Considering BackBlaze or Carbonite backup: More and more I’m thinking I need to do more than just my external hard drive for backup. I’m leaning toward BackBlaze or Carbonite but I...

mizzee Loc: Boston,Ma

More and more I’m thinking I need to do more than just my external hard drive for backup. I’m leaning toward BackBlaze or Carbonite but I need to do more research on both. What I’m curious about is file structure preservation and LR catalogues. Do they preserve my file structure/folders and the LRcat that goes with them? What about ease of use? I’m not the most tech savvy of users. Thanks in advance!

berchman Loc: South Central PA

mizzee wrote:

More and more I’m thinking I need to do more than just my external hard drive for backup. I’m leaning toward BackBlaze or Carbonite but I need to do more research on both. What I’m curious about is file structure preservation and LR catalogues. Do they preserve my file structure/folders and the LRcat that goes with them? What about ease of use? I’m not the most tech savvy of users. Thanks in advance!

Backblaze is what you want.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Backblaze has no upload per day limits. Carbonite does, or at least did when I checked years ago. Though, I'd suggest purchasing a device specifically designed to do backups where you are. They may not be the least expensive computer equipment you've ever purchased, but once set up they take care of backups.
--Bob

mizzee wrote:

More and more I’m thinking I need to do more than just my external hard drive for backup. I’m leaning toward BackBlaze or Carbonite but I need to do more research on both. What I’m curious about is file structure preservation and LR catalogues. Do they preserve my file structure/folders and the LRcat that goes with them? What about ease of use? I’m not the most tech savvy of users. Thanks in advance!

MBW66 Loc: NH, USA

Remind me to comment on Carbonite in two weeks. I am in the midst of reinstalling on a new Mac computer and it is taking forever due to all my photos and the slow internet speed in rural N.H. I screwed up the first attempt but now it is being supervised by the folks at Carbonite so I know they will give personal attention. They back up only the files, not the applications for Apple products.

morkie1891

rmalarz wrote:

Backblaze has no upload per day limits. Carbonite does, or at least did when I checked years ago. Though, I'd suggest purchasing a device specifically designed to do backups where you are. They may not be the least expensive computer equipment you've ever purchased, but once set up they take care of backups.
--Bob

I agree with Bob - but I also use Backblaze as $60 per year is cheap off site insurance. Backblaze will backup what ever you point it to.

cam.79 Loc: Gray, GA

I have been using Backblaze for almost a year. It took awhile to do the first backup, but when you are uploading 2.7TB of data, music, and photos, it does take awhile. Every week they send me a report of what they have checked and backup-ed for that week. Have had to restore some files one time due to my error. you request the files you want and they send you a link when they are ready to download.

Basil Loc: New Mexico

Another Backblaze customer here. It’s quick and easy and you can back up your internal and external drives. It’s all encrypted too.

mizzee Loc: Boston,Ma

Thank you all!

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Let me suggest that you consider Amazon S3, Google or Microsoft.

NCMtnMan Loc: N. Fork New River, Ashe Co., NC

Suggest you check out iDrive. They are easy to work with, lots of space for reasonable price and tons of features you may find helpful. Initial backup can take days if you have lots of files to back up. They will send you a hard drive to load your files on to and then you send it back to them and they will download to your account to save all of that time. Just renewed my 5 terabyte account for about $60 a year.

mizzee Loc: Boston,Ma

BackBlaze it is. Now in the 13 day backup process

CaptainPhoto

rmalarz wrote:

Backblaze has no upload per day limits. Carbonite does, or at least did when I checked years ago. Though, I'd suggest purchasing a device specifically designed to do backups where you are. They may not be the least expensive computer equipment you've ever purchased, but once set up they take care of backups.
--Bob

I have been using Carbonite for 12 years. I have 4 internal hardrives that it backs up every day. No limit. I have over 70,000 photos and tons of video files it backs up. At first it didn't back up video, but it does now.
As far as backing up Lightroom, it does the catalog and all my images. I use Acronis to back up my C drive operating system. Acronis even has an off-site cloud version also. Your's smart if backing everything up off site.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Having a cloud backup is a very smart move. I have been using Carbonite for over fifteen years and have never had a problem. I have about 2 T backed up and the very few times I have needed a file, I had no trouble getting it wherever I was in the world and whatever device I had. I have the basic service which does not include the operating system. For that, I use the Windows recovery disk.

I endorse Carbonite wholeheartedly.

sodapop Loc: Bel Air, MD

I have been using Carbonite for years. No limit. And readily accessible for technical help. Very easy folks to deal with.

Basil Loc: New Mexico

Both BB and CN are good choices. I went with BB mainly because I am a member of KelbyOne and Scott mentioned BB in one of his tutorials about organizing photos (his SLIM process) so I decided to try it. For what it's worth I found this comparison between the two:

https://www.cloudwards.net/backblaze-vs-carbonite-who-has-the-better-service/

Full disclosure - I have no idea who "Cloudwares" is or whether they have any relationship with BB. One would hope they are objective, but these days you never know.

From this comparison, while they give a slight edge to BB, it sounds like they are very similar services and the differences are slight. I can tell you that I have been extremely happy with BB and they have been very responsive when I needed customer support.