[cweagans]

B2 isn't really a solution for people that are looking for a robust computer backup service like Backblaze currently offers for Mac and Windows. I went down that road and ended up very frustrated.

I ended up buying a Synology NAS (which does offer the same computer backup features + revisioning and all that), and then syncing the backup out to B2. It's not an ideal solution by any means, and I would get rid of my NAS in a heartbeat if there were a real solution for Linux desktops.

It really sucks to have had to go through all of that setup (+ have another machine to maintain) when I just wanted to get things done and know my data was safe.

Would you consider working with the community to find a better solution? Maybe offer a closed source library (a la libspotify, but for Backblaze) for the storage bits + get the community pointed in the right direction for an open source frontend for Linux or something?

[calcifer]

I imagine the problem isn't closed vs open source, but the fact that on Linux it would be trivial to mount a massive NAS (think dozens of TBs) in a way that's completely invisible to the Backblaze client and pay $6/month for unlimited backups. There were people on /r/datahoarder who stored petabytes on Amazon's "unlimited" backup before the whole product got canceled.

[cweagans]

I'm reasonably sure you could do the same on macOS.

[therealx]

The MacOS market is big enough to support that - they prob manually call out the outliers.

[brianwski]

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.

> manually call out the outliers

We have never (yet) ejected anybody or asked them to leave for having too much data. What we do request (politely) is that customers with a large amount of data recommend Backblaze Personal Backup to their friends and family with less data to help bring our averages back down.

[therealx]

Oh, hey, thats really nice of you. I'll buy Yev a beer for it.

[clSTophEjUdRanu]

You can do that on Windows too can't you?

[elehack]

Backblaze can back up arbitrarily large local drives, but does not allow you to set network drives as backup sources (for precisely this reason). It's fine with the local drive being shared - our desktop's big storage drive is exposed over the network - but it can detect and refuse mounts from other machines. I don't know what it does with an iSCSI drive, haven't tried.

I think it's harder to detect network mounts in a way that wouldn't have a bunch of false positives on Linux.

[calcifer]

I'm not familiar enough with Windows to answer that, but I imagine HTPCs are much more likely to use Linux and would make a $6/month backup a very attractive target.

[brianwski]

Disclaimer: I work at Backblaze.

> Can you abuse Backblaze on Windows or Macintosh?

Backblaze lives on the "averages", and so far the averages for Windows and Macintosh have worked out for us. We don't have any deep pockets (no VC funding) so we have to stay profitable or die. If you are curious what the distribution of customer sizes is, here is a histogram (you will need to zoom in, then use the scrollbar): https://i.imgur.com/iVEuwUT.jpg

Backblaze does not allow running the "Personal Backup Client" on Windows "Server" OS flavors to help the averages. Macintosh are really super successful in the laptop category, but very very few people or businesses run them as servers so again, the averages work out for us (so far).

However, in all of our market research, the Linux users averages would quickly drive us out of business. By definition, Linux is pretty much dedicated to almost exclusively servers, and exclusively dedicated to SUPER technical people who understand exactly how much data they have. We built "Backblaze B2" expressly for these technical customers running Linux. If you know how much data you have, and you have less than average, you will literally save money with Backblaze B2.

[social_quotient]

I appreciate the directness and transparency of your reply and backblaze in general.

I also appreciate your focus on providing the value you know you can to your core audience. Compromising that attention which, as you noted, would possibly jeopardize your ability to exist at all. A ton of companies get this completely backwards.

[cweagans]

I'm definitely not advocating for the backup client to be used on servers -- that's definitely not the right fit. I would be 100% okay with a backblaze client checking for X or wayland or something that would otherwise indicate that it's a real desktop environment running if that's what it takes.

Also: money isn't everything. I want to pay for a product that makes my life easier, and B2 ain't it.