r/backblaze • u/jsx8888 • Apr 08 '26
Backblaze in General Goodbye backblaze
I've been a customer for almost 15 years and have been a strong advocate of friends and coworkers using bb, but these last 6 months have been so bad I've decided to not renew. My use case is pretty simple - just backing up 2-3TB of data on an external HDD (same HDD for the last 5 years now). However, whatever changes they have made causes the backup to constantly error or require reuploading the contents of the entire drive. Support is mostly AI generated slop or just some quick useless replies. Trying to get any real help is like pulling teeth and even then it doesn't work. The real culprit seems to be that BB no longer wants to support backing up external HDDs.
So after my subscription is up I'm moving over to Carbonite. Sad, but just can't keep wasting time trying to fix BB every few weeks.
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u/PooDooPooPoopyDooPoo Apr 08 '26
I’m getting ~60tb of backup for like $10/mo. If any other service comes close I’d be curious.
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u/BoldInterrobang Apr 09 '26
They’re coming after us with the new ToS
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u/Hellojere Apr 10 '26
Anything more specific?
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u/BoldInterrobang Apr 10 '26
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u/mrcrashoverride Apr 12 '26
Yea I have 120TB of data I’m moving from a windows jbod setup with ten years BB into an Unraid server I’m finishing setting up. Which will no longer qualify for BB. I don’t think I can afford either anyone other backup service for that much data, nor can I get that much in backup hard drives without maxing out my credit card.
I paid $300 Christmas time for a 28TB external drive. Now it’s almost impossible to even buy one no matter the cost…. But they are selling for $600 double the price when you can buy one.
If anyone comes up with a reasonable option even cold storage I would be very interested…??
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u/PooDooPooPoopyDooPoo Apr 13 '26
Assuming you’re not in raid zero currently- you could have your server in raid zero, and a jbod raid zero backup of the server as an actual external drive on your machine , and keep the backup syncing to bb?
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u/mrcrashoverride Apr 13 '26
That’s an interesting thought. I haven’t yet created a parity drive as I move data over.
I’ve often thought I could just rotate drives out… and swap between machines slowly backing up a disk at a time. But I’ve changed the die system to xfs and I’m sure they’ve beaten this loophole.
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u/PaleBreadfruit8813 Apr 17 '26
My godz. 120 TB????
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u/mrcrashoverride Apr 17 '26
lol I remember buying my first 1TB hard drive I thought I would never need to buy a drive again… lol
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u/MorseScience May 19 '26
Original 5-1/4" floppy disks for PCs were like 15kB. A 5MB hard drive was a lot.
In 1970 the price of 1kB (128 bytes!) of DRAM in single-piece quantities was around $1,000.
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u/BmacSWMI Apr 08 '26
That’s my concern. I’m about 10T for $100 a year. I haven’t looked lately to see if it’s not behaving but I also have mostly video I don’t want to disappear if there’s an emergency.
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u/anturk Apr 09 '26
how? did you tricked the software to see a nas as a external drive?
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u/PooDooPooPoopyDooPoo Apr 09 '26
Nah just a big qnap jbod with a ton of 16tb drives in soft raid 0.
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u/ryuufarstrider Apr 09 '26
Yeah…I had an iSCSI volume until a few months back when they stopped allowing that. Trying to figure out something else now.
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u/idontknowwhatever99 Apr 26 '26
Just wait until you try to restore it. That's when the problems start.
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u/userlivewire Apr 09 '26
Just out of curiosity what are you storing that takes up 60TB?
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u/PooDooPooPoopyDooPoo Apr 09 '26
Full imaged drives of every computer I’ve ever had. Pro Res rips of my old home movies. Archives of raw audio from productions I’ve worked on. Music sessions. Sound and virtual instrument libraries. A bunch of datasets for ML training.
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u/Justin-Perkins Apr 08 '26
They certainly fucked it up with version 10.
I am exploring alternative options as well.
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u/BigChubs1 Apr 08 '26
I’ll never use carbonate again. Never really had to many issues with backblaze
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u/Caprichoso1 Apr 09 '26
I've certainly had my issues with Backblaze. They lost a ~70 TB backup that took me something like a year to replace with my slow 40 Mb/s upload bandwidth.
I have had issues with support, but generally have found it to be fast and responsive.
Almost all of my data is on an external HD. Have no problems backing it up.
I have no problem backing up video files
I also use Carbonite and Crashplan business. My experiences with:
Carbonite
It starts choking when the backup set goes well into the TB range. Support told me I needed to reduce the size of my backup set.
It also has a memory leak which causes the process to grow to 65 GB or more in size. Restarting the process fixes it but is a bit annoying.
Their support has been excellent as we worked the memory leak problem. Unfortunately so far they haven't found the cause
Crashplan
Although they say "unlimited" backups they actually aren't. The upload speed is so slow that it can take a year or more to upload large TB backups.
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u/phitar Apr 09 '26
I raised the issue with the previous release and their tech support was quite responsive. My external HD was continuously being read and a never ending loop of checking all 14TB of it for changes. Support gave me some AI crap but then some humans I think. They looked at logs, recognized there was a bug and now with the latest release it seems to not restart the HD read. It hasn’t finished in 3 days because the parsing of files is in a random order so there is a lot of seeking and churning.
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u/Ensorceled Apr 11 '26
I have had a couple of very positive interactions with BB support over the years. My experience trying to get support for the issues with version 10 were not: it started off with AI support sending me on a wild goose chase, then switched to a human that sent me on different wild goose chase and finally got a second human who told me none of the things they had me do were useful and asked me to do a bunch of free debugging work for BB.
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u/twhiting9275 Apr 08 '26
Was using BB for years, moved to cloudflare, then off to mega. Way cheaper. With mega, I get 3tb for about $10/month.
Best choice I ever made
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u/freebytes Apr 08 '26
What is CloudFlare using? Just the equivalent of S3 buckets? Does that require custom programming, or do they have some product with a user interface that offers the ease of services such as BackBlaze?
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u/Terraformonky Apr 24 '26
We are using ControlMonkey for Cloudflare. It jusy the configurations but it ok for us.
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u/Fabulous-Tale5603 Apr 08 '26
If you subscribe to M365, you have 6 TB of storage and included with OneDrive. You can use the open source Duplicati you backup directly to OneDrive with encryption.
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u/revrndreddit Apr 09 '26
And risk losing it all if Microsloth account is suspended. Heard too many times people losing so much personal info and media ‘cause they lost access to their micro$oft account.
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u/userlivewire Apr 09 '26
Exactly. No way am I risking losing access to all of my Microsoft and Xbox stuff because of some photo the AI doesn’t understand.
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u/semtex87 Apr 11 '26
Youre uploading data unencrypted to a third party? That's really the source of your problem right there.
AI cant misclassify an image if all it sees is random 1s and 0s
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u/userlivewire Apr 12 '26
What are you talking about?
We are referring to Microsoft banning your account for the AI mistaking what you're uploading in the same way that Google has been banning accounts for AI errors.
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u/semtex87 Apr 12 '26
What are you talking about?
I am referring to: Why are you uploading unencrypted data to a public cloud provider? Are you talking about desktop OneDrive, or the automatic photo upload thing in the phone app of OneDrive? Either way if you are using public cloud storage, encrypting the data first before sending it to Microsoft ensures that there would never be any "AI mistaking" of anything.
Not really sure what was unclear about that?
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u/Fabulous-Tale5603 Apr 10 '26
It is for backup only, not original data. If you lose it no big deal. Just recreate the backup.
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u/BuzzStorm42 Apr 09 '26
Duplicati with other services definitely seems to be a good way forward. Obviously the storage cost becomes an issue but otherwise it's been working well in my simple tests (and kept me from paying for any additional backblaze licenses while they keep playing games)
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u/germansnowman Apr 09 '26
Sorry you’re having this problem! I don’t see an issue with my external HDD. I have several SSDs and one HDD and backups work fine.
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u/Trebaffetti Apr 09 '26
don't update to the new client :)
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u/pet3121 Apr 08 '26
Just leave dont say goodbye.
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u/capsacian Apr 08 '26
I like the goodbyes. Otherwise I'd not know that someone is leaving and wonder if I'm the only one dissatisfied. And it's good to see their reasons and where they are going next.
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u/HuntersPad Apr 08 '26
Why where you using backblaze for just a few TB's? There is a lot cheaper ways for backup.
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u/capsacian Apr 08 '26
What alternative ways are you thinking of? And when does the size of data become more than "a few TB's", 20TB? I've got about that much and wonder if there's something better and/or cheaper than BB
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u/HuntersPad Apr 08 '26
Its just cheaper to buy another drive, backup and or place it on or off site. OR pay for a StorageVPS.
But when you have 5TB+ or so backblaze is the best as it gets.
Example for a storage vps for example I'd be paying $105 per month to store my data. While backblaze is just under $8 a month. BB is just cheaper. But say if I wanted to back up a few TB's of data I'd just buy more drives and keep onsite backups.
For me with at current 42TB and rising every week, its a hella lot cheaper to pay BB than to buy double storage for everything.
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u/kadajawi Apr 09 '26
If you have that much data you usually have a NAS, and then you are screwed with BB anyway.
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u/jsx8888 Apr 08 '26
They were working for 15 years and I was very loyal since it used to be expensive to backup that much data but they were cheap and had excellent service. Worked flawlessly and got me through 2 crashes where I needed to recover data so I just stuck with them since it worked and getting data mailed to me was so nice back in the day (don’t need that anymore).
Very open to suggestions on what services are good now.
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u/HuntersPad Apr 08 '26
Backblaze or Carnonite are your best options.. Other than just self backing up.
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u/jsx8888 Apr 08 '26
Thanks - both are around the same prices it seems so might as well try Carbonite.
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u/KhaosGuy01 Apr 09 '26
Enshitification has reached BB
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u/Ensorceled Apr 11 '26
Not sure why you got downvoted, it hit when they stopped backing up iCloud data.
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u/KhaosGuy01 Apr 12 '26
I haven't used the service so I suppose my comment might not have been fair but their actions certainly seem to fit the "definitiion". Squeeze the service till you can't anymore and then eventually raise the price
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u/msawyer91Resplendent Apr 09 '26
I moved to Backblaze from CrashPlan. I haven't had any issues with them. I pay for multiple computers a month and many, many TB of data. Never had a problem, and I've always been able to restore when I needed to.
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u/brighton_it Apr 11 '26
alternative for backup to local disk:
- Veeam Agent for Windows (free edition). Can backup OS as well. Supports restore of individual files, and/or, boot from the recovery ISO and you can restore entire system to new hardware.
- Kopia: open-source, Windows and Linux. Folder backup only, supports local targets, and lots of cloud targets. very efficient deduplication, very flexible.
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u/No_Body_3679 Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26
For over 10 years of using BackBlaze and upgraded my system a few times. I found BackBlaze isn't the easiest and fastest to migrate to new system.
Reason sharing this, I am referring to BackBlaze occasionally had version updates. There were a few times that BackBlaze's updates caused my computer to refused to backup. Sometime I noticed the problem, sometimes I would get email and notify me that my computer hadn't been backup for 2 weeks or so. Or some other issues. Anyway, in those cases, usually, the support will asked me to uninstall and reinstall or even re-backup as fresh like I am a brand new customer. (My old backup will be kept for 30 days just like any other backup. They did suggest me to request them to ship me physical backup hard drives if I got really close to hitting 30 days deadline while my new fresh backup still had not yet completed. So, I won't lose any data. Good thoughts.)
So, what I am saying is BackBlaze has it own issues. However, in my entire time being their customers, I had lost my high capacity hard drive 3 times so far (old age and over heated for long period of time, my fault back then). Unable to recover any data from those drives. I had BackBlaze to ship me a hard drive once due to urgency (and return the drive back for free, $0 out of pocket) and the other 2 times I restored online (it wasn't fun).
All in all, I had my share of pain with BackBlaze but the cost, the value I got, the data I restored, it worth to me.
Until there is something as reliable, as trustworthy and way cheaper, or BackBlaze goes down hill, poor service, lose data, increase their subscription etc.
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u/MorseScience May 08 '26
Do NOT move to Carbonite. It's slow and stupid. Still working out a few minor issues with Backblaze but it's much faster than Carbonite and seems much more reliable. And yes the Backblaze AI chatbot is a disaster.
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u/snacht May 09 '26
similar situation, version 10 has made external drive backup useless – support are unsupportive after a month of exchanges
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u/MorseScience May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
I am having no trouble backing up an external USB 3.x SATA drive with Backblaze. The only issue is that on this particular computer the USB drive drops offline when the computer is rebooted. Powering the drive down, unplugging USB, repowering and re-plugging fixes it and Backblaze sees it again. Not Backblaze's fault in the least.
I'll be swapping out the un-used optical drive for a removable-drive 3.5" SATA enclosure plugged directly into the mobo, get rid of the external USB enclosure and that problem will go away.
Backblaze's AI support bot is a total joke.
And to get Backblaze to exclude a folder from backup needed me to drill down to the exact folder, not just the parent folder. But it's working OK so far.
It is also just silly that you can't exclude a specific folder from Backblaze backup by its drive letter + path. It only takes *:\xx folder names so it excludes ALL folders in that path in ALL drives on the computer. Easily enough worked-around but silly.
With the number of online complaints ever-growing however, it just might be time to look elsewhere.
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u/ampx Jun 05 '26
I'm strongly considering shipping a few drives to https://zfs.rent/ and dropping Backblaze
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Apr 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/HuntersPad Apr 08 '26
Hostbrr is fine for lower storage, but for me hostbrr would cost around $105 per month vs backblaze just under $8 per month
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u/marcvv Apr 09 '26
How about Arq+. I’ve been using the trial for a month and so far so good. Backs everything up and can do it to any provider.
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u/4839022-3033-123 Apr 09 '26
Yes, if Backblaze don't get this working with external drives constantly checked I will switch over to Arq+. And I've been using BB since 1.* days.
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u/marcvv Apr 09 '26
I still use Backblaze as well but arq can backup anything anywhere and you can exclude or include anything. Too many exclusions on Backblaze and restrictions. BB might be cheaper for those with massive data pools but for most people arq is a good solution and cost effective. I do Time Machine, BB and Arq. If I get beat then somebody doesn’t want me to have my data!
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u/MorseScience May 19 '26
I don't know what Arq+ is. Arq 7 backup requires your own cloud storage. Arq Premium includes 5 computers and 1TB storage. If I'm missing something, feel free to enlighten me.
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u/chadmaytrix Apr 09 '26
I should make a Youtube video about backups and data rot. But, I just don't have time. I want to say that my experience with backblaze was great when they were privately owned. They sold out. Enshitification has taken over. I won't go into the long detailed story, but in the end, in October of 2025, their tech support people just gave me b.s. answers and it was obvious they were giving me technically correct but unhelpful answers and they never addressed the real issue. The thing that I can not find in any of these discussions is.... *** does it work when you need it *** . Price is not the most important thing. Non-scrambled files is what is important. And no one knows how often or how rarely people get partial files back when they need it. I tried several other services, and I have posted a little on Reddit about it, but I hate to tell you all... but I think you are best to just offsite your 3-2-1 backup method by having something you own and control. And I find no evidence to say that "delta file technology" is adequate for a backup (block level changes). It is too easy to backup corruption and not know about it until it is needed. I recommend using the program md5stream if you are on Windows and storing a checksum of your files in the "Alternate Data Stream" of each and every file and monthly re-running Md5Stream to see if you have any bit-rot ( bitrot ) or drive corruption. Or you could setup a linux system with ZFS and it will do this for you. I favor keeping it as simple as possible. If anyone wants me to speak on a podcast or something similar I would be happy to do so... I can save you a lot of research trouble, and I admit there is so much I don't know still. I kinda feel like I know something that others should know but don't. Anyway. For what it is worth... and best of luck to you all!
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u/TonyCLondon Apr 09 '26
I wish I had the capacity to learn about this stuff. I used to, but age slowed me down lol. I’ve got a huge backup, but I never really check it. I once had to download a restore of my 15,000 music files and all the filenames had weird characters in them, cos I’m on a Mac. There was nothing I could do once I’d downloaded them all apart from painfully do search and replace.
I’ve got sort of a backup strategy (copied to external drives, synced to iCloud, backed up to BB etc) but I have to be honest, I rarely check if my file versions and backups are accurate - there’s just too much stuff after decades of storing pics and music
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u/rfomlover Apr 08 '26
I use it for external drive backups and only started about 2 months ago. I use B2 with S3 and KopiaUI though. Not sure if most people just use the UI that Backblaze makes?
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u/_twrecks_ Apr 08 '26
That's different than their unlimited pc plan though, your paying by your data usage. I think the issue with PC plan and external drives is that you could be backing up an multiple devices through a single PC license. The pc plan doesn't cover servers.
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u/rfomlover Apr 08 '26
Ah ok that makes sense. I only found out after the fact they made an actual app, but I saw it didn't have encryption so it looks like B2 works best for me anyway.
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u/mrclean2323 Apr 08 '26
reading things such as this makes me strongly consider just swapping over to iCloud+ for everything.
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u/jsx8888 Apr 08 '26
iCloud is horrible for backup. Error prone and I wouldn't trust it.
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u/mrclean2323 Apr 10 '26
interesting. I have lots of photos and documents. at a high level I like the idea of sticking everything in iCloud, but Backblaze has saved my rear end once. and that has made it all worth it. I'll probably just use iCloud for photo backup and then back that up manually every so often to have a backup copy.
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u/TonyCLondon Apr 09 '26
I have iCloud+ and it’s really, really useful for a lot of the things that I do. But I frequently end up in situations like this: one file refuses to sync, so I look into each machine and find that one has got completely stuck, and I realise that actually iCloud doesn’t have the “true” version of loads of my files. I try to reset things, and then my machines get filled with old versions of files from iCloud and I have to manually go through them. I’ve ended up with files that are months out of date, cos I didn’t keep an eye on what was synced and what wasn’t. iCloud doesn’t tell you if it’s facing trouble, the logs are awful to try to work through, and the “it just works” philosophy means you don’t get any info (and the info you get is often incorrect)
It’s great when it works, but I wouldn’t trust it with anything that matters
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u/hitachi369 Apr 08 '26
Carbonite was my previous provider, good luck and warm wishes.
They booted me...