.
Yes it takes a while the first time, but since only changes are backed up after the initial setup, it seems that this is a one-time inconvenience.
On the whole, this review was quite unhelpful because it was entirely based around a criticism that seems to hold for both include and exclude models.
Hello. I would like to know a few things since I have never used an online data backup service. First, are music, picture and video files degreaded at all from original to backup then restored; or is the restored file an exact match to the original files? Second, it sounds like the backup takes a very long time. How long does it take to restore files? For example if I wanted to watch a movie I have backed up would it be available in minutes or days? Finally, can I backup my system in case something happens to my computer and I need to reformat and restore my computer back to a working state? Would I be able t create a bootable disc?
Thank you for your time and patience as i said earlier this is new to me and I just want to make sure the service is for me.
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