Thank you for your interest, but this position has been filled. Please check out our jobs page for additional great opportunities at Backblaze. Backblaze continues to build an awesome Operations team. If you want to be one of the builders on our team, we currently have three positions open. If either of the positions below… Continue reading Wanted: Builders for Our Operations Team
Unboxing Our New Mac Pro
We love getting new gadgets at the Backblaze office and just last week we took delivery of our first Mac Pro! Our designer, Casey, couldn’t be more thrilled! We had a bit of fun with the unboxing, but not everyone was as excited about it as Casey.
Data Center Outage
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
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
Enterprise Drives: Fact or Fiction?
Last month I dug into drive failure rates based on the 25,000+ consumer drives we have and found that consumer drives actually performed quite well. Over 100,000 people read that blog post and one of the most common questions asked was: “Okay, so the consumer drives don’t fail that often. But aren’t enterprise drives so… Continue reading Enterprise Drives: Fact or Fiction?
Comcast Secure Backup & Share Shut Down
Comcast, the largest high speed internet provider in the US with over 20 million subscribers, launched an online backup service called Secure Backup & Share in 2010 through a partnership with Mozy. This Thanksgiving weekend, December 1, 2013, Comcast Secure Backup & Share is shutting down and deleting all customer data. Comcast Secure Backup &… Continue reading Comcast Secure Backup & Share Shut Down
Farming Hard Drives: Two Years and $1 Million Later
We are two years removed from the horrific flooding that caused the Thailand drive crisis that created a worldwide shortage of hard disk drives. Prices for hard drives spiked and have remained stubbornly high, only returning to pre-crisis levels in the last couple of months. The market and competitive forces that over the past 30… Continue reading Farming Hard Drives: Two Years and $1 Million Later
Restoring Data From the NSA
It All Started With a Meme I’m an avid Redditor, though my karma doesn’t show it, and around the time the NSA PRISM story broke, I started seeing this image appear in my feeds: I’m also the social guy at Backblaze, so I felt it was my duty to post it. After receiving many tweets… Continue reading Restoring Data From the NSA
Backblaze Stores 75 Petabytes of Data: One Fourth as Much as Facebook
In Jan 2011, we published that Backblaze was storing 10 petabytes of customer data. Today, Backblaze stores 75 petabytes of customer data. Backblaze data storage has grown 750% in less than three years! You guys are truly storing an incredible amount of data. ;-) Of course, all of this data is stored in our custom,… Continue reading Backblaze Stores 75 Petabytes of Data: One Fourth as Much as Facebook
Growth Hackers Conference 2013: A Detailed Bullet Point Summary
Yesterday, I attended the third Growth Hackers Conference put on by Gagan Biyani and Erin Turner. I attended the previous one, loved it, and signed up to attend this one as soon as tickets went on sale. My one regret? That I didn’t bring my whole team. Growth is a mindset (a “philosophy,” James Currier… Continue reading Growth Hackers Conference 2013: A Detailed Bullet Point Summary
Western Digital Warning Customers of Data Loss with Apple Mavericks
Apple customers upgrading to OS X 10.9 Mavericks are complaining in droves about data loss on their Western Digital (WD) hard drives. WD has acknowledged the issue today in an email to its customers and is working to determine the root cause and a solution. Western Digital’s Recommendations At this point, WD recommends customers either… Continue reading Western Digital Warning Customers of Data Loss with Apple Mavericks
Nirvanix Cloud Storage Shuts Down: Alternatives, Options, and Prices
In 2007, Nirvanix saw that cloud storage was going to be a major necessity for companies in the future and believed they could differentiate from Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) S3 storage service by focusing on the enterprises that also wanted sales engineers, tech support, and other dedicated services. To pursue this mission, Nirvanix raised $70… Continue reading Nirvanix Cloud Storage Shuts Down: Alternatives, Options, and Prices
Spooky! Our Halloween Contest Winner!
Thanks to everyone for participating! Since you took the time to make a video for our silly contest, we’ll send you and all of your actors a T-shirt! Just private message us on Facebook with your email and we’ll coordinate from there! Enjoy these great videos, and a giant thanks to everyone who submitted! Here… Continue reading Spooky! Our Halloween Contest Winner!