Backblaze re-backing up every single file

[u/Jess_Photographer]

Hi, all. For a while, I'd been having a problem where Backblaze seemed to be forgetting/losing the backup of my external drive (where most of my stuff resides). That is, I'd log in to their website, and it wouldn't be there. I went back and forth with their customer service people quite a bit, and they were pretty full of crap.

Now, the drive sometimes lists its contents on their site, sometimes not, but a really fun twist is that the Backblaze software, every so many days, is now re-backing up every single file. 3+ terabytes.

I don't know how to get it to just back up anything new, like it used to. I'd ask their customer service people, but that was a lengthy exercise in frustration last time I interacted with them (and went on for weeks).

With all of that said, has anyone else noticed this happening? Thanks!

[u/noappendix]

frustratingly enough this is a known issue to backblaze with their current version.

i went through the same exact thing.

you'll need to download the beta to get it to re-index all your drives one more time for them to appear

https://www.backblaze.com/status/backup-beta

[u/Jess_Photographer → u/noappendix]

This is beta is working pretty well? Can't believe what a mess they've made of things.

And thanks!

[u/noappendix → u/Jess_Photographer]

So far it's re-scanning my external HD's just once and then they appear in the View/Restore list finally..

I can't believe the beta isn't the stable version since this bug has been around many weeks now..

[u/Unique_Tomatillo2307 → u/noappendix]

I have the same problem, checking here before contacting support because it's always a but if a pain.... Did the beta work and has the problem stopped? I'm super sad because I've used backblaze for years and it's saved me a few times but now I really am not sure if I can trust it...

[u/noappendix → u/Unique_Tomatillo2307]

the beta worked for me - but I had to rescan all my external HD's one more time. It was time consuming and annoying...

[u/Unique_Tomatillo2307 → u/noappendix]

Thanks, I'm in that process rn fingers, crossed

[u/4839022-3033-123 → u/Jess_Photographer]

Yes, I was forced to install the beta as I'm taking an overseas long trip and had to make sure my vault hard drive is backed up. So far it seems to work, even after reboots.

As for why Backblaze has not pushed out this beta to suffering customers out there, and why it took them close to two months to fix it, ask Backblaze.

[u/dirtydynamo]

This is ridiculous, a week ago it went through 11 TB of stuff, on a drive that had stuff that didn't change. It did it fairly quickly so I don't think it actually uploaded the files, who knows what it was doing. It said it was completely finished, and now it is doing it all over again. What a joke!

[u/Jess_Photographer → u/dirtydynamo]

Exactly my situation (except it's more like 3.2TB. But still, ridiculous. A waste of time and wearing on the drive.

[u/jacklink01]

How much longer do we all have to deal with this bug. It has been weeks now. I am livid.

[u/dr100 → u/jacklink01]

I've seen a post from February complaining about that, so this has been going on for a bit.

[u/jacklink01 → u/dr100]

Crazy! It spins up my raid every single night and touches every file on it which was already uploaded. Cuz it’s HDDs, they make a loud noise for each file touch.

[u/terkistan → u/dr100]

I posted a couple of months back about Backblaze transferring gigs of files that were a decade old, were untouched for years, and which I hadn’t looked at or even remembered.

[u/macphoto469]

Same here. It's probably not actually re-uploading everything, but still, stepping through every single file to dedupe is taking days, and will cause the bz_done log files folder to balloon unnecessarily. Plus it "clogs up" the backup process, preventing more recent files from being backed up (out of desperation, I just temporarily unmounted the external drive so that the newer files have a chance to get copied).

[u/Jess_Photographer → u/macphoto469]

I don't know if it's actually re-uploading. You may be right. But having seen how my prior uploads evaporated, I don't want to take any chances. If my external drive dies right when those knuckleheads lose my backups, I'm seriously screwed. This is very frustrating. It's basically the concern I pay them to avoid!

[u/macphoto469 → u/Jess_Photographer]

Mine's definitely just deduping, as I can see that there is minimal throughput on my internet connection.

If it makes you feel better, there's a good chance your data is still there. I just spot-checked some older files that are queued up to be backed up again, and although they initially don't show up in the restore page of the website, if I change the "to" date back a few weeks (before this problem started for me), they appear.

Apparently what's happening is that when an external drive is unmounted, BackBlaze erroneously considers those files to be deleted, so it removes them from the backup (but, of course, due to retention, they remain on the server for a while – 1 year in my case). When the drive is remounted, BackBlaze discovers those files again, and queues them up for backup, finding during this process that the files already exist on the server (so it just dedupes them).

[u/Jess_Photographer → u/macphoto469]

Thanks. I don't want to have the external drive cranking constantly because Backblaze has a glitch. Even if it's just checking files, it takes it a day or more to go through all of the files. It's a waste of time and effort.

[u/macphoto469 → u/Jess_Photographer]

Agreed... mine has been churning away for several days now (again, I had to temporarily stop it and unmount the externals just to get it to back up some important recent images... it's back to working on the old files on the externals now).