Backblaze Review

Your gateway to file restoration.

If backing up a computer is like buying an insurance policy, then Backblaze is the mortgage life insurance you never knew you had. It does the job, but only if you feel that backing up is a job that needs to be done but never seen.

Start with the price. At $5 per month per computer, Backblaze is one of the cheapest back-up options available… at least for individual computers. While competitors offer packages, such as family deals, that reduce the cost per machine, Backblaze just charges another $5 for each computer added to the account. If your household contains more than a single computer, you’ll want to look more closely at rival offers.

That simplicity of pricing is reflected in the software’s functions. As soon as you install Backblaze, it starts backing up your document and media files. If you want to exclude particular files, you’ll need to enter the Preferences and select the folders you want to exclude. Backblaze assumes that you’ll just want to back up all your user files and gets to work. It won’t back up system files or applications.

Similarly, while you can set Blackblaze to back up your files at specific times, such as at night when the computer is idle, the default setting is to look for changes and back them up as they’re made. That’s a reasonable option and it means you won’t miss a backup if you turn off your computer at night or if your computer explodes between uploads. It also means that because each upload is relatively small, the draw on the CPU is negligible. BackBlaze won’t bring your computer to a crawl while it makes your data safe.

Schedule your backups or back up as you go.

Backups are encrypted at 128 bits and stored on multiple drives across multiple centers. While other services offer higher rates of encryption, Backblaze is secure enough for most household users and its Find My Computer feature adds an interesting extra level of security. But the uploads are slow—as much as four times slower than some competitors, and the flipside of the backup process, the restoration, is unusual. Instead of having access to a directory of files that you can download to a new computer directly Backblaze sends an email with a link to a zip file. Using the Web interface , you can choose the files you wish to download which means that you’ll either be downloading a giant zip file or be receiving a link to a file you could have downloaded directly with little extra effort.

The alternative options, to receive a USB flash drive or hard drive in the mail for an extra fee, are no better. On the other hand, Backblaze’s mobile apps do provide mobile access to uploaded files.