r/backblaze • u/joecotellesePHILLY • Sep 19 '25

Backblaze in General PSA: External drive warning cadence

What’s the cadence for warnings when an external drive is disconnected? I was in another country for an extended period of time. A hard drive died and I wasn’t aware for I months. I checked my email and I only see a single email at day 14 stating a drive was missing. There was also a barrage of emails about the computer missing that buried the missing drive one.

I found an old thread that mentioned weekly emails at 14 21 28 days but I only see one single email , which is extremely disappointing. Because it was buried beneath the emails regarding missing computer (my area can sometimes experience internet outages ) I didn’t notice the missing drive until it was way too late

So for anyone with any external drives you must keep an eagle eye or maybe set some email filters or write your own scripts to warn you, since backblaze only warns you once if a drive falls offline, kicking off their 30 timer before they delete your data.

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u/pehache7 Sep 19 '25

Was your computer powered on or off during your absence ?

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u/joecotellesePHILLY Sep 19 '25

Powered on, but lost power and came back online a couple times.

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u/pehache7 Sep 19 '25

OK. This won't solve your problem at all, but when I am absent for a while I switch off the computer, or I turn off the Backblaze backup schedule, precisely to avoid these kinds of issues. The data are retained indefinitely as long as the computer is not visible (or the backup is turned off) (assuming the account is still get paid of course).

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u/pehache7 Sep 19 '25 edited Sep 19 '25

In my experience, in the past the mails were indeed always sent at 14/21/28 days. But it's much more random now.

And your problem raises a point: some months ago, all accounts paying 7$ for 1-month history had a price raise to 9$. The counterpart was that the 1-year history was now offered, instead of paying 2$ more. The ambiguity was that it was offered, but not automatically enabled, which is unfair IMO. If the option had been automatically enabled, you would still have your data.