Once I’ve culled my images, I do keep the raw files for those that remain. I’m always re-thinking how I want to process any given image in terms of style and aesthetics, and for that it’s best to work from the original raw files. Given all those mbs, though, I really do have to get out of the “hmm maybe I’ll eventually do something with this” mindset, and just hit delete on the rejects.
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I don’t cull my images. Excepting complete ‘potato’ images of grass/concrete, I have every DSLR photo I’ve ever taken.
Meanwhile… I have left two separate comments on a Reddit thread that has Backblaze staff viewing and responding and neither of said staff have responded to my question!
Namely… if they can back up Documents and Desktop from iCloud Drive, why can’t/won’t they back up the rest of iCloud Drive?
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When I first looked at Backblaze around five years ago I wasn’t interested in their personal backup. But I seem to recall that they stated they only backed up a computer and direct attached storage?
If so, then technically they shouldn’t have ever backed up iCloud files. My guess is they decided that they could stop without violating their terms of service. But I don’t agree with the way they did it.
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Yes, that was the pitch. Everything on your computer and directly-attached storage devices, with the caveat that the storage devices have to be plugged in periodically and verified.
But I don’t agree that they never should have backed up iCloud files, given that logic.
iCloud isn’t an external storage provider, like a server NFS-mounted with Fuse or something like that. You don’t upload things to iCloud and then delete them from your computer. iCloud is just a way to sync from one computer to another. And all of the data in there is exactly what somebody logically expects you to be backing up when you say you’ll back up their computer.
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Apple seems to think it is. 
“When you use iCloud, you can access your photos, files, passwords, and other data on any device you choose. Because your data is stored in the cloud and not on a single device, it stays up to date everywhere.”
Even if they had taken that approach, they’ve ruined their argument by explicitly adapting their software to handle files from iCloud in Documents and Desktop when those are synced.
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I don’t mean to brag, but I am currently backing up 14tb across 3 machines. Still going great. No issues from Backblaze yet.
Edit: I now see a peer here has 24TB. Nice.
The cloud files thing stinks, but it’s not that big of a deal for what’s in there for me. I have Carbon Copy Cloner just dupe the 300gb that’s in Dropbox to a hard drive every night, so Backblaze backs up that clone. Been doing it this way for over a year, mostly as a precaution in case Dropbox has a critical failure one day.
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I recommend keeping an eye on the bztransmit process in Activity Monitor. As the bzfileids.dat file grows (Backblaze’s local index of your backup set), it can consume significant CPU and RAM resources. When I ran into performance issues, Backblaze’s “solution” was to start the backup from scratch.
Performance issues like this were one of the main reasons I eventually moved away from Backblaze in favour of IDrive after using it for almost 17 years.
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Thanks for the heads up! I keep a pretty close eye on things, and haven’t had any issues on any of the three machines yet.
The Mac Mini with 24TB attached works the hardest at it, but the computer’s sole job is backups, so it’s operating as expected.
Yes, same here. And then after I did re-do the backup, I found a github repo where somebody had a tool that would prune files that no longer existed from the Backblaze database. Turns out their index is basically just a text file with a list of files, and is easy enough to fix.
That, of course, would have been nice to know before redoing a huge backup.
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Interesting that this exists. I’m not sure I’d trust a third-party tool modifying Backblaze’s cache file. That said, the fact that this is even possible makes me wonder why Backblaze doesn’t provide an official utility…or better yet, build this kind of cleanup into their software.
Starting over when bzfileids.dat gets too large, or relying on shorter file and folder names (another suggestion from support), aren’t viable solutions in my opinion.
Generally I’d be with you. But it’s such a simple mod. When the alternative is abandoning the entire backup and starting over, I think it’s worth a try.
The link is here. The code to do it fits on one screen, and it’s easy enough to understand that there’s really no concern about it doing anything sneaky.
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You’re very welcome. In my experience, it can take a few years for this issue to surface (YMMV). When it does, it tends to create a real distraction. What’s worse is when a Mac slows to a crawl, and it’s not obvious that Backblaze is the underlying cause.
In my case, the “crawl” was first - and then it just completely stopped working. The UI was throwing an error with a message that didn’t give me a useful explanation. After I uninstalled/reinstalled/did all the typical troubleshooting, support told me the database was too big and I had to start over.
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Thanks for sharing, @webwalrus. I’d be curious what Backblaze engineers would have to say about this code. It’s not clear whether the Backblaze app monitors the integrity of that file or accounts for external modifications.
I’m wondering the same thing. On my Mac, I believe photos are stored in ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary. And in Photos Settings, I have iCloud Photos selected, as well as “Download Originals to this Mac”.
So even though my Photos are in iCloud, am I correct to believe that with “Download Originals to this Mac” set in Mac Photos app, my photos also reside on my Mac’s hard drive in addition to iCloud, and thus backed up by BackBlaze?
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I am late to comment, but I find this type of commercial behavior deplorable. This is the worst type of company. I have unfortunately recommended Backblaze to lots of people and regret that completely. I’ve already emailed and called people I know rely on it for backups and none of them can believe how deceptive and down right dishonest it is for a company to not tell us of a change like this.
I imagine they will crash and burn now with all the users jumping ship - and they completely deserve it! I am going to be much more careful with recommending services going forward.
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Today I finally took the plunge and signed up for Arq Premium. I’m just under the 1 TB threshold with 926 GB of data. Half of that are my photos which I consider my most important data. I can’t believe Backblaze hasn’t been backing up this data. I only found out by reading this forum. Even if they someday fix this glaring omission, I would never trust them again.
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That is the most important issue. If you cannot trust the company to communicate transparently, it would be foolish to trust them with something as critical as your backups. Trust is the indispensable commodity.
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You are correct that they reside on your hard drive/SSD. However, I would never have assumed Backblaze was backing them up because they’re buried in a complex ‘package’ with weird names. It’s so arcane, even if BB was backing them up, I don’t know how you’d go about restoring them in any sane way.
Ludicrously, iCloud Backup will back up photos on an iPhone, but only if you don’t have iCloud Photos turned on! Someone needs to forcefully remind Apple that sync is not backup!
This is why I created a process to export (most of) my photos from Photos to a NAS share that is then automatically synced (with no delete!) to Backblaze B2.
As a result of this conversation, I have set up a CCC task to clone my iCloud Drive contents to my NAS. I’m tempted to get a small SSD or quiet hard drive to hook up to my MBP and clone to that and let Backblaze back that up.
This is all utter madness.