Backblaze

Backblaze is a true set-it-and-forget-it online backup service. It's good for novices, but it may frustrate expert users who want more granular controls.

Quick Setup

Backblaze generates a custom installer bound to your account, and once downloaded, the rest of the installation is quick and painless.

Interface

The Backblaze interface is compact and well organized, though it does look dull design-wise. We had no problem finding settings for selecting which hard disk to back up or when to schedule backups.

Security

Backblaze is transparent about its security protocols. The security settings pane explains that your files are encrypted via SSL before transfer and remain encrypted when on Backblaze's servers.

Performance

Backblaze has made some improvements under the hood, notably with the way threading works. The latest version includes an automatic threading option, which evaluates factors such as latency and CPU performance before choosing the optimal number of threads.

Restore Files

The View/Restore Files tab is where you go to bundle backed-up files into a downloadable ZIP. Alternatively, you can pay $99 to have a USB flash drive (up to 128GB) or $189 for a USB hard drive (up to 4TB) mailed to you via FedEx.

Locate My PC

From the Locate My Computer panel, we could view our computer's current location in an online map from OpenStreetMap. Backblaze located our test computers within the PCMag Labs with remarkable accuracy.