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> Here's the thing: I'm paying about $14/month for that S3 storage, which makes $99/year a total steal. I don't use Dropbox/Box/OneDrive/iCloud so the grievances mentioned by the author are not major hurdles for me. I do find the idea that it is silently ignoring .git folders troubling, primarily because they are indeed not listed in the exclusion list.

A big difference here is that Backblaze only keeps deleted/changed files for 30 days. Deleted files can go unnoticed for some time, especially if done by a malicious app or ignorant AI.

I'd pay that extra few dollars for peace of mind.

by peteforde1 hours ago|

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Thanks so much! That is super valuable input.

I do notice in their GUI that they offer a >30 memory for extra $:

30-Day Version History (Current) Included

1-Year Version History

Forever Version History $.006/GB/Month for versions changed or deleted more than 1 year ago

They are not giving much information here at all. The above is not a pasting artifact; their page literally doesn't give any indication of how they price the 1-year history. Presumably it's not just as simple as click to 12x your retention for free.

Meanwhile, it's even more unclear whether that $.006/GB is assessed for change deltas or for the total file size. Indeed, it's not clear if it's assessed against your entire fileset or just files that changed.

I'll have to email them, I guess.

by ValentineC1 hours ago|

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It looks like the 1 year option was introduced maybe 2 years ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/175haik/is_upgra...

(Ironic that their ex-employee wrote: "In this case, it is always kind of scary for Backblaze to just quietly change a setting from one setting to a different setting in the product for the customer without the customer taking that action themselves." — when that's what happened in this case.)

I don't use Backblaze, but I found the Version History doc for you:

https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/version-histo...

Seems like whatever version is not currently on your local disk would be chargeable.

by petee59 minutes ago|

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This happened to me, a drive I rarely use silently died, and backblaze gave no indication that suddenly the whole drive was missing. Customer support explained to me how "backup" doesn't actually mean "backup"

by justin668 hours ago|

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"Maybe they're only incompetent in the ways that have been enumerated in this blog post" does not seem like much of a sales pitch. Baffling.

by peteforde7 hours ago|

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I'm happy to pay an annual fee for a one-size fits all approach that I don't have to think about. I read the post and I'm just saying that his blockers are not blockers for me.

I would ask you: what is the better alternative? That's not a rhetorical question; they don't have my credit card details for another two weeks.

by malfist1 hours ago|

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This whole post is saying that you _do_ have to think about it.

by tonymet5 hours ago|

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You lose a bit of control. With S3 you can preprocess (transform, index, filter, downcode, etc) before storing. You can index metadata in place (names, sizes, metadata) for low-cost searching.

As for testing recovery, you can validate file counts, sizes + checksums without performing recovery.

A few shell scripts give you the power of advanced enterprise backup, whereas backblaze only supports GUI restores.

by NetMageSCW10 hours ago|

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If you don’t really want backups you can save a lot more money by not signing up for Backblaze.

by peteforde7 hours ago|

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Are they known for accidentally erasing your backups?

I get that this is not a restorable image, but for $100 a year I'm not expecting that.