If you’re responsible for protecting company data, you know that any number of things can jeopardize the data on workstations, be it human error or natural disaster. It’s your job to reduce risk, but to do that you need the ability to fine-tune your backup systems.

Backblaze Computer Backup gives you an easy, automatic, centrally-managed solution for backup. And, starting today IT administrators can take greater control of their endpoint backups—from how employees authenticate to what they can and cannot restore—with the introduction of our new Enterprise Control for Backblaze Computer Backup.   

What’s New in Enterprise Control?

Whether you’re an IT manager or an MSP responsible for protecting business data, Enterprise Control allows you to meet your full business continuity and data security standards for workstation data and better support a hybrid and remote workforce. Here’s what you can do with Enterprise Control:

• Fine-Grained Access Permissions: Manage access to group member data on a granular level for enterprise operations. This includes control over members’ ability to delete their own backups, admin’s ability to delete member backups, and admin’s permissions for restoring data on a member’s behalf. 
• Advanced Single Sign-On: Enable OpenID Connect (OIDC) single sign-on (SSO) and the ability to use tools like Okta and Azure Active Directory in addition to GSuite and Microsoft. This enhances security control, allowing you to ramp up authentication practices, verifying member identity and streamlining identity management.
• Group Management Controls: Prevent members from leaving a group, taking data with them, or ordering restore hard drives or snapshot hard drives without permission. You also have the option to hide the ability to update the client through the desktop app, rename or purge end user backups from the web application, and prevent Group members from updating the client app on their own. 
• Compliance Support: Benefits businesses who are mandated to apply greater controls given compliance, cyber insurance, or heightened recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) requirements.

Enterprise Control Gives You The Guardrails

Backblaze Computer Backup reduces IT burden with its simplicity, and consistently ranked as Wirecutter’s Best Online Cloud Backup Service. Now, we’ve wrapped that simplicity with the enterprise features larger organizations require so you can reduce risk, achieve compliance, and better support your cybersecurity and disaster recovery goals. 

How to Upgrade to Enterprise Control

Enterprise Control is available for Groups with 20 or more Computer Backup licenses. To take advantage of Enterprise Control or to purchase Backblaze Computer Backup for your organization, contact your Sales representative. Or, learn more about how to implement Enterprise Control by visiting our technical documentation article.

If you have additional feature requests, please visit our Product Portal or let us know in the comments below.

The post Now Available: Enterprise Control for Computer Backup appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

June is Backup Awareness Month and the results from our annual Backup Awareness Survey are in. Say what you want about your supposedly technically-challenged grandparents, but they back up their computers. It’s not even close. Grandpa, in particular, is a backup fiend when compared to the 18 to 44-year-old crowd. He’s more than twice as likely to back up his computer at least once a day. Grandma is no backup slouch either, as she is 80% more likely to backup her computer each day versus the 18 to 44-year-old survey respondents. Let’s face it; the older generation is kicking your collective youthful butts when it comes to regularly backing up computer data.

This is the seventh year Backblaze has commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct our annual Backup Awareness Survey. Each year, 2,000 or so random computer users are asked how often they back up all the data on their computer. The results are tabulated across a multitude of demographic dimensions and then we get the data to review. For 2014, the breakdown of how often people back up their data is below:

Question: How often do you back up all the data on your computer?

Over the years, we’ve focused on how many people report that they are backing up their computers each day or more often. Typically, this would be someone with an automated backup solution such as Backblaze, Time Machine, or a similar product. In the 2014 survey, that figure is 9%. This is about the same as last year (within the margin of error for the survey) as seen in the table below:

On the other hand, 14% of senior males over 55 reported that they back up daily or more often. This compares to the almost anemic 7% rate for males 18 to 44 for the same reported backup schedule—daily or more often. Young women are even worse when compared to senior women, as 18 to 44-year-old females back up daily or more often at a rate of 5% as compared to 11% for their 55 and older counterparts.

I can almost hear the excuses being formulated in your head as to why Grandma and Grandpa are better than you at backup; let’s see if we can address some of your questions…

You: Grandma and Grandpa have plenty of time so they can back up everyday.

Backblaze:

Good online backup and local backup solutions work automatically and continuously. Grandpa does not have to remember to press the “Back Up Now” button every day at 5 p.m. to back up his computer.

You: Setting up a backup solution is a pain.

Backblaze:

Backblaze takes three steps and five minutes to install and get running. Many other daily backup solutions are similar, taking only a few minutes to set up. Pause your King of Thrones binge watching for five minutes and give your Grandpa a call, he can walk you through it.

You: Young people don’t own computers, they only have phones and tablets.

Backblaze:

The survey specifically gathered data from people who owned a computer. There were 798 people from 18 to 44 years old and 838 people 55 years old and older.

You: If my computer fails, my data is online somewhere.

Backblaze:

The average data restore from Backblaze for a given customer contains over 30,000 files and includes, photos, videos, music, documents, spreadsheets, email, source code, and many other different types of data. So, yes, your files may be online somewhere. Let’s hope you don’t actually have to try to find all of them.

You: I don’t have time to drag files and folders to my backup.

Backblaze:

Then don’t. The better online backup and remote backup solutions are built to discover all the data on your system and back it up automatically. This includes files like MS Office temp files and application data located in non-standard folders and directories. You shouldn’t have to spend your time trying to manually locate and select files so your backup solution will work right.

You: Who are these survey respondents anyway?

Backblaze:

The survey is an online survey conducted by Harris Interactive during the period of June 2-4, 2014. All the data cited was based on the 1,987 respondents (weighted base) who said they owned a computer and answered the question, “How often do you back up all of the data on your computer?”

You: I’m already a Backblaze customer so why does this matter to me?

Backblaze:

First, thanks for being customer. Second, 54% of the people who become Backblaze customers have either personally lost or know someone who has lost computer data. Yes, 54%. We’d like it to be 0%, so tell your friends and family to back up. Better yet, use our new refer-a-friend program to get them started.

You: Anything else interesting in the survey?

Backblaze:

Here are a couple of additional observations from the survey:

We could probably think of a hundred other reasons as to why Grandma and Grandpa do a better job at regularly backing up their data. It really doesn’t matter though, the simple fact is only 9% of all computer users do it. This means 91% are leaving the continued existence of their digital photos, videos, documents, spreadsheets, and more, to chance. Grandpa doesn’t like those odds; that’s why he backs up.

The post Seniors Are the Kings of Data Backup appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

We’re excited to announce that our 128GB USB flash drives will now be shipped in tiny little restore boxes that will come to your door with all your lost data eagerly awaiting to return home. To some of us in the office, these little restore boxes look like tiny flash drive coffins, with the USB drive resting peacefully inside them, just waiting to be plugged in so your data can come back to life. Coffins or boxes? Who cares, you’re getting your data back! Yay!

Even cooler, we’ve updated the USB flash drives to USB 3.0. Now you’ll be able to restore up to 110GB of your data, and get it back on to your computer almost 10 times faster than with USB 2.0, and it’s still $99—next day shipping included. Restoring to a flash drive is quick and painless, just log in to www.backblaze.com, select the files/folders you wish to restore, and we’ll express ship the drive to you. As always, you get to keep the drive.
Some key improvements that come with our upgrade to USB 3.0:

• Faster transfer speeds (Approximately 4Gbs)
• More power availability and power conservation when idle
• USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports

Of course, restoring data to a USB flash drive is not the only way to get your data back. You can still download files for free using a web browser and the Backblaze downloader. You select which files/folders you’d like to restore and download the .zipped files. We also have our USB external hard drives, with up to 3TB, for $189, shipping included.

Please enjoy this .gif of a flash drive rising from its little box; spooky…

The post Introducing: Flash Drive Restore Boxes appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

2014 is upon us and in keeping with our January tradition of giving little New Year’s gifts to our customers, we’re increasing the maximum size of our USB flash drive restores from 64GB to 128GB! That means that for the same $99, we’ll overnight you up to a 128GB restore flash drive containing your data, and you get to keep the flash drive.

Here are a couple of things you should know. First, once the USB flash drive is formatted, you can store up to 110GB of data on a drive. Second, if the amount of data you select to restore will fit on a 64GB drive (53GB of data) that’s what we’ll send you. In any case, the USB flash drive restore is a great option if you need to restore up to 110GB of data and you don’t want to use your bandwidth downloading the files.

Of course, you can always download your data for free using a web browser. Here’s a quick reminder of your options to restore the data you backed up with Backblaze:

• Web Browser: For free, you select the files/folders you want to restore using your web browser to download the files. This is good for small amounts of data, typically 1GB or less as the web browser itself is prone to timeouts and errors.
• Backblaze Downloader: For free, you select the files/folders you want to restore using your web browser and then download and use the Backblaze Downloader to stream and checkpoint the data download. This is similar to apps like iTunes and Netflix in how data is downloaded. Be aware that larger amounts of data will consume lots of network bandwidth and will take time.
• USB Flash Drive: For $99, you select up to 110GB of files/folders you want to restore and get your files on a 64GB or 128GB USB flash drive. We send it to you by next day express so you get your data fast and you get to keep the drive.
• USB External Hard Drive: For $189, you select up to 3TB of files/folders you want to restore and get your files on an external USB hard drive large enough to hold your data, up to a 3TB drive. We send it to you by next day express so you get your data fast and you get to keep the drive.

Thank you for a great 2013 and here’s to an even better 2014.

The post Doubling Down on USB Flash Drive Restores appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Comcast, the largest high speed internet provider in the US with over 20 million subscribers, launched an online backup service called Secure Backup & Share in 2010 through a partnership with Mozy.

This Thanksgiving weekend, December 1, 2013, Comcast Secure Backup & Share is shutting down and deleting all customer data.

Comcast Secure Backup & Share offered:

• 2GB for free
• 50GB plan for $5/month
• 200GB for $10/month

The first question is, “Why are they shutting the service down?”
It’s unclear and they don’t say. However, when Comcast announced this partnership in 2010, Mozy had a strong focus on consumers. Since its acquisition by EMC, Mozy has been moving away from consumers to focus on enterprise sales.

Perhaps this contract has expired and Mozy decided to continue defocusing on consumers by not renewing the contract?

Alternatively, or additionally, in February 2011 Mozy cancelled their unlimited service, saying the cost of storage was growing too quickly and that it was inevitable that all online backup companies would have to discontinue their unlimited offerings. We disagreed, explaining why our cost of storage would enable us to continue, and re-committed Backblaze to unlimited online backup.

Canceling their unlimited plan and switching to a 50GB plan for $6/month upset many of their users.

Thus, perhaps Comcast found that customers strongly preferred the unlimited storage model so as not to have to worry about usage caps or surprise charges?

Or perhaps the contract from Mozy became increasingly expensive as Mozy’s underlying cost of storage was too high?

And the second question of course is, “What should all those customers do to backup the data on their computers?”
Obviously, we think the answer is customers should sign up with Backblaze.

Signing up with Backblaze enables customers to:

• 1. Still keep backing up their data for $5/month.
• 2. Get completely unlimited storage instead of 50GB.
• 3. Have all data automatically backed up.

Did you ever use Secure Backup & Share?
Have other theories on why it may be shutting down?

The post Comcast Secure Backup & Share Shut Down appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Apple customers upgrading to OS X 10.9 Mavericks are complaining in droves about data loss on their Western Digital (WD) hard drives. WD has acknowledged the issue today in an email to its customers and is working to determine the root cause and a solution.

Western Digital’s Recommendations

At this point, WD recommends customers either hold off upgrading to Mavericks, or, if they have already upgraded, uninstall WD software.

To be clear, if you are fully backed up with Backblaze, you are safe.
You will be able to restore the data lost from your WD drive. If that happens to you, please immediately prepare a free download restore or order a USB hard drive or flash drive with your data. Before you prepare your restore, review the Backblaze file list for the WD drive you are restoring. If necessary, you can roll back time with Backblaze to before you installed Mavericks.

More Details About the Cause

While it is not completely clear from WD or Apple about the set of circumstances causing the data loss, WD at this point believes it is an issue between Mavericks and Western Digital’s WD Drive Manager, WD Raid Manager, and WD SmartWare software applications.

In reading through the threads on the WD forums and Apple forums, it seems this has happened primarily to users that have chosen to set up their drive as RAID 0 or RAID 1. The experience for the user is that the drive appears to reset, simply become called MyBook, and claim the partition is damaged with all data gone. However, this is not yet definitive and the recommendation of not upgrading or uninstalling the WD software is the best plan for the “safe rather than sorry” approach.

Consider sharing this with friends who plan to, or have, upgraded to Mavericks.

The post Western Digital Warning Customers of Data Loss with Apple Mavericks appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Apple announced the closure of MobileMe on July 1^st, 2012, hoping that its users would flock to the newly announced iCloud service. As part of the push to enhance iCloud usage, MobileMe users were given a complimentary 20GB iCloud storage plan if they moved over to the new service. Those plans are now expiring, and customers will need to either reduce the amount of data they store to below the free 5GB limit, or pay for the difference, which for that same 20GB of data, would be $40/year (the largest tier of 50GB is available for $100/year).

A lot of people frequently ask us about the difference between Backblaze and iCloud, and should they use one or the other, or both. So here’s a quick rundown of what iCloud can and cannot do.

What iCloud can do for you:

• Sync content from your various devices. This includes, contacts, calendars, iTunes, and the 1,000 most recent photos on your Macs, PCs, or iOS devices.
• Sync supported documents like iOS apps and some Mac apps. But not all apps are supported by iCloud, like Word for example.
• Back up most of your iOS device including device settings, app data, iMessages, and ringtones (more information).

What iCloud cannot do for you:

• Back up content. Calendars and contacts can be synced, but they are not backed up. Meaning there is no revision history, or the ability to restore from a previous version, should an error occur. Once syncing occurs, the changes are permanent.
• Back up anything from your Mac or Windows computer.
• Back up documents that are not supported by iCloud.
• Provide unlimited back up. The current prices are: 5GB/free, 20GB for $40/year, or 50GB for $100/year.

Syncing and back up are not synonyms. Backblaze and iCloud are actually complimentary services.

• Use iCloud to keep your calendars, contacts, reminders, iTunes store music, and most recent photos in sync between your various iOS devices and computers.
• Use iCloud to back up your iOS devices and iOS application settings.
• Use Backblaze to back up everything on your Mac and PC including data that you sync from your iOS devices and iCloud enabled computers.
• Use Backblaze to have an unlimited backup of all the data on your iOS devices. Even if you keep your iCloud set to only accept 5GB of data, if you manually sync your device to your computer, Backblaze will back up that data as well.

Simply put, iCloud is an iOS device backup and content sync program. If you need that content backed up and also your Mac and PC backed up, Backblaze is the right service for you!

The post MobileMe’s Complimentary iCloud Storage Is Shutting Down appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Why is Yev so sad? Is it because Backup Awareness Month is nearly over? No. You see, we just got back the results from our annual State of User Data Backup Survey and the results made him sad. Let me explain. Each year for the past six years, we’ve asked the folks at Harris Interactive to conduct this survey for us. Each time they reach out to thousands of people and ask them a simple question: “How often do you back up all the data on your computer?”

We sponsor this survey each June, in concert with Backup Awareness Month. While more and more people sign up each day with Backblaze to back up the precious memories and important files stashed away on their PCs and Macs, the survey is completely blind to that fact. The survey takers reach out across the US to grab a cross section of users from all regions of the country, ages 18 to 80+, across different social economic ranges, different educational backgrounds, and more. The results are tabulated and sent to us.

For 2013, only 71.17% of the people surveyed have ever backed up their computer as compared to 2012 in which 71.21% of people reported doing the same. Basically that’s no change—nada. So how often do people back up their systems? Here’s a comparison of 2012 versus 2013. Not much change, is there?

“But, my data isn’t valuable enough to back up everyday.”

Some people tell us that they don’t need to back up everyday, for them once a week or even once a month is fine. At that point they back up their computer, usually manually, to an external hard drive or a USB stick and they’re happy. But nearly half of the people surveyed accumulate six or more months worth of photos, videos, documents, spreadsheets, etc., before they back up their computer. Think for a minute about the files on your computer that you added or changed in the last six months. What would you lose if they were gone, forever?

The 10%

Reality check time. I would guess that since you are reading this blog you are a Backblaze customer. So we are, as they say, preaching to the choir. If Harris Interactive called you, you would happily say that you not only backup daily, you back up continuously and automatically with Backblaze. You are part of the 10% and we thank you.

But we know that over 50% of you are Backblaze customers because either you or someone you know lost data first. The truth is that in this digital age, many of the memories we cherish and the other important information we store can be lost in the blink of an eye.

Tell Us What You Think

As one of the 10% of the people who back up their systems regularly, what do you think of our survey results? Do only 10% of the people you know back up their computers daily, or more often? Is it more than 10%? Less than 10%? Tell us what you think. You can comment below, tweet, post, email, whatever. Yev, our Social Marketing guru loves to hear from our customers; here’s your chance to make him smile.

The post The Survey Says: Apathy Is Winning appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.

Sometimes when you first hear an idea you think, “Okay, that’s crazy.” That’s what happened when our PR folks came to us in marketing with the idea of having Backblaze be on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. It was a crazy idea.

For those of you who know Backblaze, we have grown from a gleam in our founders’ eye to a profitable, reasonably well known company in the online backup business. We didn’t spend our money on TV commercials, radio ads, and the like; we relied on making a great product, and having our customers tell their family and friends about us. So when someone said, “you can be on Ellen,” you can understand why we thought they might be a bit of a loon.

It was just before Christmas when we were first approached with the idea of having Backblaze be on Ellen. We weren’t ready. We were approached again just before Valentine’s Day, then again before Mother’s Day. Each time we’d talk through it and each time we’d get closer to saying yes. But we still said no. This was a really big deal. Was it the right thing for Backblaze to do? Could we handle the new demand without compromising service to our existing customers? What would happen if nothing happened?

We talked around this for months. Our PR folks continued to nudge and slowly the rest of us in marketing got comfortable with the idea. It could work, we could do it, and it would be amazing.

So we said yes.

Contracts were signed, emails were sent, and we were on our way. A couple of Backblaze folks went down to Burbank to watch the filming (more on that in another post).

So here we are, Backblaze is on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Watch the video, enjoy the show, and remember to tell your friends and relatives about Backblaze, after all, that’s what we’re all about.

The post As Seen on Ellen appeared first on Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage & Cloud Backup.