Today’s Question: I periodically get an email from Backblaze featuring “Your Backup Summary”. Is it important that I review the backup summary, or can I just ignore it and let it run in the background?
Tim’s Quick Answer: I do recommend periodically reviewing your online backup summary with Backblaze, even if only to confirm that all drives have been successfully backed up recently.
More Detail: The Backblaze service provides an online backup, which means you don’t have direct access to the backup on a local hard drive. That’s part of the point of using a service such as Backblaze, since it provides an offsite backup. However, because it is an offsite backup that you’re not controlling directly, it can be good to review the status of the backup periodically to make sure your photos and other important data are indeed being backed up.
There are two basic things you can check when reviewing your online backup status. First is the overall summary of the backup. When you visit the Overview page of your online account with Backblaze, you’ll see a summary showing when the most recent file was backed up from each drive that you are backing up with Backblaze. This is a good way to confirm that the backup for all drives has been updated recently and can serve as a good reminder that you need to connect a particular drive so the backup can be updated.
In addition, you may want to periodically check the View/Restore Files tab for your online account. There you can navigate to a particular folder on a particular drive to confirm that files have been backed up. For example, you could check the files for a folder containing your most recent photos to ensure they were actually added to the backup properly.
While I have grown to trust Backblaze to properly manage my online backup, I do appreciate the peace of mind of being able to check the status of the drives I am backing up with Backblaze as well as specific folders and photos. I therefore recommend that all Backblaze users do a similar review periodically, if for no other reason than to improve your peace of mind.
You can learn more about the Backblaze online backup service that I recommend by following this link:
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup/personal#af9pdk
