Backblaze Reviews 218

No File Explorer or Finder integration. Inflexible all-or-nothing approach . Slow. Can't view or share files from backup.

I can't even get mine set up, there's loads of problems and customer service never got to the bottom of any of it despite many snotty emails from them telling me 'it's simple, follow these 348585746523 steps and fix it yourself'

it's horrible and I wish I hadn't paid for 2 years because it's pointless and I have no control of it and can't look at my back ups or file things as I want. I'm pretty certain I actually have no back up at all despite paying for the last 9 months.

also worth noting:
Backblaze’s simple functions limit it as just a simple computer backup service.
Subscription is limited to one computer per account only.
If you are using a private password and you forgot it, the data in your subscription is permanently locked without any chance for retrieval.
Previous versions of your file only last up to 30 days before it is erased.
Mobile applications cannot be used to sync files with your account.

Yuck!
Just like everyone else's submission.
It is great until you need to access your information.
I couldn't download the file they sent with my backup information.
They sent me a "downloader" to expedite and assist.
That never worked. Each time you email, it is from a different person and that person never reads the string, nor do they read the entire email or look at the screenshots you sent. What a waste of money.
Oh, did they mention they never give refunds?
They're too greedy for that.

This is not a fully fuinctioning cloud backup service as suggested. Restore options are limited and it is only possible to restore from days they offer... i.e. hours, days up to a week and then exact weeks... so you can;;t for example restore a file from 11 days ago!!! This is nuts and means it is only useful as a full backup restore option not selective. As full restore it is VERY slow over the internet whatever your connection!

Until you need to restore files, everything seems fine - which could be why magazine reviews are generally positive. (Or are there other, more commercial reasons?)
GOOD POINTS: Works without glitches as far as saving files automatically to the cloud, using the parameters you give it. But that's it!
BAD POINTS: When I needed it, after a hard drive crash, files became difficult-to-impossible to retrieve. Okay, individual files can be restored but I have half-a-TB of data there. Here's what happens:
1. Downloads of large folders (childishly named 'buckets') worked at one (that's ONE) Mbit/sec. That's 50 DAYS! I have very fast fibre, BTW and my downloads are normally fast. I may not live that long ;).
2. I ordered and paid for a memory stick to be sent with my data on it - an extra $99, supposedly refundable. 24 hours on, no response has been received. I hope it's coming.
3. I sent three 'Help' questions. Only one was answered. Two links were provided - which didn't work.
4. Backblaze's online instructions are generally opaque, jargon-heavy and impenetrable - unless, I assume, you work there and know what all the in-house jargon means.
5. Almost forgot - you can save your data and download it from something called 'B2' instead of from the main website. Why this is, or what the advantage would be isn't explained. But it does cost you extra. In any case, I tried. I failed. No idea why.
6. There's more - but I'm too bored to write it all down so it would be worse to read. Suffice to say that, as soon as I've extracted my stuff, I'm off!
7. For European's the Help desk's hours are very limited. They are based on West Coast USA, about eight hours behind most of us - and the help desk even shuts for lunch, for a whole hour!
BTW, I'm a motoring technical writer. Not a complete noggin (though some no doubt disagree!) so I'm convinced it's not me; it's Backblaze who don't know how to make their product work for non-insiders.

Considering all the negative reviews I thought I would share my positive experience. I have found the service to be very reliable and easy to configure. You do need to spend a little time setting it up to backup the drives you want and to create exclusions you want. Once setup it has worked flawlessly.

It isn't that quick and it is annoying that it is per machine. Too expensive to backup out three computers so we sync important data from our laptops to the desktop (using NextCloud which is very good by the way). There is no retention of old versions of files which is a real shame as well. To get around this I use a piece of software called AutoVer to keep multiple versions of files on HDD and backup this version repository into BackBlaze. Not the most slick solution but it works well enough.

I have tried iDrive as an alternative but it was hopeless. Maybe they have fixed it now but I won't be returning to it.

BackBlaze could be improved. Version retention and a home multi-computer offering would be good. Overall though it is a good solution and most importantly has been very reliable and low maintenance - just what you need from backup.

Another option to consider if you have under 1TB of data is to find a cheap OneDrive or similar deal (there are some very cheap deals at the moment) and use backup software like Veam Endpoint Backup. In some ways this might be a better and cheaper solution for some. Just using OneDrive to sync folders is NOT a backup solution.

C

Fine unless you have a problem. My files were "safety frozen" by Backblaze, so it did not back up my files. I tried to unfreeze and could not, so I called technical support. After about 45 minutes on phone with them they insisted the problem was that I had no Internet protection. I said that was not correct and I could see Bitdefender was active on my MAC. The said they were the technicians and I needed to listen to them. I said fine I wanted to cancel and they told me that I had to pay them $100.00! When I said that was not part of the contract and why did they think that - they hung up on me! Technical support was not helpful and rude. After they hung up on me I called Bitdefender and they were wrong because it is running on my machine. I am so angry that I intend to post reviews wherever possible about this.

Product never worked as meant to. Whats more its impossible to delete from Mac and has pop ups every hour!! literally its uninstalled, blocked notifications and still coming up. Avoid at all costs!

When last attempting to login to their website, found that I was no longer getting a code pushed to my phone for 2 factor verification. Could no longer access my backup. That led to four days of tedious back and forth with very weak tech support. No one could explain why verification codes were no longer being sent. Was asked to send a library file to them only to be told it didn’t match what they had. What does that tell you about the integrity of my backup? I asked them to delete the backup (guessed they thought I was a hacker) and start over but they refused. All that was offered was to cancel the subscription and stop recurring billing. Oh but what about the payment made 5 weeks ago to renew the subscription? Well, they say, there is no refund since it’s over 30 days. So, I likely have a corrupted backup and am locked out of accessing it, and out paying for the product. Stay away.

As other reviews have said, everything seems great up until the point you actually need to do a restore. I recently purchased a new computer and, rather than copying the files directly from my old PC to the new one, I thought I'd test out Backblaze by restoring the files I'd backed up to their service.

Before I could download anything, their system explained that my files all needed to be compiled into one ZIP folder, then they would be available for download - it said this process should only take a few hours. Okay, sounded fine, so I clicked to proceed.

A few days passed and I'm still waiting for the backup files to finish compiling into a ZIP folder, so I contacted Backblaze customer support - they say they are aware of the delay and they are working on a fix, but can't give me an ETA.

I wait a few more days and I'm finally informed that my backup ZIP folder is ready for download. I start the download and wow... my internet is a decent speed but Backblaze is one of the slowest services I have ever used. The download froze multiple times and it took days to finish downloading to my PC.

By this point, nearly 2 weeks had passed since I started the process, but at least the ZIP file is finally on my PC. I go to unzip it so I can access all of my files... and it tells me the ZIP file is 'invalid', which means it's corrupted in some way. Exasperated, I gave up Backblaze and reverted to copying the files directly from my old PC to the new one.

I cannot in any way recommend Backblaze - the process has been nothing but hassle from start to finish, and if I'd been solely relying on their service I still wouldn't have access to my files.

Everything seems slick until you try to restore. The web portal starting prepping my restore into a single zip file. It gave an estimate of 20 minutes to prepare the file for download. That was FOUR days ago. If you have a backblaze account try to restore.. you'll see what I mean. A backup application or service is only as good as it's restore capability. You cannot rely on this service at all when it comes to the important/critical component of restoring

It was awful experience. On the 10 DEC 2018 my PC failed with burnout and when I got a new PC I failed to restore from BB but had to use my external hard drive image and other means to restore my data to march 2018. and then get data from others.
From the 21 December 2018 daily and sometimes more than daily, for 10 days, I communicated with support and just went round and around in circles. The whole thing exhausted me and got nowhere. I am 76 and have been using computers since 1970 but have never been so frustrated.

I would absolutely NOT recommend Backblaze to anyone who expects service & professionalism. It has been a nightmare dealing with them.
I recently bought a new MacPro & emailed Backblaze so I could restore the backed up data to my new computer. They sent me a USB hard drive which I found difficult to use ; I am not tech savvy. I had to unlock the drive. Then the drive backed up for a few seconds & stopped.
At one point the support point person (who sometimes gave me an answer to my question or just repeated a previous email answer), gave me advice that would have deleted my backup. When I pointed this out , he said he mixed up my ticket with someone else’s ticket. THIS IS CLEARLY UNACCEPTABLE.
I then left 3 voicemails for the lead support person & additionally I wrote an email to both the CEO & the head of the support team regarding this unacceptable scary mixup. As of today (easily 20 days out) I have not heard from anyone I‘ve contacted.
Additionally I discovered that Backblaze had charged me twice so I pointed out this mistake to them.
Fast forward, I finally had to pay Apple a $100 to transfer the data from my old computer to my new MacPRO. In summary I have paid twice: to Backblaze (with no reliable service) & to Apple.

Backblaze literally says on their website "Online backup of all your data" they should really change that to "online backup of some of your data and some which we choose not to backup because we don't want to backup everything" Not quite as catchy but more accurate for sure. My issue is they do not backup .lrdata files which are previews built by lightroom - a photo editing program - which take up 8 times less bandwidth than the camera RAW files. I had no idea that these weren't being backed up until one day I was going through the backend to check to see if something else was there and none of these files were there from any of my past client jobs. If my working drive and offsite backup had failed backblaze was meant to be my failsafe. I'll definitely be looking for other options now that I know they choose what they want to backup.

Been charged for over 38,000 times the amount data that I backed up for 6 months! No help from support.

As I was in the slow painful process of recovering my files from a failed drive you have about 30 days to recover it all before the system deletes it all, now with a slow connection this was impossible and I talked to them about extensions of time and they say just remove the drive from your back up and it will stay there for another 3 months which would have been plenty of time.

logged in only to be absolutely mortified that the T drive is missing from online service. With my slow connection it was going to take a long time to recover my files. I have lost files dating all the way back to 2005 now... Entrusted with what I thought is supposed to be peace of mind knowing my files we're safe on the cloud.

This does not seem to be the case and unless there was a way to get the T drive content back I will be closing my account… and leaving an honest review for not receiving exactly what I paid this service for. What is the point of an online cloud backup service when they delete your files after a month of being unplugged? I tried doing what they said by un-listing the drive to “buy me more time”. Yet here I am now… It deleted my files now it seems. You cannot plug back in a hard drive with mechanical failure...That would just be foolish and make whatever it was scrapping itself against even worse inside the drive itself.

Now I am going to have to take my broken drive to a data recovery center and hope that all my data can be recovered which is going to be a costly method of recovery (Probably going to be cheaper than their "send you a hard drive with your files on it" for 100s of $$ ££s. Unless I can get these files back if they have a backup of them somewhere because they are no longer on my account I will be closing my account and leaving a review based on my honest experience with them.

I will admit that correspondence with support has been very prompt and fast and that's fine but its the system itself is the problem, The system saying that it is deleting your files after 30 days if you "dont plug it back in" is an absolute joke! again how can you plug back in a hard disk that's suffering mechanical failure and scraping itself inside making what could potentially be recovered later impossible.

Another thing I did try even bought a replacement "T drive" and it was in windows set up the same as the other and the system still claimed it was "unplugged" I thought that it could have prevented that but it did not and was treated as a separate "T drive" to the other.

I have now potentially lost over 12 years of files and memories that I wanted to retain unless I take the drive to an expensive data recovery center.

My experience with BackBlaze's "System"...

Sean

Garbage. The program jumps right in and starts backing up folders and files without any kind of setup process or wizard to explain what it's doing. It locked up on me trying to back up files I don't even care about. I tried to exclude the folder to keep this from happening but it wouldn't let me do that. Worst of all, it didn't even back up the folders I actually wanted to back up in the first place. Useless crap. You get what you pay for. Avoid at all costs.

stay away from this product! I have tried a couple of online backups and this is the worst of them all.

backing up 1 terabyte is going to take over 5 months. It has a really slow backup procedure and it stalls your computer completely. Support will tell you to reduce your threads which will just make the backup take even longer.

This company is doing something wrong and it's probably about saving a buck on their side.

YOU WILL BE DISAPPOINTED.

Overall I'm happy. I've used them for about 3 years now and have never had a tech issue. But my experiences with customer services have been poor. Both from a tech and billing point of view. They really don't seem to care. Otherwise would be 5/5.

As an aside, looking at the reviews below.
Tip 1. Overall, you need a fast wifi connection (upload speed needs to be high) you also need for the back to be "continuous". Slow speeds and daily backups don't work as well. Make sure it's all set up properly and you'll be fine.

Tip 2. Ref the review below, the person with 7tb. Trouble is, and this is not clear when you sign up. Some software, for example in my case "Sketch" (design software) save your work as "artboards". Now, if you're like me, these "artboards" can be up to 2gigs in size. Which isn't a problem. But, any change to this artboard, anything at all... like I open it and move an image 1px... results in the entire file changing. Now, Backblaze sees this file has changed, which is has, and uploads it to your storage. The entire 2gigs, not just the changes. So every tiny change I make to this file, results in a new 2gig version of my artboard being backed up. It can't just upload the changes to the file, only the entire thing. This is not backblazes fault. It's the way my design software saves it's files. But this can mess, big time, with your RAM and computer. As it's constantly backing up. In this case, perhaps a daily backup or backup when I click would be better.

Tip 3. Again, looking at 1 star complaints below. Your backups are only stored for 30 days only. This is fundamental. After this time they are gone! This is not a store and leave solution. This is a way to mirror your hard drive - a 30 day rolling snapshot. If this is not what you want, you need to look else where. Your files will not be there unless they're being backed up at least once a month. You delete a file from your computer and (after 30 days) this will also be gone from Backblaze. Make sense? You go on holiday for 30 days, no backing up... gone. You backup an external hardrive, 30 days later... gone. You get the idea.

Tip 4. This is not dropbox, you can't view and edit files online. This is clear from the start.

Just my advice :)

Really good, I am using it for a month no technical issue and good customer service too

Never trust your data to Backblaze!!

Their app is really buggy!

After a long time I was finally able to backup my 7tb of data. Then the software started to use the complete RAM of my computer, making it completely useless.

I contacted support and they wrote me: "Sorry but you have to delete your backup and start again from scratch".

When I asked why this would happen, their explanation was that "I shouldn't rename folders which contains many files" (??)

Stay away from Backblaze!!!