Update 2/12/2014: The post mortem on the data center outage is complete. The outage started when the Emergency Power Off (EPO) system was activated. The outage began on 02/05/2014 at 9:08 a.m. PST and lasted for one hour and 43 minutes until 10:51 a.m. PST. At this point, the Backblaze servers started recovering and were… Continue reading Data Center Outage
Year: 2014
Backblaze 2.5: The Tranquility Release
You shouldn’t have to worry about data backup. It should just work. No data limits, no throttling, no worries. That’s Backblaze. Here’s a look at what’s new in Backblaze Computer Backup release 2.5. Account Page From any web browser, you can log in to your Backblaze account to see how things are going. Most of… Continue reading Backblaze 2.5: The Tranquility Release
Our Secret Data Center
We have a secret. A 500 petabyte secret. Back in August 2012, Backblaze posted our need for a new data center. At the time we had about 40 petabytes of storage and our current caged facility in Oakland was bursting at the seams. After our post, proposals rolled in from around the US—Utah, Texas, California,… Continue reading Our Secret Data Center
What Hard Drive Should I Buy?
My last two blog posts were about expected drive lifetimes and drive reliability. These posts were an outgrowth of the careful work that we’ve done at Backblaze to find the most cost-effective disk drives. Running a truly unlimited online backup service for only $5 per month means our cloud storage needs to be very efficient and we need to quickly figure out which drives work.
A Burger With a Side of Spreadsheets, To Go
“The Mac died,” my wife sighed into the phone. I wasn’t surprised. First, the dead Mac was our seven year old iMac computer, which had worked flawlessly the entire time. And second, I was traveling for business and things always seem to “break” when I am on the road. It was Sunday night. I had… Continue reading A Burger With a Side of Spreadsheets, To Go
Backblaze Release 2.3.1
Release Date: 7/30/13 Version: 2.3.1 Auto-Update: Yes, 12/13/13 2.3.0 was a very successful release, including many performance enhancements. We’ve refined a few more things with 2.3.1, and are auto-updating all users to this version. Windows and Mac: Decrease memory usage in certain corner cases Improved support for double byte characters in computer name Backblaze Downloader… Continue reading Backblaze Release 2.3.1
Doubling Down on USB Flash Drive Restores
Editor’s note: On March 3, 2022, Backblaze ended the USB flash drive restore option. While we parted ways with USB flash drives, we continue to offer many options for restoring your files—explore ways to recover your data here. 2014 is upon us and in keeping with our January tradition of giving little New Year’s gifts… Continue reading Doubling Down on USB Flash Drive Restores