Reprinted from TidBITS by permission; reuse governed by Creative Commons
license BY-NC-ND 3.0. TidBITS has offered years of thoughtful commentary
on Apple and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access to the
entire TidBITS archive, visit http://www.tidbits.com/


   Backblaze 4.0

   Agen G. N. Schmitz

   Backblaze has updated its eponymous backup software to version 4.0 with
   significant improvements in upload and download speeds. [1]Backblaze
   4.0 (which is tied to the subscription-based Backblaze online data
   backup service) introduces a threading scheme that optimizes bandwidth
   utilization when network latency is present. Differing from the more
   typical use of the term threading (where multiple threads of data are
   contained within a single process), Backblaze uses multiple processes
   to independently send encrypted blocks of data to the Backblaze data
   center. (Backblaze admits that they're 'actually creating and using
   multiple processes' as opposed to true [2]threading; see this [3]blog
   post announcing version 4.0 for more background on Backblaze threading
   and how to implement it.)

   In addition to improving upload speeds, the Backblaze Downloader app
   has been given threading capabilities to quicken the pace of
   downloading recovered files. Backblaze also now allows very large files
   to be backed up over the course of several months (should you have a
   slow upload Internet connection); previously, backing up a very large
   file would have been abandoned after a few days. The auto-update
   process for current Backblaze subscribers will begin in the next couple
   of weeks, but you can get this update now by downloading directly from
   the [4]Backblaze Web site or performing a Check for Update within the
   Backblaze software. Version 4.0 of Backblaze now requires Mac OS X 10.6
   Snow Leopard or later, though previous versions of Backblaze will
   continue to run on 10.5 Leopard and be supported for the foreseeable
   future. (Free with Backblaze subscription, 9.8 MB, 10.6+)

References

   1. https://www.backblaze.com/
   2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computing)
   3. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-online-backup-4/
   4. https://secure.backblaze.com/update.htm

.