Backblaze 4+

I really like the Backblaze service, but the app is terribly limited in at least two ways that impact it's usability for me:

1. The app is incredibly reluctant to grab updated summary information from the Backblaze servers. I have a Mac Mini with a large external drive that's still trying to finish the initial upload after a couple months. Consequently, while away from home on business I like to pull up the app to check my upload process (not to mention occasionally retrieve files). Unfortunately, I find the upload total rarely updates. After a week or so of refreshing the app or killing the app using the multitasking/app-switcher/app-killer function then re-starting the app. I'll finally see a new total and it'll be a couple dozen more gigabytes. Clearly the uploads continue but the app just isn't gathering/reporting it well at all.

2. The second is short and sweet. I don't believe there should be a bandwith cap on downloadable files. Is there a necessary or unavoidable technological limitation causing this? If it's just a proprietary business decision, drop it. More often than not I've needed a file on mobile while on the road yet been unable to access it for download because it's size is reportedly too large.

I'm writing this on behalf of a client of mine.

I had recommended Backblaze based on internet recommendations but I hadn't tried it myself.

Ugh. The backup mysteriously failed on her Mac for 32 days. It was non-obvious that it had. When I was checking it out, I wasn't sure that it had but I wasn't absolutely sure about that.

Then I contacted customer support for help. My first attempt at trying to get it to work again failed. It was a bit unclear because it had a disk scanning progress bar that was stuck at 100% for several hours but I also got an alert that the backup had failed. This was confusing…

I then contacted customer support and did an uninstall and reinstall which also failed with unclear error messages.

After that, I gave up and asked for the subscription to be canceled.

In my mind, a great backup should be more like Apple’s Time Machine: you should be easily able to check when it was backed up and see what files were backed up. You should have clear error messages.

I was a long time customer until I discovered that an external hard drive that was backed up was deleted before the 30 day time limit.

I contacted support about the issue, they weren’t too sure, so they had re-upload the drive’s content. I started to do that, but I didn’t upload the entire drive just in case it happened again.

About three weeks later, the drive’s contents were deleted again. Even though I paid for the one year extension.

I contacted support again and basically was told that there was nothing they could do and the ticket was closed. I complained about the service, but never got a response from anyone at the company.

Shortly after that, I cancelled the service.