Backblaze don’t provide a list or any easily accessible information as to what they do and don’t backup, but there were historical tests people ran that found most metadata was discarded, and according to a post on Reddit from a year ago it doesn’t sound like anything has changed. some of the Finder comments I set, and the PDF reader Skim stores annotations in extended attributes). This may or may not be important to you, but metadata can contain what I consider data (e.g. If you’re not willing to consider Arq Backup and are only choosing between CrashPlan and Backblaze, a few things to keep in mind (not trying to be overly negative, these are just the things that have stopped me from using Backblaze – they might not matter to you):īackblaze discards a lot of metadata when it backs up files. But the recent email about limiting deleted files to 90 days made it easy, so I’ve finally cancelled! Seems highly unlikely at this point (and given I had a pretty recent local backup that I restored from at the time), but CrashPlan had many years’ worth of deleted files, so I couldn’t bring myself to cancel it. My internal SSD failed 2+ years ago (before I started using Arq), and part of me was worried that I might still come across some file that I’d failed to recover properly. However, I hadn’t cancelled my CrashPlan subscription. (You can also use the Arq software to backup to other cloud storage that you pay for separately if preferred.) You simply pay for the amount of backup storage space you need, and it’s reasonably priced. Arq Backup is great – it backs up whatever files you ask it to, includes all metadata (even old Mac bits like resource forks) and keeps them for as long as you want (whether they are on internal or removal media).

I started moved my cloud backup to Arq Backup after the previous change CrashPlan made to file excursions.

Crashplan reddit