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Advanced Mac Help




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1. Backblaze delays finding my external drive or new files
Backblaze was designed to be lightweight. There is a small process that slowly scans your computer looking for new/changed files. It can take about an hour or two to scan across all drives for an average user. When you plug in an external drive, it may take Backblaze anywhere from a 1-120 minutes to schedule the files on the external drive to be backed up online.
There is a way to force an immediate rescan. It will slow your computer down for a few minutes while it scans all your drives. You can force the rescan by holding down the OPTION key and clicking "Restore Options..." button.



2. Photos in Aperture, iPhoto, and Lightroom will be backed up
Backblaze will backup all your photos, no matter their size or the size of the Aperture, iPhoto and Lightroom libraries. Aperture, iPhoto and Lightroom store each photo in a packaged folder which you can see by right clicking (Control clicking) the library and select "Show Package Contents". Backblaze sees into each of these packages and backs up the individual photos. So even if your photo library is bigger then 4GB, Backblaze will still backup all the contents.



3. The Backblaze installer remembers past account information
When Backblaze is installed on a computer again, it remembers the past account information. If you want to install Backblaze under a different account (email address), you can hold down the OPTION key and click "Install Now" button to sign in with a different account (email address).

 



4. Change Languages
You can change the language for the Backblaze System Preferences by holding down the OPTION key and clicking the "Settings.." button. Continue holding down the OPTION key and clicking the "Settings" button to cycle through all 12 of the languages Backblaze supports.



5. FileVault Support
When a user is logged out of FileVault, it appears on the computer as one large bundle file that is encrypted. When the user signs in, the FileVault bundle decrypts and all the files appear in normal folders. Currently Backblaze backs up FileVault both ways. The recommended way to backup FileVault is to logout and leave your computer running so that our backup process can back up the sparse bundle bands. However, if you are logged in and Backblaze is running we will backup up the files in from the mounted sparse bundle.
The question at hand is really how opaque do you want your files to be on the restore server. All the files are encrypted and then sent over HTTPS. On the server all your files including the indexes are encrypted. So the back to "opaqueness", the difference is on the Restore page. If you decided to only backup the sparse bundle bands you will just see the sparse bundle directory and its bands. On the other hand if you decide to do an online backup of your home directory mounted, you will see the actual files.

 


6. Computer runs slow because 'mds' process (Apple Spotlight) load is high on the CPU
The reason Backblaze causes load on some anti-virus and Spotlight is that Backblaze likes to add a single short line of logging every 30 seconds or so to a large log file. This triggers anti-virus and Spotlight to re-index that large log file from the beginning. This can cause almost continuous load on your system from mds (that's Spotlight's indexer).
By default, Backblaze is excluded from Spotlight indexing, but could have been removed for various reasons.

The first thing to try is to exclude "/Library/Backblaze" from Spotlight indexing (do that from the Spotlight System Pref). Notice there are two "Library" folders on the Mac, one in your /Users/bob/Library and the other at the very
top of the hard drive. Backblaze lives at the top of your hard drive.

 


7. Backing up VMWare Fusion files
Backblaze sees Virtual Machines as a second computer, and won't back them up. You could install a second Windows copy of Backblaze on your Windows VMWare machine to back it up for an additional $5/Month. Another option is to create a synced (shared) folder between your VMWare Fusion and your Mac and Backblaze will backup online any files you put in your synced folder. You can add a synced (shared) folder by going to the VMWare Fusion Settings, click "Sharing" and then select "Share folders on your Mac". You can add a new folder that will be synced between your VMWare Windows and your Mac.
Click here to view a PDF Guide How to Sync a Folder between VMWare Fusion and Mac

 


8. Little Snitch doesn't like Backblaze
Little Snitch informs you whenever a program attempts to establish an outgoing Internet connection. Since Backblaze is continuously backing up and communicating with the Backblaze backup servers, Little Snitch can give frequent alerts. You can add a new rule to Little Snitch to allow the two services that Backblaze uses to communicate to stop those alerts. The two Backblaze services "bztransmit" and "bzbmenu" are found in the folder in /Library/Backblaze.
Click here to view a PDF Guide to How to Allow Backblaze from Little Snitch

 


9. Backblaze won't backup a Time Machine Drive
Backblaze doesn't backup an Apple Time Machine Drive or a drive that has a Time Machine folder on it. You can partition your drive into two partitions, a Time Machine partition and a data partition, and Backblaze will backup the data partition.
If you no longer use Time Machine on your drive, you can delete the file called "Backups.backupdb".
Backblaze checks to see if the folder exists at the top of the hard drive. If you removed the "Backups.backupdb" file, it should then allow online backup. If you have any problems, reboot, then check if the "Backups.backupdb" file is really gone. What we've seen is that if something has a file open it appears to be gone, but is really still there. A reboot will clear all that up.
Click here to view a PDF Guide How to Partition your Time Machine Drive.


10. Excluding Backblaze from ESET Nod 32
ESET Nod 32 can slow down your computer when it continually analyzes Backblaze log files.
You can create a 'Custom Scan' and exclude Backblaze from being analyzed. Below are screen shots of a user adding a new 'Custom Scan' called 'exclude backblaze'. You can call the Custom scan whatever you want, just make sure to exclude the Backblaze folder found in: /Library/Backblaze









11. Getting Backblaze to Backup (not be offline)
At a very profound level, Backblaze is very VERY simple, it just does HTTPS posts to our datacenter. If Backblaze doesn't backup when you click "Backup Now" and is reporting that is offline, then you can try the following things:

a) Anti-virus and Firewalls often stop Backblaze from communicating or working correctly. Below is a list of Firewalls and anti-virus programs and how to disable them. Remember, you are probably running two or three or even more of these: http://www.backblaze.com/disabling-firewall.html

b) Backblaze does not support "network proxies". But don't worry, you do not have a "proxy" unless you are inside a large business with an old network.

c) The Backblaze installer is designed to get you online, or fix your network connection if you are not online.
So run the installer right over the top of whatever you currently have (even if you are already running the latest version!), and after running the installer make absolutely sure these three files exist on your computer:

On Mac:
Macintosh HD/Library/Backblaze/bztransmit
Macintosh HD/Library/Backblaze/bzfilelist
Macintosh HD/Library/Backblaze/bzbui

If these three files do not exist, STOP, this is your problem, you are running an anti-virus program or firewall
that is stealing the binaries from Backblaze's installer.

d) Try having a friend who has a laptop come to your homewith their laptop and plug into your network and install Backblaze. Either it will work, or it won't. Both outcomes are VERY interesting. If it works, then your computer has the settings problem. If it does not work, your network has the settings problem. Contact us with the results from this experiment and we can help you with the rest.

e) Have a super technical friend or "Geek Squad" help get Backblaze installed and your network working.
http://www.geeksquad.com/