Backblaze, an online backup service that I described as Online Backup With Time Machine’s Finesse, has released a Mac version of its software in private beta. TechCrunch readers can grab one of 500 invites here.
Backblaze costs $5 a month or $50 a year for unlimited online storage for backing up your hard drive, with a 15-day free trial available. The service continuously monitors files for changes and uploads them to the server, and in the event of a hard drive failure allows users to selectively download files via a web interface or have them delivered on DVDs or a USB drive. Unlike some other backup solutions, Backblaze emphasizes simplicity, allowing users to begin backing up in only a few button clicks with a minimal amount of setup (though it does have advanced features - they’re just hidden by default).
Backblaze may be a harder sell on the Mac than it is on Windows, as Time Machine (the best backup utility I’ve ever used) is already included in the most recent version of the operating system. Online backup has some advantages over local storage (its disks aren’t open to theft or destruction during a flood or fire), but for most people the deciding factor will be simplicity, and it takes far longer to backup via the web than over USB.
The site’s Windows version opened to the public in September. Other online backup services include SugarSync, Mozy, iDrive and Carbonite.
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Mac’s need HD backups? I thought they were indestructible?
Awesome, thanks.
Unfortunately they dont have iPhone support that sugarsync has.. Although their pricing is better! I hope companies start talking about their roadmap. It will help users like me make a decision and become customers.
Sugarsync is better and has both iphone and blackberry applications.
blah, Amazon s3 + 1 ruby script backs up all of my stuff, for about $3 a month. Firefox S3 plugin if I want the GUI to download, or just reverse the script.
NEXT
Josh
did you not read the article?
“but for most people the deciding factor will be simplicity”
So most people ask:
What is “Amazon s3″?
What is “ruby” (I got my girl a diamond, isn’t that good?
What is a “script” (do I have to see a doctor to get one?)
What is Firefox? (some poor little animal?)
“Plug-in” to what? ( my computr is already plugged in)
“GUI” like sticky candy gooey?
“reverse the prescription”? Isn’t that illegal?
hesitations
Owned.
@Hesitations,
This is a really brilliant answer … Are you a comedian?
@mimi
No, not a comedian
My point is this: All of Josh’s technical ability equals $2 per month.
Backblaze is easy Cost=$5 per month
Josh’s technical solution=$3 per month
Josh has a probem. His education, training and experience make him $2 per month.
He is “blah” because his skills just got overwhelmed by the market.
Based on this application he is bankrupt and ruined.
I already use S3 (with JungleDisk).
$3 per month? Wow, you must not backup much. I’m spending $15 per month for 2 computers.
Once JungleDisk is setup and running, it’s pretty simple, but I’m pretty interested in this solution. For some reason, I just don’t feel all that comfortable with JungleDisk. Can’t explain it.
If I get a beta invite (all taken apparently), I’ll give backblaze a try.
I’ve been using Mozy for awhile and there are some definite merits to this, based on my impressions so far.
First, the interface provides much more information than Mozy, particularly in terms of backup details and options. Second, the backup system appears to be continuous, rather than a timed backup. Both are pluses. I’m going to try it with a small amount of data and see how it goes.
Multiple services like this have failed. The fact is, most people wouldn’t create backups even if they were free. There is a very small market for this. Deadpool.
I think it’s a winner
http://datingtips-sally.blogspot.com/
Entirely relevant!
Since we are a mac shop we’ll definitely give this a try . I wonder what it does to your onlince connection though - probably gobbling up a lot of bandwith and therefore best used over night ?
Peter, like any online backup service, we do need to use your bandwidth. However, 1) we deduplicate, compress, and once backed up only do incrementals to minimize bandwidth usage and 2) we use your upload bandwidth which doesn’t affect your download use. Hope you enjoy.
A word of warning: I installed backblaze with the previous techcrunch article about it. I however didn’t sign up after the beta. Since then it keeps bugging me once a day to get a paid plan, and there is no easy uninstall or stop autostart button. I’m sure I could hack it off my pc, but it’s a bit annoying.
PacMan, sorry you decided not to use the service. Uninstalling is simple - just visit Add/Remove Programs (XP) or Programs and Features (Vista).
Only negative is how you retrieve your backup files.
I did the beta when TechCrunch first posted about backblaze and it took days for my initial backup to finish.
JungleDisk is pretty darn easy and you pay for what you use. Would recommend that over anything.
Sugarsync is unreliable.
First impressions
1) Installer prompts for an email, then password to create a new account. Password is concealed and only entered once so no checking for typos!
2) Installer prompts for admin rights then goes straight into ‘analysing’ your drive. Didn’t give the option to say what I wanted to try backing up!
3) No application icon - no easy way to uninstall!
Found uninstaller courtesy of their website - it’s in Library\Backblaze\Uninstall.zip
Will see how this compares with Mozy.
Online storage may take longer now than a USB but I would expect that this will start to shift over time. There are huge shifts toward moving into the “cloud” and I expect to see many more services like this.
Check out http://www.icloud.com.
It is a full operating system in the cloud. Still a little limited and in their beta launch but it is pretty cool
I’ve had a very poor experience with Mozy. The backup client crashes, the upload is throttled to 100kb/s (overnight), and the configuration interface is poor poor poor.
Backblaze appears to not require year-at-a-time signups, so I’ll give it a try tonight.
If it -works-, it’ll be better than Mozy.
I’ve had a pretty good experience with Mozy (on XP) - never had client instability, and upload is throttled to 1Mb/s (that 1000Kb/s or 125KB/s). This is a good bit faster than most consumer internet is capable of uploading, so most users wouldn’t notice it (I’m at a university, so unfortunately I do notice this bandwidth cap).
Mozy has been frustrating for me (unreliable, poor response time from customer service, etc) so I’m hoping that this is a better alternative.
JungleDisk/S3 isn’t a cost-effective solution once you get above a certain number of gigabytes…
Dang. I installed it (thanks Jason!) but found two major gotchas:
- It won’t back up files larger than 4GB
- It won’t backup DMG files
This defeats the entire purpose for me since my High-Definition video footage is the stuff that’s most difficult to back up remotely and it’s A) more than 4GB, and B) a DMG taken from my HDD based camera.
I know from comparing notes with other geeks that this is a pretty common use-case, so this is a major bummer for those of us doing this.
*goes to uninstall Backblaze*
Zip/Tar the DMGs, or try changing the file extension. Think it will work?
An interesting tool Mozy to Backblaze converts might be interested in:
https://www.backblaze.com/speedtest/
Oh, I could easily change the file extension. But there’s no way 30GB -> 4GB easily.
Don, if only there were a company who cared about user data, who were experts in online storage, and knew a lot about Macs run by a team of dedicated wizards to bring us Mac users a real, honest to God Mac online back up solution. I’d be pretty damn smug about using such a service from such a company.
I’ve used Sugarsync for a few months on my two macs (and iphone) and have liked it - though I think the user interface could use some improvements.
While I get the overlap for cloud back-up, I definitely view sugarsync and backblaze differently. For me, I use sugarsync less for ‘back up’ and more for the syncing between computers (and the online access via web browser). The fact that those files are ‘backed up’ is a bonus.
If I wanted to use sugarsync for back-up of my whole system, I’d have to go to their max option of 250GB and pay about $25/month. But currently I have the 30GB option for $5 a month to keep a specific set of files synced and accessible.
So I may consider backblaze for backing up my whole system (about 200GB) for just the $5. Or I may go with Time Capsule, I haven’t decided. But I can definitely see how someone can actually use a sugarsync type service and backblaze type service at the same time.
Just to add - I personally would consider Mozy and Backblaze competitors (fixed price, straight back-up), and separately I would consider Sugarsync and Dropbox competitors (syncing, web access, photo galleries, price per storage size).
I’m a little confused by this posting. Is the news simply that BackBlaze has launched a limited Mac backup? Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge fan of this space and have nothing against BackBlaze - they seem to have a nice product (from what I can see here - to be clear, I haven’t used it as I can’t get into the Mac beta).
But what about this makes it worthy of a Techcrunch post, given that there are many credible service providers who offer the same functionality and already support Mac (I’m thinking of ElephantDrive, iBackup, jungleDisk, and Mozy of the top of my head)?
I use iDrive for backup and they have a pretty decent Mac client (ui could be a tad cleaner on the app but it’s no biggie). The best thing about it is that it has “true archiving” meaning that if you accidentally delete a file from your computer, the system won’t also delete that file from the online backup. This is the way Time Machine works, by letting you go back to previous backups. I did not see anything on BackBlaze’s site about whether they offer this or not. Most backups just keep a copy of your current disk but that might not be what you need when a file goes missing or gets corrupted or something like that. iDrive is also just $5/month for 150 GB which covers my needs.
And hey, BackBlaze. Put some full-size screenshots on your site. It’s hard to tell at all how using the app will work.
Testing it now… and it’s already told me several times that “There’s a problem with your billing” in an annoying popup window. Its a shame that they interpret a ‘free trial’ as a way to annoy me into uninstalling it…
I see no mention of block-level updates which competitors support.
I really want one of these backup providers to support backup from network connected drives. Their rationale is about restricting use to only 1 PC (and network drive backup circumvents that), but when are they going to realize that their customer base that is likely to adopt their service likely has network attached storage.
Trevin,
IDrive does block level updates; It also does mapped drive backups.
Raghu
I’m personally a loyal Elephant Drive user. They have a beta Mac product out, and it’s pretty damn good.
“We are currently full.
With the success of the Mac beta launch, we are briefly not accepting new customers.
We will open to more customers shortly. Sign up to be notified when we do.”
That’s TechCrunch hands doing …
O-o-ops - scalability issues …
Are any of these online backup services actually aware of what you’ve downloaded off of the web?
I mean, all the stuff you downloaded doesn’t actually need to be uploaded again does it?
If a file is publicly available when you download it, such services can just grab ONE copy for everybody and just track it when it changes.
Anyone know what the scoop is?
hopefully services can get to this point. i dont think they’re there yet. and you’d have to be doing a lot more complex analysis of files like hash keys.
imagine what happens when you upload your PhD thesis paper called “Thesis.doc” and it overwrites that file because a similar file is available publicly.
It’s doable but way more complex.
@comments above: How does backblaze give you more information than mozy? Also, it does allow you finetune, as it only allows to excluded folders, otherwise even in trial it just grabs all volumes (including external ones) and your whole homefolder. Also, there upload pipe seems to be pretty small. While mozy at least can use my full 2 mbit upload, backblaze’s speed test clocked somewhere at 0.8 …
I tried it for 3 days and just submitted this to BackBlaze Feedback.
1. I paid money to sign up for BackBlaze.
2. I canceled 3 days later.
3. I don’t want my money back.
4. Your UNinstalled process sucks. I am used to running AppZapper to nuke an application, but it did not find the appropriate files.
5. So, why did I uninstalled BB and cancel my service?
Because the initial backup process totally screwed up my Mac. It ate resources like nobody’s business.
Firefowe performance went into the toilet.
Dreamweaver was completely unusable.
Overall, a horrible experience.
Hopefully it will work. I’ve been fighting with Mozy on Mac and it is one of the more broken pieces of software I have seen. It simply doesn’t work reliably.
What’s worse, Mozy support is completely useless. They are stateless, they ask you to repeat silly steps again and again, they forget what has been said before and they seem to have no contact whatsoever with the developers. A complete waste of time.
I am having high hopes for Backblaze.
I use MyOtherDrive.com for Mac online backup. They give me the back up service I need plus 128-bit encryption for a fraction of the cost of most online backup sites - making them the value leader in my book. Combine their backup offering with public / private file sharing they offer, and you just can’t go wrong. VERY reliable upload / downloads!
Does anyone ever stop and think that using online services like this to backup all of your data are too much of a personal liability?
I would use something this for photos specifically, but don’t know that I would trust “handing” them over to a company for safe keeping.
At least with Mozy, you can use your own encryption key, and encryption is done on your client, so they couldn’t figure out what you’re uploading even if they wanted to (and they couldn’t help you recover it if you forget your passphrase).
I agree about Mozy support being useless. They sound like an automated support machine, asking you to repeat steps that were tried in a previous response. Try restoring large number of files with Mac Mozy, always fails for me. The problem with many of these online backups is they give a false sense of security unless the restore process is tested frequently and works for you.
Backblaze sounds great but it lacks some important features for me, since I mostly backup external HDD, network drives and USB drives from both my Pc and Mac. Most providers don’t have these features but this wasn’t a problem for SafeCopy (www.safecopybackup.com). It allows me to do the above features plus I can share the same account for both my Mac and Pc. I’m very happy with it and it’s worth checking out.