This past summer, Eli joined Backblaze as an Engineering Intern. He worked on a variety of projects including helping out with our SMART stats data collection and analysis. Since going back to school, Eli has been very busy. He was a member of the winning team in the 2014 Siemens Competition in Math, Science &… Continue reading Congratulations, Eli the Intern!
Year: 2014
Office Manager Emily Joins the Backblaze Horde!
The newest addition to the crew at Backblaze, Emily, breaks down her favorite hobbies and aspirations. They involve pets and World of Warcraft… What a combo! What is your Backblaze title? Office Manager. If you didn’t have to work, what would you do? If I didn’t have to work, I would work! I would start… Continue reading Office Manager Emily Joins the Backblaze Horde!
2014 Year in Review
Seven years ago, we started on a mission to make storing data astonishingly easy and low-cost so that no one loses their wedding photos, curated music, work files, or any of the other items from their computers. In 2014, I’m proud to say we made a good dent in that mission. Here are a few… Continue reading 2014 Year in Review
Our 6TB Hard Drive Face-Off
Backblaze is transitioning from using 4TB hard drives to 6TB hard drives in the Storage Pods we will be deploying over the coming months. With over 10,000 hard drives needing to be purchased over the next several months, the choice of which 6TB hard drive to use is critical. Let’s take a look at how… Continue reading Our 6TB Hard Drive Face-Off
Holiday Gift Guide—Backblaze Style
We all have those hard to shop for members of our family, and at Backblaze, we wanted to take a moment and make your holiday shopping conundrums a bit easier to solve. We realize this is coming out a bit late in the holiday gift guide season, so we pooled together some items that you… Continue reading Holiday Gift Guide—Backblaze Style
Backblaze Hacks the Hood
We love hearing stories of people making a difference in their communities. At Backblaze, we are excited to have the opportunity to be a part of one of those stories. We’re pleased to announce we’re supporting a wonderful non-profit called Hack the Hood, both financially and with our online backup service. Working with teens, Hack… Continue reading Backblaze Hacks the Hood
Thank You!
It’s Thanksgiving week here in the United States, so we wanted to follow the grand tradition of showing thanks. At Backblaze, we’re incredibly thankful for all of our loyal customers. Without them, we wouldn’t be here, and we’re pleased as punch that some of them feel the same way about us. That’s why we wanted… Continue reading Thank You!
Backblaze + Time Machine = ♥
“Why do I need online backup if I have Time Machine already?” We get that question a lot. Here, we recommend you use both. Backblaze strongly believes in a 3-2-1 backup policy. What’s 3-2-1? Three copies of your data, on two different media, and one copy off-site. If you have that baseline, you’re in good… Continue reading Backblaze + Time Machine = ♥
There’s No “I” in Bryan
Straight out of Portland, Bryan joins our data center staff to help backup your world! Having had a wide variety of jobs before joining the Backblaze team, including farming and store clerking, Bryan is excited to join the tech industry, and can’t wait to help ensure your data is safe. Let’s learn some more about… Continue reading There’s No “I” in Bryan
How Backblaze Achieved 917% Growth
With 917% revenue growth over the last five years, Backblaze has just secured itself the 128th spot on the list of the fastest growing technology companies in the United States. The journey has been exciting but could have come to an abrupt end at various times. Let me share a bit about how we grew… Continue reading How Backblaze Achieved 917% Growth
Hard Drive SMART Stats
I’ve shared a lot of Backblaze data about hard drive failure statistics. While our system handles a drive failing, we prefer to predict drive failures, and use the hard drives’ built-in SMART metrics to help. The dirty industry secret? SMART stats are inconsistent from hard drive to hard drive. With nearly 40,000 hard drives and… Continue reading Hard Drive SMART Stats
Obama Backs Backblaze—Throttling Is Bad
President Obama is now on the record stating that internet providers have “a legal obligation not to block or limit your access to a website.” We agree and want to thank the President for following in our footsteps by telling the world that throttling is bad. Backblaze itself does not actively throttle our customers. The… Continue reading Obama Backs Backblaze—Throttling Is Bad
Backblaze and Subversion, Time to Change?
Our recent post on Source Code Control led many to ask, what does Backblaze use? The short answer is Subversion (SVN). The longer questions are: why did we pick it, how has it worked out, and should we switch? What Most Companies Use for Version Control According to the folks at Duck Software Open Hub… Continue reading Backblaze and Subversion, Time to Change?
Backblaze Blog: No Comment.
One of the great things about the internet (and possibly one of the worst) is the ability to leave comments and interact with individuals on their blogs or web pages. Recently, Backblaze switched our website and blog to HTTPS. We also moved the blog from blog.backblaze.com to backblaze.com/blog and we updated our blog design and… Continue reading Backblaze Blog: No Comment.
Voting vs. Mobile Phones. The Winner Is…
It is Election Day here in the United States and many people get time off of work to vote—typically two hours. I was thinking about this last week as I spent two hours at the Verizon store waiting to update my wireless service. I had a lot of time to think. One of my random… Continue reading Voting vs. Mobile Phones. The Winner Is…
OS X Yosemite: Four Days. Windows 8: Two Years.
Since very early on, Backblaze has supported both Mac and Windows computers, so we keep aggregate statistics on how many customers are backing up each operating system, and specifically what versions. With the recent release of Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite, I wanted to see the percent of people that had upgraded—and what I found… Continue reading OS X Yosemite: Four Days. Windows 8: Two Years.
The New Backblaze Blog Site
As you can see, we’ve updated our blog. Over the years, we’ve published over 300 posts and we decided we could organize things a bit better. Along the way, we made changes to the layout, the categories, comments, and more. Easier to Use First, we changed the look and layout of the blog by adding… Continue reading The New Backblaze Blog Site
Backblaze and OS X Yosemite
Yosemite (OS X 10.10) for Mac was released yesterday, and Backblaze is ready for it! Want to update to the latest and greatest Backblaze version, which supports Yosemite’s new “dark mode?” Do the following: Right click on the Backblaze icon and choose “check for updates,” then click download. or Install the latest client from: https://secure.backblaze.com/update.htm… Continue reading Backblaze and OS X Yosemite