Cloud Backup & Storage

There’s a very common saying within the IT support space, that there are two types of users; those who have lost data and those who are going to. The only way to stop data loss is to make sure you have a robust backup strategy. Because backup is so important, with both Jae and James having personal experience with losing valuable data and now being Backblaze users ourselves, we go on a fanatically deep dive into both backup and cloud storage with our guest Pat Patterson, Backblaze’s Chief Technical Evangelist.

We look at why backup is so important, the difference between syncing your data to a cloud service like iCloud, Dropbox, or OneDrive and actual cloud backups, as well as exploring more about cloud object storage in the form of Backblaze B2. As well as talking actual storage, we also take an important look at how our increasing need for storage can have a real environmental impact and what Backblaze are doing to try to tackle this by means of their partnership with Nautilus.

Do you have data loss horror stories, or want to share your backup strategy with us? we’d love to hear from you, so send a note over to podcast@crossedwires.net, leave a comment on the post, or start a discussion in Goodpods.

As a little bit of an aside, this is our first episode to be released first on our new site and hosted by Castos. We made the move sooner than planned because we found out that our previous host, Substack, had been stripping the MP3 chapters from our episodes – so sincere apologies about that.

For full disclosure, we do have an affiliate link with Backblaze (thanks to Pat for pointing us towards their affiliate program in our post-show chat). This doesn’t give you any discount, but if you are considering getting setup with their cloud backup plans, using our affiliate link may just help us pay the bills around here, and that’s hugely appreciated.

If you liked this episode or any of our content, we’d greatly appreciate any little bit of support you can throw our way over at our Ko-Fi page.

Episode Links

• Backblaze
• Pat Patterson (MetaDaddy) on Mastodon / Twitter
• Backblaze Cloud Backup (Affiliate link)
• Backblaze B2
• Backblaze Drive Stats – Q3 2022
• Querying a Decade of Drive Stats Data
• Mat Honan Hack (WIRED)
• Backblaze Rides the Nautilus Data Center Wave
• CyberDuck
• Forklift
• Iconik

Chapter Times

1. 00:00:05: Introductions
2. 00:10:29: The Importance Of Transparency
3. 00:19:30: Spinning Rust Vs SSDs
4. 00:21:20: The Importance Of Backups
5. 00:24:17: How Backblaze Works
6. 00:27:09: Local Backups Are Still Good
7. 00:27:43: Value For Money?
8. 00:29:56: How Long Deleted Files Are Retained
9. 00:31:56: Cloud Storage Vs Local Filesystem
10. 00:37:00: Extended Version History Clarification
11. 00:38:18: The Real Cost Of Losing Data
12. 00:40:54: Cloud Object Storage
13. 00:49:09: Backblaze B2
14. 01:03:24: Simplicity Vs Proper Backup Strategies
15. 01:05:06: The Environmental Impact Of Storage
16. 01:14:26: B2 For Free?
17. 01:18:34: Implementing B2
18. 01:22:34: Personal Backup And Linux?
19. 01:26:00: Wrapping Up

Credits

Intro and outro theme: Ace of Clubs by RoccoW