First, let me note that I’m retired now and whereas I was a freelancer and kept EVERYTHING related to my clients on my laptop, now that’s all past history and I’ll never need all of those documents again. Sure, I’d hate to lose everything on my computer, but it wouldn’t be a life and death matter like it was 10-ish years ago. Having said that, I’m looking at Backblaze, because there ARE things I’d hate to lose. And I like the automatic in the background thing.
I copied this from the Backblaze site:
Backblaze retains a 30-day version history of your files. After 30 days, the updated, changed, or deleted versions are removed from your Backblaze backup, leaving only the most recent, current version of your files.
This is probably a standard thing in the computer world, but I don’t quite understand it. And I have the handicap of being extremely literal-minded. So this is saying that, for example, I have a document-- possibly my tax return-- that I’m tinkering around with and making changes over a period of days. BB saves those changes as I make them day-to-day. But after 30 days, that tax return file is “frozen” and any new changes will be a new document? The early, temporary, interim files are deleted and only the final one stands? Until I make changes to it?
I believe Backblaze recently upgraded the standard product to include one-year version history while unlimited version history is available for an additional amount.
I’ve used Backblaze for a couple of years but I don’t think I’ve ever used the version history. The website does say, “By default, Backblaze saves any old versions or deleted files for 30 days, with the option to enable One Year Extended Version History for free.”
Okay, I think I understand it. Backblaze works as a mirror of my computer’s current state, plus a 30-day safety net for deleted or changed files. So it backs up what is on your computer right this minute, with a 30-day cushion. That 30-day cushion seems like a good thing, because right now if you delete a thing it’s pretty much gone.
If you’re comfortable with the command-line, the free and open source software Rclone can help you back up to multiple cloud providers and local storage at once. It supports dozens of providers, including S3, Backblaze, OneDrive, FTP, local disks, iCloud, GDrive, and many, many more.
It’s not as easy to use as a nice backup app from a single provider, sadly.
An easier to use similar product might be https://duplicati.com/, which can similarly upload to a variety of destinations.
It’s possible to use a tool like Duplicati to just upload your files to a generic cloud storage in a way that prohibits them from later changes or deletions (as long as you keep paying your bill, that is). With Backblaze, for example, separate from their backup product, they also offer a storage solution with immutable objects: Backblaze B2 Object Lock For Immutable Data
That is, you just pay them for monthly storage, and then enforce a lock that says “once I upload something, never let something delete or change it afterward”.
(Or yes, you can just use their backup product and pay for 1-year version history instead. It depends on your goals.)
If you want forever storage, just back up the files (without any “syncing”) to several different providers and local disks, and the chances of them all going down at the same time will be incredibly small.
One way to think of it is that backblaze is making a copy of your computer every hour, and keeps that copy for 30 days. If you need any of those old file versions for any reason (unwanted deletion or changes, for example), then you can go to backblaze and download the older versions.
Some fancy computer stuff happens so that it doesn’t have to copy your entire computer every hour; it only copies what has changed since the previous backup. It also doesn’t have to store 720 copies of your computer, it stores one full copy, and then all of the changes.
Yeah - the other way you could think about it is that it’s similar to the ‘undo’ function in some applications - where you have the current, most up-to-date version of the file, and there is a stack of changes that describe what it was like before the most recent change, the one before that, and so on - and those changes aren’t necessarily additions just as with ‘undo’ - if you delete a block of text, ‘undo’ puts it back; if you add a block of text, ‘undo’ removes it.
Depending on the exact type of storage you choose from BackBlaze, this feature may or may not be present - and you can configure it too; I have versioning turned off on my BackBlaze cloud storage because the stuff I am storing there happens to be the final, published versions of the files I am creating - I turned off versioning because otherwise I end up paying to store multiple incomplete uploads of files if some network interruption prevents a single file being fully uploaded.
It’s a “running” history that keeps the most recent 30 days (or 1 year, or forever, depending on your settings). e.g.:
Jan 1:
2pm: You save the first version of the file and it gets backed up.
2:10pm: You make a few edits and save it again. Nothing gets backed up.
2:40pm: You’re still making a few edits and save it again. Still no new backup.
3:05pm: An hour has passed, Backblaze scans your disk for changes, and now notices and backs up the 2:40pm version.
Jan 2 through the 20th: No changes.
Jan 21, 7pm: You make another change. Backblaze saves it.
Jan 22: Your house is hit by a wayward asteroid and you lose everything. Thankfully your tax returns are still there in the cloud. You can choose to restore any of the previous versions: The Jan 1 2pm, Jan 1 2:40pm, or Jan 21 7pm.
Feb 5: Your new house is hit by another asteroid (wow, what are the chances). But now, because 30+ days have passed since Jan 1, the only version you can restore from is Jan 21 7pm.
…years later, the Jan 21 7pm version should still be there, as long as your account is paid up. Hopefully no further asteroids.
Like others have said, it’s taking snapshots as you change things, just like Time Machine on Apple products.
But that history only goes back 30 days. It means that if you edited The Great American Novel last week and then stopped changing it, you could download it as it looks now, and you can download it as it looked before you messed with it…as long as that older version was less than 30 days ago.
But if you wait until May, you will only be able to retrieve the latest version.
It’s still pretty potent because that’s really why you have it: it retains a full and complete snapshot of how your computer looked yesterday, last week, and three weeks ago.
The benefit of the full backup is obvious: if tragedy strikes, such as theft, fire, or hard drive failure, you will still be able to restore everything.
The benefit of the 30 days of versions (and that’s what mine is saying I have right now, so no “full year” unless I pay more) is that if you are hit by ransomware or if you do something that accidentally deletes critical files, you can still go back in time to “before the bad thing happened” up to a month ago.
Wirecutter prefers IDrive over Backblaze for a few reasons (either on e costs about $100/year):
• A Backblaze subscription covers only one computer. You have to pay $100/year for every additional computer you want to back up. IDrive lets you back up as many computers as you need to and gives you 5 TB of online storage to do so.
• You can have Backblaze mail you a copy of your restore data on a hard drive, but you have to pay $279 up front (that is refunded if you return the drive within 30 days). IDrive offers a similar service for free once a year.
The article does state that Blackblaze is best if you need very large backups.
Coming in 3rd is Arq Premium, which is “a bit quirky” but provides 1 TB of storage space to back up five computers for about $60/year.
Updated info on Backblaze: apparently they have recently changed from 30 days to 1 year for the same yearly cost.
I went in to my “manage your account” page and found I could upgrade from 30 days to 1 year of retention for $0.00.
This is very cool. Backblaze has suddenly made awesome even better!
Something I did mention but will clarify: you can add whatever external drives you want and it just backs them up along with everything else. My iMac has a 2TB internal SSD, a 2TB external SSD for my photography and a 4TB external SSD for YouTube video work.
Backblaze just plods along and backs them all up.
I signed up for Backblaze yesterday right after post #34, 15 hours ago. And it just finished. So only 15 hours to back up everything. It was weird watching all these document names go by… talk about blasts from the past. No, I didn’t sit and watch the whole time. I was busy watching the tumble dryer go round and round. Hehe.
Full-system offsite backups are one of those things that used to be freakishly expensive and then suddenly one year they were accessible to normal people.
