if(!defined(‘ABSPATH’)) exit; Page 65 – Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup

Backblaze + Pebble

Backblaze and Pebble? Talk about worlds colliding. I (Yev) love the Pebble, and I’ve been wearing one ever since my Kickstarter edition watch shipped last year. More recently I’ve upgraded to the shiny and new Pebble Steel. Anyway, I’m also the social media guy at Backblaze, so I’m constantly monitoring the ‘social sphere’ for any… Continue reading Backblaze + Pebble

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

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

Hard drive farming in action.

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