Many people think of Backblaze as just a cloud backup provider for Mac users looking to have an offsite copy of their photos, movies, documents, etc. The company also offers some robust business solutions as well. Today, Backblaze is announcing a new Backblaze B2 partnership with Vultr that gives organizations a storage alternative to the big three technology companies.
In an email sent to customers today, Backblaze announced that they will be increasing the cost of its unlimited Mac backup plan. While plan prices will jump next month, Backblaze is giving customers a chance to lock in existing prices for up to two years.
Backblaze is introducing version 8.0 of its desktop app that contains many improvements for macOS users who are using the service to backup all of their data.
Backblaze has been my go-to backup service for as long as I can remember. With its native macOS application, fast backup speed, and rock-solid track record of being ready for Apple’s latest software updates, it’s one of the few applications that I am never looking to change to something else. Today, Backblaze is announcing they’ve crossed over the one exabyte of data storage mark. Expand Expanding Close
Backblaze, the popular macOS backup service, has just released a nice update to its iOS and Android apps. While the mobile apps have been great for personal users for years, business customers have been left out. With version 5.0, Backblaze B2 customers can now access your B2 buckets, browse files inside the buckets, and download them to your mobile device.
I’ve been obsessed with photo management and photo backup for years now. Before iCloud Photos, I used services like Everpix (RIP), Loom, and others. I’m all in on iCloud Photos, but I also let Google Photos and Amazon Photos upload my photos as well. My iCloud Photo library has grown to the place where I can no longer keep it all offline on my laptop (500GB) and still have room for other things. This situation makes my Time Machine and Backblaze backup useless for my photos since the majority of them are in iCloud. I’d love to see Apple or another company offer a way to backup iCloud Photo library. Since iCloud Photos is a syncing service, it’s not a real backup. Why isn’t iCloud Photo a backup of your photos? Expand Expanding Close
I’ve used Backblaze for many years as my go-to backup service on macOS. Just last week, it saved me from re-creating a presentation I worked on for three hours. I had been having issues with one of my laptops (due to macOS Catalina), so I decided to reformat the drive and set up from scratch. I didn’t realize that iCloud Drive hadn’t uploaded the document, though. I am not blaming Apple here because I was running a beta OS, and I knew I had some wonky things going on. Thankfully, Backblaze was working, though. I logged in to the online portal, downloaded the PowerPoint, and was up and running. One of the things that makes Backblaze such an excellent backup service on macOS is how much care they put into their app. It’s fast, lightweight, and is 100% native to macOS. Today, Backblaze for Mac 7.0 is being released. All clients will update over the next two weeks, or you can download by clicking on the Backblaze icon in the Menu Bar and check for updates. So what’s new in Backblaze 7.0? Expand Expanding Close
I’ve been a big fan of Backblaze for years now. While cloud-backups weren’t new to me when I came across them, having a native macOS app for a cloud-backup service was something I knew I wanted. I’ve been a subscriber for many years, and I have no plans of leaving anytime soon. Today, Backblaze has announced the tenth anniversary of the first release of the Backblaze Storage Pod.
Popular unlimited cloud backup service Backblaze today announced its first-ever price increase. The company says it will increase its monthly price from $5 to $6 for both new and existing users.
Backblaze has remained a solid option for off-site backups as competitors like CrashPlan have ended their consumer plans. Today, Backblaze is rolling out version 6 with a lot of improvements including a fresh iOS app, 50% faster backups, network block lists, SSO for Gmail, and more.
This article is meant to serve as the most up to date guide to backing up your Mac. Unlike iOS, there is no built-in cloud backup feature that will cover everything on your device to an offsite server. I am often asked by friends and family about backups, so I wanted a way to just send a simple article they can follow.
If you are hesitant to pay for anything, think of it like this: If your hard drive crashed, and I offered to restore everything for less than a meal at a restaurant, you’d take me up on it. Even in the age of flash storage and SSDs, failures still happen. Don’t forget about data losses due to theft, fire, and accidental damage (spilled drinks, drops, etc.). The most important thing I can communicate is you need to act like all of your devices have a chance of breaking tomorrow, and you need to be prepared. Here’s my guide on how to back up your Mac:
Backblaze is today launching version 4.0 of its Mac backup app, potentially allowing file uploads to happen five times faster. This will primarily be of benefit for the initial backup, which can take several weeks. Faster downloads will also be available when restoring from a backup.
Although you’ve always been able to choose how much of your upload bandwidth the app uses, latency issues meant that the app didn’t always take advantage of higher speeds. You can now assign multiple processes (or threads, in Backblaze’s terminology) to the job. The company says those more than 500 miles from its California data center should see the greatest benefit.
It won’t magically add extra bandwidth out of thin air, and the company suggests limiting usage to two or three threads, but if you’ve told the app to use a decent chunk of your upload capacity and it isn’t doing it, adding an extra thread or two should help. The update is free to all users.
Backblaze costs $5/month for unlimited backup per Mac, including any connected external drives.
MacUpdate just launched their Winter Mac app bundle this morning. This bundle contains 10 apps + 2 bonus apps for early buyers. Together, the 12 apps are worth nearly $400 (or about $360 without the 2 bonus titles), but the bundle is priced at just $39.99.
Macs make automated backup childishly easy: simply plug in an external hard drive and OS X will ask whether you want to use it as a Time Machine disk. Say yes, and you’ll then get fully-automatic, hourly, versioned backups without doing anything further.
Unplug it to take your MacBook out & about, and it will catch up as soon as you return and plug it back in. Even easier, get a Time Capsule, and those backups take place over wifi, so you don’t even have to connect a drive.
But I’m a belt-and-braces chap. I like multiple backups, and I like one of those backups to be off-site. That way, if the house burns down, or a burglar takes both my Macs and my backup drives, I still have access to my data. Which is where online backup services come into play. Think of them as your backup of last resort.
iCloud, covered in my cloud storage roundup last week, already backs up quite a lot of your data – but nothing like all of it. The services covered here are ones that backup either your entire Mac, or a large proportion of it …
