There were good and bad things about every backup system that I trialled. Backblaze has three small downsides – so make sure that you are happy with them before you jump in. Each of the three things it can’t (or won’t) do can be worked around once you know that they’re there.
- Backblaze will not allow you to back up a network drive. You can’t trick or beat it, it knows what you’re trying to do, and has been taught how to identify a shared network drive. If the hard drive is on your PC, you can back it up. Even external hard drives or USB flash drives: you can back up anything that is connected directly to your PC, but network drives – no. They’re just not supported.
- Backblaze cannot back up a file that is “exclusively locked”. The only files that regularly fall into this category in my testing are Outlook PST data files. Essentially, if Outlook is open, Backblaze can’t back up its data file. Not everyone who uses Outlook needs its data file to be backed up (if you use Microsoft Exchange, or email via Office 365 or Google G Suite, you don’t). For other people though – where you download email via POP3 and store it in PST data files, I have a workaround which can take a copy of your data files and lets Backblaze back those up.
- Backblaze will backup, and keep revisions, of all files whenever they are created or updated – and it’ll keep every revision for 30 days. However, it will take one revision every 48 hours for files over 30 MB in size. You’re unlikely to have (m)any files over 30 MB anyway, except your Outlook data file and perhaps some PowerPoint slides. This means that if you changed a large file multiple times during the day, Backblaze would only backup one copy every other day.
You can get in touch with me and I can help address these problems if you think that they’d impact you.
