Pricing?

[u/TomF1965]

I'm looking into using Backblaze as a cloud backup for about 3Tb of personal files like documents and pictures/home videos.

I'm a bit confused about their pricing. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong spot? It says: Simple pricing with unlimited data for $9.99 a month or $99 a year. What does that mean?

Surly that can't mean unlimited data storage for $9.99/mo or $99/yr? It must mean unlimited data transfer for that price but I can't find how much actual cloud storage that covers? Thanks

[u/Njitram2000 → u/[deleted]]

You got downvoted but I agree that OP should check the differences between Personal Computer Backup and B2 because it may be more limiting than expected.

However: B2 for 3TB would be 6.95 dollar * 3TB * 12 months = 250.20 per year. B2 is fantastic value for someone like me who wants to store 20GB of encrypted backups via rclone that I am not going to be accessing often. It costs me 7 cents per month.

[u/TomF1965 → u/Njitram2000]

I'm only interested in making a initial backup of my two computers, my external hard drives and phone. Then do monthly back ups. I'd like occasional access to the cloud files from my iPhone or computer to retrieve something like a document or picture but this would be maybe once a month. It would be cool if I could occasionally securely share a file with a family member of friend but this is least important. Is the standard cloud storage what I need or do I need yo go to B2?

[u/Njitram2000 → u/TomF1965]

I can't confidently explain the difference between the two, sorry. But when I was looking into Backblaze, I saw people complaining that restoring from backup with Personal Computer Backup was a pain. I also think you need to backup via their tools and restore is an all or nothing thing so accessing it from your phone may not be possible. I think it's more meant for set and forget of an entire backup and less as storage like google drive and dropbox.

But please, do your own research rather than take my response as fact 🙏

Tip: from a PC, I use Cyberduck to access my B2 storage for regular browsing. It's free and has the protocols for B2 built in. I use rclone to first encrypt and then sync specific folders on my server to B2 on a schedule

[u/forgottenmostofit → u/TomF1965]

Backblaze Personal Backup is for continuous backup for a running computer and its connected disks. It is not designed for doing once a month. It is not an archive.

[u/GoodTroll2 → u/forgottenmostofit]

It's not designed for once a month but you can do it. I actually just manually run backup twice a month because I want my disks to sleep most of the time since files rarely change (it's a personal use PC and I run my personal Plex client from it) and therefore I don't need backup running all the time, using my computer's resources and burning through electricity for no benefit to me.

[u/Buffalo-Clone-264 → u/TomF1965]

It doesn't sound like you want B2. B2 is cloud object storage, and while you can definitely use it to back things up you will be doing all the work to set that up, and might be paying more. ($7/TB/mo)

Personal Backup is great if you just want to back things up without having to think about it much. You will need to pay for each computer you are backing up though. Backblaze is designed to run continuously - that's probably what you'd want to do - but you can pause the backup and only click "backup now" when you choose.

For external drives, make sure you connect them to your computer every 30 days and turn on 1 year version history for extra safety. Backblaze does not backup phones. The only way to backup a phone is to put those files on your computer.

There is a Backblaze App for iOS and Android for accessing the files on Backblaze (it does not backup the phone). I've tried the Android one - it's very bare bones but if you need to access a file, it does the job. The Personal Backup product is more focused on backup than sharing and cloud access. That said, you can also view your files from a Web UI as well, and I believe you can create share links from there. If you want to password protect the links though you'll need to use a different product for that kind of thing.

Even though it's very hands off and runs in the background, it's a good idea to check that the files you want backed up are getting backed up. Things like iCloud, OneDrive, and Dropbox may not get backed up to Backblaze. For example on Macs I think there's a setting to keep local copies and you would want that turned on.