#Backblaze backup external drive manual
#Backblaze backup external drive full
#Backblaze backup external drive mac

We live in a time where almost nobody owns a computer with multiple internal drive bays anymore. If Backblaze does not see a drive for more than 30 days, it considers it gone and deletes the data from your backup. An unlimited number of external drives is included in your “unlimited” backup allowance, provided that the drive gets attached to your computer at least every 30 days. One of Backblaze’s biggest downsides for me is its policy towards external hard drives. That’s Backblaze if you have to deal with external drives.

#Backblaze backup external drive manual

There is this saying that a backup system that requires manual work is not a reliable backup.

Support for the upcoming Finder Sync extension in Yosemite would also help with transparency. The web interface on has a little more information, but verifying that a certain file has been backed up is inconvenient and requires you to enter your private encryption passphrase into the browser, something I’d rather not do unless I needed to. Which files are already backed up and which aren’t? Can I be sure the app has noticed and uploaded all changes on an external drive so I can unplug it again?

What I also would very much like to see from the Backblaze client is more and better information about what’s going on with my backup.

When you find out that some of your home videos have never been backed up in the first place, it might be too late. I do question some of these defaults, though, especially the file size limit. The best backup system gets out of your way and just does its job. I generally like Backblaze’s lack of configurability. The four Backblaze processes that are running on my system while I’m writing this consume about 500 MB of memory (as reported by Activity Monitor), and that’s with a backup size of almost 2 TB (comprising 1.2 million files).īackblaze’s default list of excluded directories and file extensions. Everything feels way faster than with CrashPlan’s client app. I never noticed it taxing the system in any way. The backup daemon works very unobtrusively. The client is very Apple-like, purposely designed to get out of your way and give you as few options as possible.

#Backblaze backup external drive mac

The Backblaze Mac client installs its GUI component as a panel in System Preferences.

#Backblaze backup external drive full

I’m on a 50/10 Mbit/s connection and I regularly see the Backblaze client utilizing the full upload bandwidth, with an average of about 4–5 Mbit/s in practice (= approximately 2 GB per hour). Upload speeds to Backblaze have generally been much better for me than with CrashPlan from my location (Berlin). (And hopefully the NSA can’t break the encryption, either.) Backblaze claims they cannot decrypt the data in their data centers if you do this. The Backblaze client allows you to specify your own private passphrase that is used to encrypt all your data before it leaves your computer.

Like CrashPlan, Backblaze offers unlimited storage for the fantastic price of $5 per month and computer. Now that I have been using Backblaze for the past nine months, I believe I can make a fair evaluation of the service. Backblaze is the second online backup service ( after CrashPlan) I have tried for a significant amount of time.