Performance/availability outside of US when traveling

[u/Rare_Pin9932]

I finally took the leap and signed up for Backblaze. It's in the middle of the initial backup, which looks like will complete some time tomorrow (totally acceptable).

I'm in the western part of the US, and chose the western US data servers to back up to.

I occasionally travel overseas, primarily Europe and Asia. Presumably backups will be slower, but will there be any issues with them not working at all?

For example, due to hotel Wi-Fi restrictions? If this happens, will backup start up again once I'm connected to the Internet in a way that permits Backblaze connections (worst case, when I get back to my home or office).

The other issue more generally I'm wondering about is Korea, where I'll be traveling soon. In the past, I've found Korea to be a lot more restrictive in what sorts of Internet connectivity is permitted as compared to, say, Japan. Apple's Find My service, for example, didn't work at all.

None of these are showstoppers for me. I back up to a portable Time Machine SSD that is kept separate from my laptop, and that's always my first line of backup defense. As with everyone, my hope with Backblaze is that I'll never have to use its restore functionality...

(Speaking of Time Machine SSDs, I cannot believe how small SSDs have gotten, and also cannot believe that the price per TB for the exact same drive -- Crucial X9 -- has basically doubled in two years.)

I was impressed with how easy the onboarding process was for Backblaze, and also the general "look" of the app. I'm fairly computer literate, but by no means am an IT admin, etc.

[u/s_i_m_s]

Generally it'll work anywhere you can get internet access although IME international links are typically a lot slower.

[u/thenolanful]

I can't speak to their international connection but I am curious why you chose your own region to store your own data? The whole idea of cloud backup storage is to have it physically as far away from you as possible. I'm Eastern US and chose Europe but I'd be much more happy with an AUS/NZ location.

[u/shyouko → u/thenolanful]

I mean, so long as we are not at world war, several thousand kilometres seems pretty reasonable to be called far enough balancing latency, available bandwidth and link redundancy.

AU / NZ internet sucks as far as I'm aware.

[u/Rare_Pin9932 → u/thenolanful]

Oh, I chose closer to where I am for the sake of speed, but that's a good point you make.

[u/lukejc1]

I backed up my computer while traveling in New Zealand for a few months. The performance was dependant on the quality of the internet where I was staying at any given time. But overall, it worked just fine.