Seconding Backblaze. They’ve been nothing short of amazing. Cheap. And their recent update with auto-throttling really improved things. I used to notice when it was running because my internet would slow down, but not any more. Now it’s almost invisible, you don’t even notice it’s there. I have a massive media library, with nearly a terabyte (that’s over a thousand gigs for the non-techies out there) of data backed up with Backblaze for $10/month ($5 for each of my wife’s and my own computers). And it’s unlimited so I could back up another terabyte of data for the same price if I needed to.
I have tested file recovery with them and it’s a breeze and worked as expected. Luckily I haven’t had to do a full restore yet, but I like the option of paying to have them ship you an entire drive with all your files on it.
Another benefit is their “Locate My Computer” tool. Works similar to iOS’ “Locate my iPhone/iPad/MacBook”. Basically, if someone steals your computer, Backblaze is still running in the background and you can use it to locate your lost/stolen computer. They have a story on their blog where a theif was taking pictures of himself with the built-in webcam, and the pictures were being uploaded to Backblaze without his knowledge. The owner could see the files being uploaded to Backblaze, which gave him plenty of evidence to take to the police to catch the guy and get his computer back.
The only bummer, but it’s true of all cloud backups, is that it took literally a month running 24/7 to complete my initial backup of 600+ gigs. Once the initial backup was complete though, the incrementals are minor, quick, and hardly noticeable.
Note that I use Backblaze as a backup to my backup. My primary backup is still a local external drive using Time Machine. That’s always been enough when I’ve needed to restore an older file revision or rebuild a file-system (which I’ve had to do more than once). Time Machine has been more than enough. But it’s obviously not enough if the house burns down or I get robbed, which is why Backblaze gives me the piece of mind I need.
