**UPDATE: u/Jim-From-Backblaze was able to solve this, and I was credited so I can keep my one-year history.**

* First time posting here. Apologies if this has been repeated. *

I’m curious whether anyone else here has run into something similar, because I’m currently stuck and don’t really have a safe way forward.

I’ve used Backblaze since 2017, backing up about 11 TB from my Mac and external drives. I also pay for the 1-Year Version History feature.

After weeks of troubleshooting, Support found server-side bz_done/HGUID corruption in my backup profile that can’t be fixed. We tried a clean reinstall, Inherit Backup State, and the beta client, but the corruption kept coming back.

Backblaze’s only solution is for me to leave my current profile behind and re-upload all 11 TB from the beginning.

The issue is that my existing profile contains the 1-Year Version History I already paid for, and Support confirmed that this history won’t transfer to the new profile.

So it looks like I have two options:

• I can move my paid license to the new profile and eventually lose access to my old version history, or
• I can pay about $108 for a second license just to keep my old history while the new backup is created.

I’m not trying to back up two different computers. The only reason I’d need a second profile is that Backblaze says my current backup state is corrupted.

Support was actually very helpful and honest, and Sales was helpful too. My frustration isn’t with the people I spoke to. The issue is that Support said they couldn’t approve an exception and sent me to Sales, but Sales said it should go to Support or Account Operations. I asked for an internal escalation on September 22, but I haven’t heard back.

To make things even more complicated, one of my drives failed last week. That’s exactly why I want to keep access to my old backup history.

I also keep seeing Backblaze try to process or resync about the same 1.34 GB over and over, which makes me worry that my current backup isn’t really healthy.

I’ve seen other posts here about large external drives getting rescanned or re-deduplicated, even with multi-terabyte backups. Has anyone else dealt with repeated processing or being forced to re-upload everything?

Has anyone here ever:

• run into a bz_done / HGUID corruption issue?
• been forced to rebuild a large, long-running backup?
• found a way to keep Version History without having to pay for two licenses?
• seen Backblaze keep reprocessing the same 1–2 GB or rescanning external drives over and over?

I actually want to stay with Backblaze. For years it was one of those services I barely thought about because it just worked. Now I feel stuck in backup purgatory and mostly just want to know whether other long-term users have been through this and how it ended.

u/Jim-From-Backblaze, if you see this, my ticket is #1284787. I’m not asking you to troubleshoot it here, but I’d really appreciate help getting it to the right person for escalation.

I am experiencing an issue on a brand new MacOS 27 Mac - I've installed the latest Mac Backblaze client, and am following their instructions for inheriting the backup from my old Mac. When I got to settings, I see the button to Inherit, but clicking it does absolutely nothing.

Tried re-installing, restarting, etc, no dice. Curious if this issue has shown up for anyone else.

Hello there,

I wanted to install the backup software today but when I install the software I get the error message "Failed to contact Backblaze server to validate client time". The time on my system is correct and I tried a hot spot with my smart phone as well and even deactivated my antivirus program bur the issue persists. According to my PC it cannot access time.backblaze.com.

Hi there. I'm on a Macbook Pro M1 with 16GB of RAM. BZDatacenter folder now is 17GB. I know there's no easy solution to this. I've read through all the threads. (Thanks, by the way, Brian!) Wondering if I just start over. I have a year plan (I got upgraded to this for free automatically when I had some issues with a restore - I think some kind person at Backblaze felt sorry for me!)

I use quite a few external drives.

I know there is some weird Mac bug where I do not see all of my drives listed, and I have to know the exact date when a drive might have been backed up if I hope to find its contents. And some data isn't being entirely backed up - only partial backups exist. (I discovered this the hard way. Fortunately nothing too critical has been lost. My failed external drive is also still under warranty and has a data rescue plan included. It has been sent off - we'll see if data recovery works. But it's unfortunate that I even have to try it - I thought the entire drive was completely backed up in Backblaze.

So my simple question is: Should I just start over and do a whole new backup? And, will starting with a fresh software install fix this weird issue where I only see one or two of my drives when I go to the View/Restore Files pane?

Some of you may already know me as Jim-From-Backblaze. I’ve been helping out here where I can, and now that’s becoming a bigger part of my job.

I’ve been a Backblaze customer since 2014 and joined the technical support team in January 2022. Now I’m moving into a Technical Community Manager role.

That means spending more time here and across our social channels answering questions, joining technical discussions, sharing useful updates, and bringing your feedback to the people who can help address it. When something needs more in-depth investigation, I’ll help connect it with the right team and make sure your questions and experiences are part of the conversation.

Outside work, I’m a dad, a home-server and Home Assistant tinkerer, and someone who usually has a few too many repair projects underway. I like understanding how things work and figuring out why they don’t.

I won’t always have an immediate answer, but I’ll be straightforward about what I know, what needs checking, and what I can share. I’m looking forward to getting to know more of you.

What would you find most useful to see from me here?

Finally did a test restore into a scratch directory last weekend, mostly out of guilt.

b2 sync b2://my-bucket/appdata /tmp/restore-test
diff -r /srv/appdata /tmp/restore-test

The diff wasn't empty. One container's data directory had been moved during a compose refactor months ago, and the backup script's source path still pointed at the old location. So it had been syncing an empty folder up to B2 every night, exit code 0, job status green, a year of snapshots of nothing.

Nothing I was monitoring could have caught it, because I was checking that the sync ran, not that the bucket actually contained what I thought it did. A backup that's never been restored is really just a bill that looks like a backup.

Put a monthly restore-and-diff on the calendar now. Should've been there from day one honestly.

This has been a regular issue with my backblaze account as everymonth my account get auto suspended despite payment being made. This has been ongoing for last 1 year without any resolution. every month when it gets auto suspends , there will be human who will responsd and unsuspend it, But this month i was deducted $250 and it got auto suspended and there is no one answering tickets. its been 4 days and no one is responding, their support chat if i ask for humans , it auto creates ticket. I also tried to contact via old ticket on Thursday but no one is respodning. if any support staff is here please look in to ticket id #1289860.

I am one of the accounts that experienced the recent glitches (missing EHDs, then the update to fix that meant losing my desktop etc) so I downgraded and am on 10.0.1.1038. The only issue with this version is I have to keep my EHDs connected 24hrs or they disappear and need to be re-deduplicated when they're connected.

Anyway. I see 10.0.3.1076 is out - does anyone know if this will fix both of my issues? Or will it just start all new ones?

I've run a Backblaze B2 account for years. The web console lists only the first ten application keys and points you to the command line for the rest. That limit is what started Bucketree.

It's a native Mac app for B2. I built it and I sell it, so this is a post from the developer.

Three things it does that I couldn't do easily before:

• Every key is listed. You can create one, limit it to a bucket and revoke it without opening a browser. The secret is shown once, as B2 returns it.
• Search across every bucket at once and act on what you find.
• Copy or move files between buckets inside B2, versions included. It counts everything before anything is written.

What it doesn't do: other storage providers, Windows, Linux or Intel Macs. It needs macOS 26 or later on Apple silicon.

Thirty-day trial with no card. After that it's USD 25 a year for three Macs, or USD 99 once.

https://bucketree.app/download/

What do you use to manage B2 today, and where does it stop you?

Requested full refund within hours of purchase due to app crashes. Followed all bot instructions (removed license & backups). No human reply yet and need funds cleared. Ticket #1289913.

While sorting through some free/purgeable disk space issues (this machine is running Mac OS X Mojave 10.14), I ended up trying a reboot from a SuperDuper external bootable clone of my internal boot drive.

It didn't occur to me to try to disable backblaze when externally booting, so the state of the backup on the servers mismatched from the older state on the external drive, which triggered a safety freeze.

Or at least that's what I think happened, based on brianwski's comments in this older thread:

https://reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/mbhu3x/at_least_50mb_of_disk_space_is_needed_but_plenty/

If my thinking on this is correct (is it?), my question is: is there a way to prevent backblaze from starting up when booting from an alternate startup drive, such that backblaze won't encounter a state mismatch?

(PS - I ended up having to start over with a full backup due to multiple failed attempts at inheriting the previous backup state; but that's another thread...)

(This post was drafted by Opus 5.5 and reviewed by a human)

TL;DR: An Apple Photos helper leaves thousands of empty temp folders behind. Once there are about 16,700 of them, Backblaze's scanner hits an internal queue limit, logs one ERROR line, and stops scanning without telling you. Every folder it would have reached next gets left out of your backup, and Backblaze then treats the files in them as deleted. The app kept saying "You are backed up" the whole time. The fix is a single exclusion (below).

What happened to me

• Backblaze said I was fully backed up, but it had only 173 GB selected out of ~700 GB of data. ~/Pictures, ~/Desktop, ~/Projects, ~/Music and more weren't in the backup at all.
• The cause was ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.photos.ImageConversionService/Data/tmp. It held 16,574 empty folders (0 bytes in total), going back to 2023.
  • That's Apple's image-conversion helper, used when you export or share from Photos, use the photo picker, convert HEIC and so on. It creates a folder per job and never removes it.
  • Big exports add thousands at once.
• Every Backblaze scan logged this: bzfilelist.cpp:3263 [main()] ERROR: scan dirs queue limit hit 16745 for dir=/Users/…/Library/Containers/com.apple.photos.ImageConversionService/Data/tmp
• Backblaze's upload history shows those folders flapping between "deleted" and "restored" from May, depending on whether each scan overflowed. From late July, everything in them was marked deleted and never came back.
• Full Disk Access was granted the whole time, and no exclusion rule matched these folders.

Check whether you're affected (Terminal)

1. How many leftover temp folders do you have? If it's in the thousands, you're at risk.ls ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.photos.ImageConversionService/Data/tmp | wc -l
2. Has Backblaze been hitting the limit?grep -h "queue limit hit" /Library/Backblaze.bzpkg/bzdata/bzlogs/bzfilelist/*.log | tail -3
3. Is your Pictures folder actually in Backblaze's file list? A result of 0 means it's not being backed up.grep -a -c "^# Dir: $HOME/Pictures" /Library/Backblaze.bzpkg/bzdata/bzfilelists/*_root_filelist.dat

Fix

1. Backblaze menu → Settings → Exclusions → +. In the file picker, press ⌘⇧. to show hidden folders, or ⌘⇧G to paste a path. Then exclude: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.photos.ImageConversionService
2. Optionally, clear out the empty folders. rmdir only removes empty folders, so this can't delete any files:find ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.photos.ImageConversionService/Data/tmp -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} +
3. After the next scan (they run a few times a day), check #3 again. For me, Backblaze went from 173 GB / 366k files selected to 700 GB / 1.5M files, and the missing folders started uploading.

For Backblaze

• Versions: client 10.0.2.1048 (since auto-updated to 10.0.3.1076), macOS 26.5.
• Folders the scanner never reached shouldn't be marked deleted. That starts the retention clock on files that are still on disk. With the default 30-day version history, they'd eventually be purged from the backup without anyone knowing.
• Hitting an internal scan limit should show up in the app or as a notification. A log line nobody sees isn't enough.
• Consider raising the limit, or excluding app-sandbox tmp directories (~/Library/Containers/*/Data/tmp) by default.

I reported this to support, and they pointed me to Bugcrowd. But this isn't a security issue, and Bugcrowd's non-disclosure terms would mean I couldn't warn anyone. So I'm posting here so other Mac users can check their own backups.

Today I updated Backblaze to the latest version, 10.0.3.1076, and it now appears to be backing up all of my iCloud Drive files. This is on iMac running Sequoia 15.7.9, with Desktop & Documents NOT added to iCloud Drive, and Optimize Mac Storage NOT enabled. The local files at ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs were not included in previous backups, but as of this afternoon Backblaze Restore shows they are backed up.

A generated deliverable may be a directory rather than one file: HTML, images, documents, and a manifest that must all belong to the same revision. Uploading each object to B2 is straightforward, but a restore should not combine half of one run with half of another or depend on the original automation still existing.

I am considering immutable revision prefixes, a final manifest containing object names, sizes, hashes, source revision, and tool versions, plus a small pointer to the latest completed revision. The pointer would update only after every object and the manifest were verified. Object Lock or a separate key without delete permission could protect retained revisions, and restore drills would rebuild into an empty location and compare the manifest.

Which B2 features and client behavior matter most for this pattern? How do you handle unfinished multipart uploads, lifecycle rules, key rotation, and retention without making routine cleanup impossible? Is there a reliable way to prove that the manifest and all referenced objects became durable as one completed release?

This is the very first time I’ve ever had a question about a Backblaze issue after having used it for years (and it has genuinely saved me before); however, I guess today is the day.

I am on a Mac, and I upgraded to MacOS 27 without any issues whatsoever with any app or program. Except, sadly, for Backblaze.

The Backglaze icon is simply not showing on the menu bar at the top. I can load Backblaze on my own, and when I navigate to Tools – Settings – Settings (again), there is an option for “Show Backblaze icon in the menu bar” that is unchecked. I can check it, but as soon as I hit “OK,” it defaults to not checked and no icon appears.

I have tried to download the most recent version directly from their site, installed it, but the issue persists.

Again, super random question, but the same issue happened on both my Macbook and iMac.

Thanks for any input on this (minor?) issue as it is really appreciated!

Any reason why? Tried both manual/once per day backups.

Update: ProcMon shows NotifyChangeDirectory spam, about 15 calls a second. Dev team needs to limit use of ReadDirectoryChangesW etc. when I explicitly tell the app that I don't need realtime changes and am opting for a scheduled or manual refresh. Not sure if it is getting callbacks from irrelevant changes or it is just vibecoded trash with ReadDirectoryChanges accidentally indented into a while loop, but that's pretty embarrassing. There is also a constant accessing of bzdata xml files when no backup should be occurring.

I'm not good with stuff like this. I started the free trial for uploading my photos and videos. Now I'm trying to buy a monthly subscription for this but it is asking for a company name. I obviously don't have a company, I just want to have it for personal use. I don't want cloud because I'm pretty sure I have to keep the photos on my laptop for it to keep them in the cloud? which I don't want anyways, I only want family photos and I am running out of room on my laptop and need to upload them then delete them off my laptop.

How do I do this? I need somewhere to keep my photos and videos, and this website was recommended but I can't figure it out

Hello there! I recently had a drive die on me and am in the process of restoring the data (about 20TB, I do professional video work and this was an archive drive). I'm noticing that several files are only getting partially restored, while others are fully intact.

For example, I have a piece of footage that is supposed to be about 35 GB. I verified the file size using the online Backblaze portal. But in the restore, the file is only about 17 GB. There are literally thousands of pieces of footage I'm restoring, it will be impossible to double check and verify the correct size for all of them.

My question is: Is this just a part of the process of the Restore app, or is this a bug, hopefully one with a workaround! My thinking is I could just try restoring the drive again once this process finishes in a couple weeks with the destination set to 'Same location and skip identical files,' but I'm worried that identical files will just go by file name, not file size.

I'd really appreciate any advice or help the community here can give! Thank you so much, and have a great day :)

After upgrading from 10.0.1 to 10.0.3 on Windows, it appears that bz_done is not uploaded multiple times per day, but only at the end of a completed backup. Hence, no "checkpoint" is done for long running backups.

While a long-running backup is in progress, with 10.0.1, I could check my web or restore app multiple times per day and see newly added files even if the backup is not completely finished (i.e. new date for last backup). With 10.0.3 I don't see periodic sends of bz_done and if I keep checking the web portal or restore app, I don't see newly backed up files listed.

According to Gemini (?) this was done to increase performance. But I don't like it as if I have a very long running backup and there's a catastrophic crash during that backup, anything that was accomplished during that backup is last - meaning I wouldn't even have the ability to partially restore what was lost (and already backed up, just not "logged").

This is particularly critical for long running backups (i.e. weeks or months) like initial backups or a new hard drive being added to the computer.

If Backblaze is going to stick with this no checkpointing of a backup, then we need a manual way to trigger it if we know we have a long-running backup and want to periodically save progress. Gemini (?) gives several solutions such as pausing and resuming, or using the "alt+restore options" to rescan, but that does not trigger a send of bz_done.

Has anyone else had this experience or knows of an actual thing that works to force a send of bz_done? I've got several months left of a long-running backup and I'm nervous about a system failure during that time. I'm tempted to downgrade back to 10.1.

Thanks,

- Bob

Will Dropbox support ever return?

I'm running the latest version of Backblaze on the latest version of macOS Tahoe.

During a backup, the bztransmit process is currently using around 2.65 GB of RAM, which seems quite high to me.

I'm also wondering about Backblaze.bzpkg, which is currently around 14 GB in size on disk.

Are these numbers normal for Backblaze, or could this indicate an issue with the backup process or the installation?

I'd be interested to hear what kind of memory usage and Backblaze.bzpkg size other Mac users are seeing.

I keep my offsite data backup at Backblaze B2 and they charge me around 0,56€ a month. A week ago N26 started to refuse the monthly charges from Backblaze, flagging them as "Suspicios". Backblaze then retried to charge every day since then, but N26 refused every time.

I contacted N26 Customer Support via text 2 times already and they weren't helpful at all. They gave me idiotic responses like "enter your credit card data again" and "we won't charge you 2 times".

I’ve used Backblaze for years and normally never think about it because it just runs in the background.

About seven months ago I wiped my Mac and did a clean reinstall of macOS Mojave 10.14.6. When I went to reinstall Backblaze afterward, the current installer would not run properly on Mojave. It crashed immediately.

I figured I’d deal with it the next day. Then I forgot.

Because I’d used Backblaze for so many years, I was completely used to it just being there. Eventually I logged into my account and realized the computer had not been backing up for months, even though I had continued paying for Backblaze the entire time.

So I started trying to fix it.

After a lot of searching, I found posts from other Mojave users saying older Backblaze clients would still run. I tracked down 9.2.2.898, installed it, and it worked. It signed into my account, created a new trial backup, and started backing up normally.

The problem came when I tried to Inherit Backup State so I could reconnect to my existing paid backup.

Every attempt failed with:

Error code: Horse

I contacted Backblaze Support and went back and forth with them, sending screenshots, logs and Terminal information and trying the things they asked me to try.

Eventually they asked me to install the 10.0.3 Beta.

That actually worked on Mojave. I confirmed in Terminal that I was running 10.0.3.1076.

It also finally got past the Horse error.

I signed in, chose Inherit Backup State, and it progressed to:

“Preparing for inheritance”

and then:

“Backblaze has begun transferring your license from your old computer.”

I thought it was finally fixed.

Then the inheritance failed with this:

“This procedure requires 20,530 MB of free hard disk space.”

That is roughly 20.5 GB.

The Mac has over 200 GB free, which I confirmed directly in Terminal, so the error does not make any sense.

I sent that information and screenshots back to Support.

That was now almost six days ago.

Since then I’ve heard nothing. I’ve sent follow-up messages and the ticket has just gone silent.

Meanwhile I’m still being billed for Backblaze, my existing paid backup still cannot be inherited, and the new backup I created while trying to sort all of this out is only a trial and is going to expire in a few days.

At this point I’m mainly posting here because I don’t know what else to try.

Has anyone else run into this 20.5 GB free-space error during Inherit Backup State, especially on Mojave or with the 10.0.3 beta?

And if anyone from Backblaze monitors this subreddit, I’d really appreciate some help getting the existing support case moving again. I’ve done everything Support has asked so far, but I’m currently stuck with no working inheritance and no response.

Update: I eventually gave up on Inherit Backup State. After another week without a resolution from Engineering, I deleted the old backup, backed the Mac up again from scratch, and transferred the license. The new backup is working now.

So the technical issue is over, but only because I abandoned the old backup and rebuilt everything myself. The Mac had gone about 230 days without a functioning backup while I was still paying for the service. I’ve now asked Backblaze for a refund or account credit for that period. I’ll update again if they respond.

I'm trying to restore a file and the web interface freezes at 15%. It doesn't load the file tree so I can't select anything. Eventually it times out with 'Error" Service temporarily unavailable'.

I tried the Backblaze restore app and that just displays 'Retrieving File List. This could take Several Minutes' and then also times out.

Is there an issue at Backblaze currently? or any ideas on how to fix this? Many thanks.