Two weeks ago I returned from my honeymoon—a trip to Kenya that included an amazing safari. While the trip was incredibly relaxing, I was nervous until a few days after I returned home. You see, since this was a honeymoon, my wife made a firm request: no laptop. Checking email and doing work could wait… Continue reading Backing Up Photos While Traveling
Scheduled Maintenance: Lessons Learned
Sorry and Thank You Last week we had a maintenance window that was scheduled for 12 hours. Instead, our core services were offline for a day and a half with some backups being throttled for an additional day. I am very sorry for any inconvenience that this caused. Rest assured, we take any disruptions in… Continue reading Scheduled Maintenance: Lessons Learned
Scheduled Maintenance: Thursday 9/23/10
UPDATE 6: All services are live! We are fully back online—new installs, trials, backups, purchases, and restores. We really appreciate how patient everyone has been with us during this time frame. Over the next couple days we will be digging in to everything that happened and working to figure out our lessons learned and how… Continue reading Scheduled Maintenance: Thursday 9/23/10
Backblaze Needs a New Office
Backblaze was founded in a small office where we planned to stay for six months. But we kept finding creative ways to cram more people in. Three years later…we’re bursting at the seams. So it’s time to move out of our humble abode and move to…well, a slightly larger humble abode. Do you have or… Continue reading Backblaze Needs a New Office
Backblaze Release 1.5.0.311 (Minor)
Backblaze has made a new release available and all users are scheduled to be automatically upgraded over the next two weeks. Below are the enhancements in this release: Release Date: 9/2/10 Version: 1.5.0.311 Auto-Update: All Users Increased frequency of updating summaries in customer accounts (helps Transfer Backup State reflect accurate information). Minor security enhancements. On… Continue reading Backblaze Release 1.5.0.311 (Minor)
Backblaze Online Backup Almost Acquired: Breaking Down the Breakup
In this post, I’ll share why I am publicly sharing this, exactly what happened, the details of our acquisition process, how we are moving forward, and what we learned.
Broadband Speeds: Lies and Statistics
We love fast broadband speeds. Faster upload speeds mean faster backups of your data. Often we salivate over claims of 10Mbps+ blistering connections. However, periodically customers email us saying “I can’t seem to backup as fast as my internet connection implies.” Looking at the the customer’s internet connection, we see it’s slower than advertised—but it’s… Continue reading Broadband Speeds: Lies and Statistics
Backblaze Release 1.5: Back Up 9GB Files and Transfer Backup State
Backblaze has made a new release available. All users are scheduled to automatically upgrade over the next two weeks. Below are the enhancements in this release: Release Date: 7/20/10 Version: 1.5.0 Auto-Update: All Users In addition to various minor fixes and enhancements, there are two key new features: 1. Backup of Individual Files up to… Continue reading Backblaze Release 1.5: Back Up 9GB Files and Transfer Backup State
Backblaze in Oil Paint
I spent a little time creating something we can hang on the wall that isn’t a Post-it Note or print outs. The white doggy, Tiffany, was one the early fans of Backblaze.
Seagate Ships 3TB Drives
Wow. Seagate just announced the world’s first 3TB drive. Called the Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk, it’s big enough to hold about 1,000 full-length HD movies or one million digital photos or songs. It is also twice the size of the Seagate drives we used in the Backblaze Storage Pod when we published the design in… Continue reading Seagate Ships 3TB Drives
GigaOm Structure 2010: Cloud Computing Event Summary
For the third year in a row, Om Malik and the team put on a fantastic event about cloud computing last week. The GigaOm Structure 2010 event was bursting at the seams as people filled the main room to capacity (with a recurring plea by MC Joe Weiman asking people to try and find seats… Continue reading GigaOm Structure 2010: Cloud Computing Event Summary
Backblaze Release 1.0.7
Backblaze has made a new release available and all users are scheduled to be automatically upgraded over the next two weeks. Below are the enhancements in this release: Release Date: 6/21/10 Version: 1.0.7 Auto-Update: All Users Protocol changes to add efficiency and reliability. Minor security enhancements. Rolls up changes from previous versions which were not… Continue reading Backblaze Release 1.0.7
Access Backblaze Files on Your iPad
Are you one of the several million people to have bought an iPad already? If so, you can now access your files backed up with Backblaze directly from your iPad. Since the iPad only handles a few file types by default (and can’t unzip packages or compressed files), get the excellent Good Reader application ($0.99)… Continue reading Access Backblaze Files on Your iPad
Backblaze Racks 100th Storage Pod
In 2008 we started deploying our Storage Pods and in September 2009 we gave away the design on our blog in a post titled, “Petabytes on a Budget: How to Build Cheap Cloud Storage.” This weekend we deployed our 100th Backblaze Storage Pod. For those of you counting, that’s: 100 Pods 4,500 spinning hard drives… Continue reading Backblaze Racks 100th Storage Pod
Backblaze Is Giving Away Two Apple iPads
Losing all of your photos forever. Paying iTunes a second time to buy all your music again. Pulling your hair out when your computer won’t boot. …If these reasons aren’t enough to backup your computer, we’re giving you one more: A free Apple iPad. Every computer that starts backing up in June will be entered… Continue reading Backblaze Is Giving Away Two Apple iPads
Backup Awareness Month: June 2010
Has it been a year already? It feels like just yesterday I was writing about our last survey with Harris Interactive where we asked how often people backup their computers. Well, it’s June again and we re-ran the survey. Good news: Fewer people are not doing regular backups (92% now vs. 94% last year). Bad… Continue reading Backup Awareness Month: June 2010
Backblaze Release 1.0.6 (Minor)
Backblaze has made a new release available. The release is very minor, thus users will not be automatically upgraded. A future release will include these items and automatically upgrade all users. Release Date: 6/10/10 Windows Version: 1.0.6.263 Mac Version: 1.0.6.264 Auto-Update: None Usability Slightly updated icons in Backblaze Preference Pane/Control Panel. Exclusions Added exclusions for… Continue reading Backblaze Release 1.0.6 (Minor)
Backblaze Saves a Marriage
Ok, maybe not quite the marriage…but at least the sanity leading up to it. My friend Vlad was planning his wedding recently and posted this on Facebook a couple days before the actual event: Vlad is grateful for Backblaze…phew I asked him what happened and wanted to share his reply: we’ve been going *nuts* over… Continue reading Backblaze Saves a Marriage