Hi everyone,

I’ve started pushing backups of media important to me (family pictures, video etc) to backblaze with client-side encryption.

However, are they a reliable storage provider? I can’t help but compare them to something like Amazon who likely has a better chance of maintaining my files but they are so expensive that I don’t even bother.

What do you think? Yes, I’ve heard of 3-2-1, however for now I only have backblaze and a local backup. I’m trying not to spend too much on this.

Thanks!

  • sunbeam60@lemmy.oneEnglish
    6·
    2 months ago

    I’ve used backblaze for years and regularly run recovery exercises. Never had a problem.

    However, to avoid any fears, I store remote backups in two locations (the other one being OVH, a large French cloud provider).

    My data retention regime:

    • Mirrored disks in local NAS.
    • Continually (every night) copy to Backblaze(US) and OVH (DE).
    • Once/year, copy all local NAS data to offline disks (ie disks that are plugged into a tray only during the copy) to avoid a file locking/encryption infection that could spread to the online files.
      • sunbeam60@lemmy.oneEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        I pay about £2.50 for 700+ GB storage, with about 2-10 GB of ingress every month. Storage alone is only £1.40. That’s using OVH’s “Cloud Archive” product; they also have a product called Cold Storage which is a smidge cheaper but doesn’t offer updating of existing data, so according to my projections based on the class of data I am archiving it wouldn’t be cheaper in the long term.

    • Findmysec@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      02·
      3 months ago

      I’m worried about reliability; what are the chances that they will lose my data? I have a local backup but I’m also feeling paranoid

      • Dlayknee@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Bottom line, there’s always a possibility a cloud/service provider could lose you data. That chance is (/should be) exponentially smaller on their environments however than the likelihood of your own local stores.

        If you’re really serious about preserving your data, consider the 3-2-1 Backup Rule:

        3 copies of your data 2 different types of media 1 copy stored off-site

  • nickiam2@aussie.zoneEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    I’ve used backblaze b2 for almost 8 years now and it just works. I’ve never had any data lost by them in that time.

    I just recently switched over to Storj.io as it a bit cheaper at only $4/TB as compared to B2 at $6/TB. Both are S3 compatible and work with just about every backup software out there. I have used Borg, Kopia and now Restic to do backups of important data. All 3 tools deduplicate all your data and reduces the amount of storage used. They also do encryption client side and are open source. They also have a built-in verification mechanism that checks the data is intact.

    • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      There definitely isn’t a docker container that will let you run Backblaze in WINE so that you can get the cheap unlimited plan working on Linux. You shouldn’t go looking for such a thing to save money. /s

  • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I think the main thing is for you to try doing a test restore of your data before you need to (and you already have a local backup anyway if your test goes wrong)

    That will give you a better understanding of the whole process - they might be 100% reliable in storing data which is totally unusable by you because you’ve lost your decryption key, weren’t backing it up correctly, etc (for example).

    • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I’ve never really understood the logistics of how to do a test restore.

      Do you have to buy a 2nd computer?

      • SayCyberOnceMore@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Yeah, that was me a couple years ago… I’d read some blogs, watched some yoochoobz and had data going from my NAS to Backblaze… encrypted…so… ok… is it restorable? No idea.

  • 𝔻𝕒𝕧𝕖@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    I am a happy backblaze user and generally I’ve only heard good things about them.

    They do have multiple data centers and they are operating B2B products too.

    Is there anything in particular that would make you think they could be unreliable?

  • conrad82@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I have used them since januar 2019, and I don’t have any complaints. I have only needed to restore backups once - it worked as well as could be expected.

    Any issues with backups have always been on my side

    • Findmysec@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Can you explain the situation around you restoring a backup? Did backblaze lose your data?

      AFAIK AWS replicates your data across buckets for reliability in case their datacentre goes down, which (from what I understand) is the cost of a whole another bucket with B2. That’s my concern. I don’t think Backblaze is going out of business any time soon but I’m afraid of data loss (I do have one local backup but my budget is unfortunately a bit tight right now - I’m going to have to pick and choose important bits from all of the data and add a second backup I guess)

      • waitmarks@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        AWS has multiple teirs of storage options in s3, some replicate and some dont. by default those that do replicate do so in multiple availability zones, but not across regions. unless you turn on cross-region replication (CRR) which is an additional charge.

        So, for example without CRR if your bucket is in us-east-1 and 1 availability zone goes down you can still access the data, but if all of us-east-1 is down, you cannot.

  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Tbf I think a 2-2-1 is sufficient for home users.
    I would only recommend 3-2-1 to some that has a business behind themself.