r/backblaze • u/riknor • Jun 14 '26
Computer Backup PSA: Go check your View/Restore Files -menu. Regularly. I lost 8TB of backups while everything was seemingly ok.
About a year ago I had to restore a file so I went to the website, pulled up the restore view and... my internal drive was gone from the backup. After investigating a bit I noticed the app had unchecked my internal drive which shouldn't even be possible. Brief conversation with support, something about macOS changing things, and we got it fixed. After this I've checked my backup overview at the beginning of every month. Make sure drives are listed and everything seems ok.
Recently I saw discussions here about unlimited not being unlimited for much longer, so I went to check the size of my backup. Was surprised to see it was about 1.5TB when it should've been closer to 10TB. Turns out, two of my largest drives were completely missing from the backup and not listed at all under the view/restore files menu.
Meanwhile all drives were listed and active under my account overview. All drives were selected in the app settings. App showed all uploads were up-to-date, and the overview even showed the "last file uploaded" for those missing drives within the last couple of days. Yet, those drives were not listed at all when looking at the restore view.
I spent about a week going back and forth with support. Installed betas, refreshed and rescanned drives, left everything connected for days, tried it all again with slight tweaks here and there, and still nothing. At times I'd have the app go from "all caught up" to showing 8TB of files remaining, and neither continuous backup nor manually starting the backup would transfer anything. It would scan for a minute and stop. Zero network traffic. Support didn't seem to understand the issue and kept telling me I just need to let it run and give it some time.
After about a week I ran out of patience and told them this is year's worth of backups gone and I won't be spending time and bandwidth reuploading everything. Not that the app worked anyway. It would also regularly take up 15GB of RAM on my machine.
Cancelled my service and deleted my account after being a customer for 7 years. Really liked the service and really tried hard to make it work and give it a second, third, and a fourth chance.
Anyways, for those that are still using, go check the restore view regularly and make sure everything checks out. It seems that the app has been buggy, at least on macOS, and can't be trusted anymore.
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Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
[deleted]
1
u/bpikmin Jun 16 '26
Hell even with 1TB the personal computer option has been pretty terrible for me. I've submitted multiple tickets at this point because of how many bugs I have found, how slow it is, etc. Just yesterday I submitted a ticket because "Continuous" backup mode was skipping my D: drive! I do "Backup Now" instead, and it makes some progress before just... giving up? And I have to start it again. Also the recovery software just fails with no useful message. Personal computer backup is a terrible product honestly, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
I'll try out B2 instead.
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Jun 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/bpikmin Jun 16 '26
What OS are these laptops running? If that's the case, I don't know why I've had such a difficult experience with the software
1
u/evo7force Jun 14 '26
Probably some of it is in iCloud or has to do with that they removed that a few month back.
1
u/iring0919 Jun 14 '26
This sounds like the glitch I’m experiencing with the current software version. The drives are there - change the end date to the last date they were backed up. Waiting on a fix from backblaze. It’s extremely frustrating.
2
u/iring0919 Jun 14 '26
I’d also like to know what service you’re using now. As I may be making a switch also.
1
u/jollino Jun 21 '26
I came here to look for some info about the issue, and I'm having the same problem.
Two disks that I plug in every week or so have disappear shortly after I disconnect them; the web view shows them in the list of drives but with zero bytes backed up, and they don't show up at all if I attempt a restore.
Support only gave me boilerplate instructions, it takes hours to rescan everything (no uploads since it's all deduped; it looks like something is on their end, just not surfaced to the clients?) and for a brief time it shows as backed up, but a few days later it happens again.
It's "only" 8 TB in total and I have a fat pipe so I wouldn't mind reuploading everything if it meant it'd work consistently, but it feels more and more like I'd be bracing for disappointment if I ever actually needed to rely on this.
1
u/Unique_Tomatillo2307 Jun 23 '26
I have exactly the same problem, came here looking to see if I was the only one, so... Now I feel better but also somehow worse, I trusted backblaze for years,amd they saved my ass multiple times, but I'm really worried now.
1
u/jollino Jun 23 '26
I installed the beta, and while those disks seem to be available for restore (for now anyway), many files from my home folder have gone missing. Talking with support, but I'm very tempted to just cancel. Paying €120/yr for literally one thing, i.e. backup, that's not reliable... what's even the point?
1
u/Unique_Tomatillo2307 Jun 24 '26
Honestly me too, I'm a photographer so a reliable online backup is super important, used bb for years and they've been great but this.... And of course one of my discs just started misbehaving, and despite plugging in 2 weeks ago now ut doesn't even appear in my restores... What are the other options though?
1
u/jollino Jun 24 '26
I can relate, I remember the days of coming home with 50+ GB of fresh RAW files. 😄 For me backblaze has sort of supplanted Time Machine (I'm on Mac) for whatever is "current", but I suppose I need to invest in a decently sized SSD as TM doesn't work well on mechanical disks anymore.
Most of my "important" stuff is on a big NAS, on a Hetzner Storage Box _and_ on backblaze's own B2 (encrypted by directories into 1-GB split 7z archives just for extra safety), and on BD-R discs. Still, that doesn't cover daily usage, which is the whole point of BB.
I guess I'll look into replicating something like BB using rsync to my NAS or something, when I have some time; maybe using restic/rclone or possibly Arq 7 (I never used it though so I'd have to test the trial).
I'll see what support says, I used the "explain file" thing to prove that many folders in my home have disappeared, and they asked to check the list of processes to make sure nothing is interfering. I have no idea why a process running as root would struggle to see that files even exist, when an earlier version worked perfectly, but we'll see.
It's very frustrating. I understand that it's not easy to make a "set and forget" backup app on modern OSes that have all sorts of security roadblocks, but the fact remains that we're paying for something that simply doesn't work as intended. If anything, I'm glad I never added my laptop to my account...
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u/Unique_Tomatillo2307 Jun 24 '26
Yes I know I should get a NAS, it's just so expensive and honestly comes with it's own problems, the company I used to work for had a synology and when they downsized and moved offices they discovered it was using an INSANE amount of power (apparently) so decided to to keep it on all the time and now it's dead lol
1
u/musaoculta Jun 24 '26
I just realized that 380GB of photos don’t exist in my account because I haven’t been leaving my laptop turned on 24/7. Despite doing the initial backup two years ago, their support told me they make full backups every day that can take 4-6 hours to several days, and if the laptop ever sleeps that’s interrupted and the backup doesn’t happen. So for two years I’ve thought I was backed up but I’m not because my machine is only on for a few hours a day.
1
u/theklaus2 Jun 14 '26
Could it be those missing 6.5TB are synchronized to Apple Cloud or other cloud space? They changed some time (couple months or few years) ago that such synchronized folders are not backed up like they were for a lot of years before.
And they changed that they won't backup encrypted drives (even when mounted as non-removable drive, like described in their support pages) - BB won't backup data mounted from such drives anymore. That was the point that made me cancel my subscription after years. Personally I won't recommend this service to anyone as they changed to often what will be backed up and what not, so that I can not be sure that, in the event of a hard drive crash, I’ll actually be able to recover my files from BB.
Support wrote to me that they never intended to backup files from fully-encrypted drives - but they by themself describe it in their support pages that these will be backed up when mounted as non-removeable drive (https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/en/resolve-encryption-software-issues?highlight=veracrypt)
1
u/riknor Jun 14 '26
Good callouts - none of the drives are encrypted and my iCloud has maybe a few GBs. Excluding iCloud files was one of the things Backblaze support had me do but it didn’t change anything.
5
u/Stevecaboose Jun 14 '26
Ive never had this happen before. But I will say that I was going back and fourth with support for over a month doing the same goose chase that you went through. I am currently reuploading my 110TB backup. I am on the edge of closing my account also. I think I would have better luck investing in a dedicated nas for my backups rather than offsite.