My Favorite Online Backup Service Is 30% Off During Black Friday
It's never a bad time to consider an online backup for your computer. If you have lots of photos, videos, work-related documents, and other important files that can't easily be replaced, then you should consider keeping multiple backups of each. Ideally, you want to have one copy on your computer, a second one in an external hard drive that you can easily access, and a third one outside your home or office.
The reason for an off-site backup is to ensure you have access to your data in the event of damage to things in your house, such as during natural disasters and other accidents beyond your control. This is where online backup comes into the picture and Backblaze is among the best in the business. During Black Friday, its online backup services are 30% off, bringing the cost of an annual plan down to $69.30 per year (originally $99). The sale ends November 30, and you'll have to use code CYBRBLZ24 at checkout.
If you're a new subscriber, you can sign up for up to two years and save yourself a lot of money. It works with Mac and Windows, and there's no limit to the size of your backups. The company charges you per device, so you'll be paying the full subscription fee for each computer you want to backup, no matter how much data is on it. If you have a PC with a couple 22TB hard drives, you'll pay the same for backing it up as you would for a MacBook with 256GB storage.
The service has a few caveats that you should know before you sign up. Backblaze takes a fair bit of time to complete the initial upload and backup. It's designed to run in the background and slowly complete backing up your entire computer. Once the backup is complete, you can restore data anytime by downloading it via the website or asking Backblaze to ship your data in a hard drive. The latter requires you to pay a fee, but if you return the hard drive within 30 days, then Backblaze says it's free (shipping costs excluded). The web-based restore is ideal for small packets of data, but you'll find it frustrating if you're expecting to download terabytes of data in one click.
In spite of these caveats, it's a great service to use as a failsafe. Whether you're a parent looking to backup years of priceless photos or a freelance designer who wants to back up their projects, Backblaze is a reasonably priced backup solution that's ideal for storing irreplaceable data.