Backblaze - full restore...

[luckyme]

I went searching for reviews of different plans a while back and PC Mag has reviewed all of them. Here's the one for Crashplan and then you can click around to see others: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2375988,00.asp

They do rate them according to ALL features and I just don't need all the features.

However, the real test does come from a full restore and it doesn't look like they did any of those. Hey, the one file at a time worked great on BB, and it had me fooled. :blink: In fact, I was going to keep BB just for that kind of retrieval, but when I started discovering empty files, well, that's just too darn scary.

I did a successfull full restore with BB. I had to go back about 3 weeks in time though for my restore point. When I tried with anything more recent, it showed those blank files. However, that was my EHDs fault, not BBs. My EHD corrupted those files and then BB (as it was continuously uploading in the background), backed up the modified (corrupted) files. So, I had to restore to a point before my EHD corrupted the files. Hope that makes sense! I also did a restore to portable EHD. I couldn't wait to download 0.7 TB of data, haha!

PS - with BB, when you restore to portable EHD for $189, you get to keep the EHD. With CrashPlan, my understanding is that you pay a similar amount and you have to return to the EHD.

 

[Sherri Tierney]

PS - with BB, when you restore to portable EHD for $189, you get to keep the EHD. With CrashPlan, my understanding is that you pay a similar amount and you have to return to the EHD.

You know, I was thinking about this. Really, $189 for a drive the price of your restore isn't bad at all. I mean, you get the DRIVE too. By the time my initial backup is done I will have almost 1TB on there. I probably couldn't pay someone to retrieve my files from a corrupt drive for that much, you know? I have a 300 gig hard drive and someone quoted me $400 to TRY to restore the photos from it. No guarantees and I had to pay for them to try. Actually, I got a couple of quotes in this range.

You do send CrashPlan's drive back to them, but its nice that you can be fully protected right away by just transferring your files to it and mailing it back. However, it still takes a while even to transfer between drives you have and, if there is a crash and you need a full restore there is always the question of how well their restores are.

I think I'm going to stick with BB AND buy an extra EHD at home (for less than the price of the seed drive) to back up to. I already have two but you can't be too safe with such precious things as family photos!

 

[Txcorey]

I'm sorry you've had such a hard time with this Mary. I just took Kayla Lamoreaux's class, Finding Your Photo Flow. She recommends Backblaze so I'd been considering going with them but haven't done anything because my internet's service plan limits you on the amount of data you can upload during the month. I think I may look into Crash Plan since you've had such a bad time with BB. She does recommend that you make your backups automated so that it's one less thing to remember. I purchased a program called SyncBackPro that runs every night and backs up my digi kits, and pictures every night automatically to my EHD. I have to remember to connect it, but it is nice that it does it automatically. Just thought I'd mention it, because it definitely eases my mind knowing that everything gets backed up every day.

 

[Julie Billingsley]

Really, $189 for a drive the price of your restore isn't bad at all. I mean, you get the DRIVE too.

I agree. I had my hard drive crash and had to have it sent to a "level 3" clean room to be rebuilt. It cost me $1795 (including a new hard drive to put it all back on). So, yes, $189 is fabulous.

 

[maryinaz]

As long as you know you'll have to buy that $189 EHD and feel confident that the files won't be empty, then BB might work for you. It's the idea that BB indicates you can easily do an online restore (but you really can't if you have too much data) that bugs me. I still will be dropping them - their customer service was horrible on top of everything else.

I also wonder when people recommend one service over another if they have personally done a full restore. Like PC Mag, it didn't sound like they did.

I'll have to check out SyncBackPro. I'm not really looking for a service from which to do a full restore anymore as I have my EHD now as a backup. I just want something that can give me a few files when I need them.

 

[Kara]

So glad it worked out for you, Mary!

 

[rach3975]

I'm glad you were able to get all your files back, Mary! The empty files problem makes me nervous. Right now I'm being good about backing up to an EHD every couple of weeks, but there have been times in the past when I've gone many months without running a backup. Online backup is my insurance policy against my own potential laziness or something happening to our home that would take out my computer, EHD, and printed albums. At that point I'd probably pay the $189 and consider it a bargain. But whether I'm downloading or ordering, I have to be able to trust that my thousands of photos will be there without checking every file individually. I'll be watching to see how the new plans work for everyone who's switching.

 

[Sherri Tierney]

Mozy got great reviews back before the pricing structure changed but I had big issues trying to do a full restore too. I got a lot of empty files when downloading. I had to go back and download the files individually. Then I found I still didn't get them all. It was better than nothing though. I don't know that there is any backup service that can give us the kind of full backups we want without a hefty price tag involved. It makes me want my own backup server at home... which I have considered.