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Backblaze Blog
Company blog · blog.backblaze.comsystemsdata
Backblaze Blog is the company blog at blog.backblaze.com, writing about systems and data. Since 2009, 79 different Hacker News readers have linked it 113 times, most often “Petabytes on a Budget v2.0: Revealing More Secrets”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-27, and you can follow it by feed.
Get all of the latest cloud storage news and insights from Backblaze - the leading independent cloud storage provider.
Most-linked posts?
- Petabytes on a Budget v2.0: Revealing More Secrets18 people · 20 mentions · first linked 2011-07-20
- Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage14 people · 16 mentions · first linked 2009-09-01
- 180TB of Good Vibrations – Storage Pod 3.09 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2013-02-20
- Farming hard drives: how Backblaze weathered the Thailand drive crisis8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2012-10-09
- How long do disk drives last?4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-11-12
- /2008/12/15/10-rules-for-how-to-write-cross-platform-code/3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-10-25
- /wp-content/uploads/2009/08/cost-of-a-petabyte-chart.jpg2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-09-03
- Storage Pod 4.0: Direct Wire Drives – Faster, Simpler and Less Expensive2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-03-19
- Are the days of unlimited online backup over? Our answer is: No.2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-02-03
- Backblaze Blog » Enterprise Drives: Fact or Fiction?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-12-04
What Hacker News says?
Interestingly, we think they do as well if not better ( http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/12/04/enterprise-drive-reliab... ). We think it's because external drives are meant to be jostled around by Joe Schmo, so they do well in our storage pods, whereas internal drives and especially enterprise drives are meant to live in a perfectly Utopian environment.
Comment linking /2013/12/04/enterprise-drive-reliability/
on “What Hard Drive Should I Buy?”Submitted What Hard Drive Should I Buy? as a story · 688 points
HN discussion> and in some cases...externals that were made internal! :) I remember reading about this a while back[1] ( fun read! ). Have you guys noticed a big difference in life expectancy of the repurposed external drives or do they generally match up with their internal equivalents? [1]: http://blog.backblaze.com/2012/10/09/backblaze_drive_farming...
Comment linking /2012/10/09/backblaze_drive_farming/
on “What Hard Drive Should I Buy?”Submitted Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage as a story · 401 points
HN discussion"[Some users] store multiple terabytes." They are certainly not a replacement for S3, but could be a substitute for some use cases. Also, they can certainly change their stance at any point, but they are certainly committed to truly unlimited. http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/02/03/backblaze-is-committed-... http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/10/26/backblaze-2-0-unlimitin...
Comment linking /2011/10/26/backblaze-2-0-unlimiting-unlimited/
on “Introducing Google Drive... yes, really”Submitted How long do disk drives last? as a story · 311 points
HN discussionThe answer is in their documentation. We generate a new 2048-bit RSA public/private key pair when our client is installed, store the public key on the local disk and transmit the private key to our datacenter via https. Then, for each backup session, we generate a new random 128-bit AES symmetric key which we use to encrypt the user’s data. We secure the 128-bit AES key by encrypting it with the user’s public key an…
Comment linking /2008/11/12/how-to-make-strong-encryption-easy-to-use/
on “Feds, Please Return My Personal Files Stored at MegaUpload”Submitted 180TB of Good Vibrations – Storage Pod 3.0 as a story · 207 points
HN discussionI guess that comment was cynical, but just to be sure: http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/11/12/how-long-do-disk-drives... . Especially in the beginning there is a higher failure rate for disk drives. So it is actually the opposite: backups should be one of the first things to arrange for new machines.
Comment linking /2013/11/12/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/
on “What happened when my co-founder quit the night before our YC interview”Submitted Farming hard drives: how Backblaze weathered the Thailand drive crisis as a story · 187 points
HN discussionHow to save 95%: don't use AWS long-term, buy dedicated hardware. http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibration...
Comment linking /2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibrations-storage-pod-3-0/
on “How to Save 90% on your S3 Bill”Submitted Backblaze online backup almost acquired as a story · 173 points
HN discussionSupposedly Backblaze was at one point approached about their 45 drive chassis' by a federal agency. http://blog.backblaze.com/2014/03/19/backblaze-storage-pod-4... 45 drives * 6TB drives = 270TB of storage in one chassis (more than a month's worth of recordings). How much does it cost to get a whole rack colo'd in the Bahamas? As you mentioned, if you have the horsepower, you can do speech to text right on the box.…
Comment linking /2014/03/19/backblaze-storage-pod-4/
on “The NSA Is Recording Every Cell Phone Call in the Bahamas”Submitted Storage Pod 4.0: Direct Wire Drives – Faster, Simpler and Less Expensive as a story · 170 points
HN discussionhttp://blog.backblaze.com/2014/03/19/backblaze-storage-pod-4...
Comment linking /2014/03/19/backblaze-storage-pod-4/
on “Amazon S3 Pricing Changes Effective April 1, 2014”Submitted Farming hard drives: 2 years and $1M later as a story · 166 points
HN discussionAt that price, it would only take them 150 days to stop losing money if they started building some Backblaze servers ( http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v... ). 25,000TB / 135TB * $7,384 = $1,367,407 minimum cost of commercial hardware to store that much. "historically and mind-bogglingly large amount of data" - you could say that again.
Comment linking /2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/
on “Storing 25 petabytes of Megaupload data costs us $9,000 a day”Submitted How to write cross-platform code as a story · 109 points
HN discussionUgh. Backblaze is one of those companies with an extraordinarily poor design that they flout and "open source" as if anyone would follow their lead. Take a look at the physical design of their system and combine that with the published data. Consider that to remove any harddrive from their setup requires physically removing a 4u rackmount storage pod from the rack. http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a…
Comment linking /2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/
on “How long do disk drives last?”Submitted The DVD is dead. USB flash drive restores are here. as a story · 76 points
HN discussionBackblaze wrote about it here (2011): http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v... and here (2013): http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibration... We are constantly looking at new hard drives, evaluating them for reliability and power consumption. The Hitachi 3TB drive (Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030ALA630) is our current favorite for both its low power demand and astounding re…
Comment linking /2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibrations-storage-pod-3-0/
on “How long do disk drives last?”Submitted 10 petabytes - visualized as a story · 69 points
HN discussionThat's what is suggested by this blog: http://blog.backblaze.com/2008/12/15/10-rules-for-how-to-wri... Rule #2: Factor out the GUI into non-reusable code – then develop a cross-platform library for the underlying logic I'd like to hear others experiences and views with doing that as opposed to using something like QT or GTK.
Comment linking /2008/12/15/10-rules-for-how-to-write-cross-platform-code/
on “Wireshark is switching to Qt”Submitted Are the days of unlimited online backup over? Our answer is: No. as a story · 38 points
HN discussion> I wonder if Amazon hasn't cut Dropbox a huge discount to keep them around. I can't imagine why they would. Dropbox dedupes all their data before hitting S3, but Amazon can still leverage their bulk hardware discounts that Dropbox likely isn't big enough to score. Amazon would have the upper hand in such a deal, and I don't see why it would be friendly. > http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibration…
Comment linking /2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibration..
on “Dropbox raises about $250 million at $10 billion valuation”Submitted Is the NSA Using Backblaze Storage Pods for PRISM Surveillance Data? as a story · 20 points
HN discussionThat's definitely true, that you wouldn't buy all your capacity upfront, but you would need to have a minimum amount of capacity on hand upfront, and to do that in multiple datacenters and build the software to manage it would cost money. That explains why they started on S3 but it doesn't explain why they are still there now. looking at the economics of it, I wonder if Amazon hasn't cut Dropbox a huge discount to k…
Comment linking /2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibrations-storage-pod-3-0/
on “Dropbox raises about $250 million at $10 billion valuation”Submitted The NSA might want some Backblaze pods as a story · 19 points
HN discussionPerhaps 100s of TBs but 100 of GBs is not a difficult problem to solve, perhaps once you get to more than 100 TB you'd be beyond the capabilities of a single chassis. Even a petabyte should fit in a rack or two. I really fail to understand how a business could acquire that much data and not be able to sell it. http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibration... Here ya go, 180 TB for $10K in 4U, which me…
Comment linking /2013/02/20/180tb-of-good-vibrations-storage-pod-3-0/
on “Call me maybe: Cassandra”Submitted Petabytes on a Budget v2.0: Revealing More Secrets as a story · 15 points
HN discussion
