Over the past few months, I have been migrating my cloud backup service which triggered more than a few headaches. I’ve been using CrashPlan for the longest time, resisting change because of the time it would take to upload to a different service. When I started with CrashPlan – it was only $2.49/month, was the only service that didn’t throttle uploads, and was fairly easy to use.
However, over time, they changed. They were purchased by Code42. In 2018, they raised their monthly fee to $9.99/month. The software became much more, shall we say, more IT professional oriented. I was continually seeing issues with the backups running some kind of resynchronization processes, resulting in delays to keep my cloud backup updated. Their support has always been fine, and having a cloud backup did save some of my images on one occasion. But the waiting for the very slow syncing process repeatedly grew annoying.
From the recommendations from many other photographers using BackBlaze, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and spend time uploading a fresh backup to a new service. BackBlaze is less expensive and offers integration into my Mac’s settings area – with easy settings and simpler navigation. Having a cloud backup is part of a recommended 3-2-1 backup strategy – having 3 copies of your photos – 2 on-site and 1 off-site.
Not without hiccups
Something I hadn’t realized was my cable internet service provider implemented monthly data caps a bit over 6 months ago. While they are generous, I never approached these caps simply uploading incremental new material – and as such – never noticed. Uploading a new archive would exceed them for sure. So I figured I would just keep an eye on my upload total as I approached the cap, and pause it until the next month when the caps reset again.
I set BackBlaze to start pushing files into the cloud as fast as they could go. It seemed to be going great. Very much like Mac’s native Time Machine backup process – and nowhere near a memory hog Code42’s software is. About a week into it, our internet started dropping out completely. Well, to make a painstakingly long story of help desk calls and modem diagnostics short – all I could conclude was that BackBlaze was pushing things faster than my internet hardware could handle. Fortunately, there are settings to allow you to tweak this – essentially slowing it down. But that never resolved the issue 100% and the internet would still go down, just less frequently.
Enter new cable modem – DOCSIS 3.0 vs. 3.1. While the cable modem manufacturer I was speaking with (Motorola tech support is pretty darn good BTW) told me my older DOCSIS 3.0 modem should be able to handle things just fine – I was super techno-exhausted at this point. Trying to root cause service lines vs. modem vs. software vs. ISP is a real mind-numbing slog – each one pointing fingers at the other. So I paid for a DOCSIS 3.1 modem – supposedly to have all sorts of techno-goodness to it. So my savings in switching to BackBlaze will be offset for a little while to pay for the more expensive modem. :-/
By this point, I am thinking F— the data cap – I am going to let this thing rip. Sure enough, I went over – but completing my full backup didn’t take as long as I expected. It triggered a little email from my ISP saying – hey, you’ve exceeded your cap – but we will give you a grace month just this once.
The clouds opened up and a little sunshine came through!
I hope you enjoyed this little bedtime story.
The End.
Disclosure: This post contains links to BackBlaze. If you use one of these links to purchase a subscription, you get a month free, and I get a month free. I’ve already paid for a full 2 years and saving me $50/year over my previous provider.
About the photo: A mountain range volcanic ash view from Kinak Bay in Katmai National Park, Alaska, photographed in 2009 but not developed until 2022 – when I needed a cloud image for this post. 🙂
Loved the bedtime story!! I have no experience with backing up my files on the clouds because I still do it manually here. ?
Might be wise my friend – seems risk to put stuff up in the sky
I subscribed to BackBlaze around six months ago when my old computer was getting too iffy to count on and I started worrying about being able to back up to the external HDs. What peace of mind! And now when I take my external hard drives with me somewhere, I don’t have to worry about something happening to them. Well, not as much.
Ah, the digital life! I’m another one who uses Backblaze and so far, no issues. I hope you’re having a great summer, Mark.
Well it certainly seems I am the latecomer to this party.
I just keep a backup at home and try to keep another off site and don’t deal with cloud backups. Maybe that’s not bright but my file sizes are really large.
My patience with CrashPlan was much more limited than yours. xD The memory consumption! And then it would re-scan the entire selection with EVERY reboot. Good grief. I was still a Windows user back then, but it made the switch to BackBlaze easy. I’ve been using them for a very long time, and with one of my clients, also had to test their “restore via USB drive in the mail” feature. It all worked great and was very quick.
The only bummer for me was that, when I switched from Windows to Mac, there was no way to inherit the backup — partially understandable of course, but it would have been nice if they’d matched up the files by their MD5 checksum or hashes or brownies or whatever that is. 🙂 Instead, I had to upload the entirety of my data again, which took ~3 weeks…
Oh and, I did at the 12-month retention time to my account, which at $2/month extra I found a no-brainer add-on. 🙂
I’m still using the very reliable off-site hard drive method, exchanging external drives with my son periodically. And he keeps one of his backup drives with me. Simple and no data caps!
When I was working I had kept one in a drawer in my office.
I do believe CrashPlan uses those hashy thingies to verify files which I utilized when replacing a failed drive. I didn’t have to upload again once restored from my local backup.
Yes, changing a local drive and restoring it from a backup is the same. Even changing the entire computer is possible, with the “inherit backup” option in BackBlaze… just not changing platforms. 😛
I’ve been using Backblaze for over a year and it has worked great for me. I had to wait as my ISP had both data caps and I was on a plan that only had an upload speed of 0.5 Mbps which was way too slow for updates let alone the initial data upload for a service such as this. When I upgraded my internet (15Mbps upload) it came with unlimited bandwidth (I’m sure there is an asterisk on that somehow) and it all worked fine. I think the initial upload took something like 2-3 weeks which wasn’t bad. I periodically check to see if a new file is uploaded there, and so far so good! I’ve even used it to restore a file I deleted by accident and wasn’t included in my local backups yet.
Good to know. My service has 10 Mbps upload but the total data cap upload + download I think is 2.5 TB/month, which prior to this upload, I never came close to using even half of that.