Hi everyone,
I’ve started pushing backups of media important to me (family pictures, video etc) to backblaze with client-side encryption.
However, are they a reliable storage provider? I can’t help but compare them to something like Amazon who likely has a better chance of maintaining my files but they are so expensive that I don’t even bother.
What do you think? Yes, I’ve heard of 3-2-1, however for now I only have backblaze and a local backup. I’m trying not to spend too much on this.
Thanks!
You must log in or register to comment.
I’ve used backblaze for years and regularly run recovery exercises. Never had a problem.
However, to avoid any fears, I store remote backups in two locations (the other one being OVH, a large French cloud provider).
My data retention regime:
- Mirrored disks in local NAS.
- Continually (every night) copy to Backblaze(US) and OVH (DE).
- Once/year, copy all local NAS data to offline disks (ie disks that are plugged into a tray only during the copy) to avoid a file locking/encryption infection that could spread to the online files.
How much does OVH cost you for storage?
I pay about £2.50 for 700+ GB storage, with about 2-10 GB of ingress every month. Storage alone is only £1.40. That’s using OVH’s “Cloud Archive” product; they also have a product called Cold Storage which is a smidge cheaper but doesn’t offer updating of existing data, so according to my projections based on the class of data I am archiving it wouldn’t be cheaper in the long term.
Backblaze is a great backup solution. They publish drive stats and even show you the hardware they use.
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/hard-drive-test-data
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/resources/storage-pod
I’m worried about reliability; what are the chances that they will lose my data? I have a local backup but I’m also feeling paranoid
The person you’re replying to linked their literal reliability stats lmao
Bottom line, there’s always a possibility a cloud/service provider could lose you data. That chance is (/should be) exponentially smaller on their environments however than the likelihood of your own local stores.
If you’re really serious about preserving your data, consider the 3-2-1 Backup Rule:
3 copies of your data 2 different types of media 1 copy stored off-site
I am a happy backblaze user and generally I’ve only heard good things about them.
They do have multiple data centers and they are operating B2B products too.
Is there anything in particular that would make you think they could be unreliable?
I don’t use them but I work for a dj that uses them to backup all their music and production music. This has been going on for over 10 years now and they are still using them. At one point I was over there while they were downloading a large batch of their files and the speed was fast enough to saturate his internet.
I’ve used backblaze b2 for almost 8 years now and it just works. I’ve never had any data lost by them in that time.
I just recently switched over to Storj.io as it a bit cheaper at only $4/TB as compared to B2 at $6/TB. Both are S3 compatible and work with just about every backup software out there. I have used Borg, Kopia and now Restic to do backups of important data. All 3 tools deduplicate all your data and reduces the amount of storage used. They also do encryption client side and are open source. They also have a built-in verification mechanism that checks the data is intact.
There definitely isn’t a docker container that will let you run Backblaze in WINE so that you can get the cheap unlimited plan working on Linux. You shouldn’t go looking for such a thing to save money. /s
I think the main thing is for you to try doing a test restore of your data before you need to (and you already have a local backup anyway if your test goes wrong)
That will give you a better understanding of the whole process - they might be 100% reliable in storing data which is totally unusable by you because you’ve lost your decryption key, weren’t backing it up correctly, etc (for example).
I’ve never really understood the logistics of how to do a test restore.
Do you have to buy a 2nd computer?
I really need to do a test restore. I’ve been backing my NAS up to B2 for about a year now and haven’t done one yet.
Yeah, that was me a couple years ago… I’d read some blogs, watched some yoochoobz and had data going from my NAS to Backblaze… encrypted…so… ok… is it restorable? No idea.
I use them as my backup backup provider. Crazy cheap, my bill was like $1.50 for a month. Their backup command line tool is pretty solid also. I would definitely use them if you need a new backup provider.
Yeah well I have over 3TB to store
So… $18 a month? That’s a Netflix subscription homie.
That’s personal pictures, ripped media, documents, some sensitive information etc. Netflix can go to hell
I wasn’t saying to use Netflix that doesn’t even make sense. I was saying that’s the same price as a Netflix subscription…
And that’s more expensive than a lot of other providers
I admit that Storj is less expensive but it has egress costs which B2 + cloudflare doesn’t (the latter with a free account)
It’s more expensive than one other provider, iDrive. But iDrive doesnt provide nearly the same level of service. Back laze is the cheapest full featured B2 service on the market. If you are concerned about data integrity of your backups but you cannot afford $18 a month, then you cannot afford to have that much data.
Tbf I think a 2-2-1 is sufficient for home users.
I would only recommend 3-2-1 to some that has a business behind themself.Until your house burns down
2-2-1 still insinuates having a remote backup. I don’t see how this particular threat destroys a 2-2-1 setup.
I have used them since januar 2019, and I don’t have any complaints. I have only needed to restore backups once - it worked as well as could be expected.
Any issues with backups have always been on my side
Can you explain the situation around you restoring a backup? Did backblaze lose your data?
AFAIK AWS replicates your data across buckets for reliability in case their datacentre goes down, which (from what I understand) is the cost of a whole another bucket with B2. That’s my concern. I don’t think Backblaze is going out of business any time soon but I’m afraid of data loss (I do have one local backup but my budget is unfortunately a bit tight right now - I’m going to have to pick and choose important bits from all of the data and add a second backup I guess)
AWS has multiple teirs of storage options in s3, some replicate and some dont. by default those that do replicate do so in multiple availability zones, but not across regions. unless you turn on cross-region replication (CRR) which is an additional charge.
So, for example without CRR if your bucket is in us-east-1 and 1 availability zone goes down you can still access the data, but if all of us-east-1 is down, you cannot.
US based provider so eww
It is encrypted
Doesn’t matter.
The US stores to decrypt later
ignore the cucks downvoting you, what privacy-respecting alternatives do you suggest?
I’ve recently switched from Backblaze to a Hetzner Storagebox. 5TB for only slightly more than I was paying for Backblaze.
They support BorgBackup out of the box, so super simple to set up encrypted, differential backups
Is there an SLA on the Hetzner storage boxes? What do you think about their reliability (will they recover if their underlying hardware fails?)
not the op of this comment. I know there’s Infomaniak that is an independent host based in Switzerland, and they have a service called Infomaniak Swiss Backup. I might use their services in few times, so will come back to this comment to tell what I think of them in a few weeks if you wanna know
You could still encrypt your backups tho to make them private.
Just saying, but swiss privacy laws are a huge marketing hoax and amongst the worst in Europe.
I didn’t know that, could you give an example?
A few (German language)sources: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/der-geheimdienst-will-auch-die-internetkabel-anzapfen-895734682308
https://www.republik.ch/2024/01/09/der-bund-ueberwacht-uns-alle
Basically: The Swiss Intelligence Agency do monitor all traffic going in and out of Switzerland(including incountry routing that uses external routes)and have the right to safe as much traffic as they want for 18 months- and can force swiss companies to give them access to their infrastructure even when they do not provide a service for non-swiss customers. Coming from a Intelligence agency that had the highest amount of files of their citizens of all democratic nations once (see Fichenskandal) it is more than troublesome.
Additionally swiss privacy law itself,while improved in 2023 after years of doing nothing, is still inferior to the GDPR. Unlike the GDPR it is not necessary for a person to explicitly consent to data collection unless the data is deemed especially sensitive. Unlike the GDPR there is no time-limit to notify authorities of data breaches and it is only mandatory for high risk breaches. And the right of data deletion is severely limited as the company can refuse to delete the data if it is still deemed “necessary” for the original purpose.
For me this is also why I can’t take Proton and Threema seriously. Whoever uses “swiss privacy law” as a marketing catchphrase without lobbying for improved laws (especially before 2023). And Proton openly lies on their “Why Switzerland” page.
Thank you for the very detailed response
