Beginner's Guide to Personal/Online Backup

What Is Personal/Online Backup?

Personal Backup backs up all user-created data on Mac and Windows computers. This covers unlimited backup of data on the computer itself as well as any internal drives, and external drives physically connected to the computer. For information about personal backup pricing please see here. (Please note that NAS devices are excluded from personal backup, however, Network drives can be backed up using our B2 Cloud Storage program. You can find out more about that service here. )

To find out more about what can and cannot be backed up using Personal Backup, please view our guide on What Backblaze Backs Up and our guide on Exclusion Settings. 

Personal Backup is an active, evolving mirror of the current state of your computer and drives. By default, all Personal Backup accounts are set to 30-day version history, meaning that files that are deleted from your computer or disconnected drives are cycled off of our servers after 30 days from the last time they were present. We do, however, offer the option to upgrade to one of our Extended Version History options, which would allow you to retain deleted data or disconnected drive data for a year or Forever, depending on which option you choose. You can find out more about our Extended Version History options here.

How Do I Start Backing up?

Once you have signed up for a new account via the sign-up page found here, you only need to install Backblaze on your computer for backups to automatically start up. You can find out guide to Installing on Mac here and on Windows here. 

(please note that if you are running Mac OS 10.14 or later, some additional steps may be required due to how the operating system handles permissions, please reference our guide on Installing on Mac 10.14 or later )

After you have installed the software on your computer, from the software settings you can select what hard drives should be backed up, set your backup schedule, or change your performance settings. For more on how to do that you can check out our Mac Settings Overview and Windows Settings Overview. (Both guides link to further explanatory guides on the individual settings options found in the software interface)

What Do I Do If I Need to Restore My Data?

Your data can be restored from the "View/Restore File" page of your Backblaze.com account. You would select the method you want to use to restore from the top of the page; either a .zip download or USB hard drive, and then scroll to the bottom of the page where you will see a window showing all files and folders that have backed up to us. You can choose to either select all Files and Folders or manually choose which you want to restore.

Please check out our Restore Guide for a step-by-step guide of that process.

If you are trying to access data from an older time period, you will need to Roll Back Time on the View/Restore Files page to do that. 

It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the restore process early on, so that you are comfortable with it should you need to recover data. Creating a simple .zip restore of a few files is a good way to do this.

How Do I Transfer My Service To Another Computer?

If you want to transfer your service to another computer they are two different ways to do that. 

The first option is to simply transfer your license to one computer from another. This is a good option if you have a brand new computer that you want to have its own backup. You can find out more about how to transfer a license here.

The second option is to do an Inherit Backup State. This will resume your old backup on your new computer/hard drive, this is good if all of the data is exactly the same in your new backup as your old backup. You can find out more about how to do an Inherit Backup State here.

( Please note: Inherit Backup State cannot be done between Mac and PC or vice versa. )

How Do I Remove An Extra Backup From My Account?

The backup itself can be deleted from the "Preferences" page of your account, and if you wish to also remove the license it can be removed from the "Overview" page of your account after the Backup's deletion. Please see our guide on Deleting a Backup.

How Do I Uninstall Backblaze?

Uninstalling the software is very simple. Please see our guide on Uninstalling on Mac and Windows Computers for more information. 

What if I need to Cancel My Backblaze Account?

Should you no longer need to use the service you cancel your account by removing all backups and licenses from the account. For further information on how to do that, please see our guide on Cancelling and Deleting a Backblaze Account.