While I wish that everyone would backup their data, the reality is for many people it takes a specific event to occur. (Unfortunately, that moment for most people is data loss.) For Kirk, that moment was starting to work at Backblaze.

In a crazy coincidence, immediately after starting work and signing up with our online backup service, Kirk had a system crash:

Just had a great first-hand experience using backblaze to restore my corrupted iTunes Library.itl and .xml. I have been working on my home computer and having memory issues that messed up right in the middle of an iTunes update. It corrupted the iTunes xml and itl files. To restore I merely asked for those 2 files from backblaze and had a zip file in SECONDS. I copied them in and voila, my itunes is up an running.

I saw on the mac support site where lots of folks had this issue so another great selling point! (not to mention we back up the entire iTunes music library as well!)

Here are the Mac Forums discussion Kirk mentions with lots of people having issues and the related Apple support URL for how to recreate iTunes library and playlists.

Maybe we should hire everyone out there to get them to backup?

No, I am not kidding.

Just over a month ago we launched Locate My Computer, a free feature of our online backup service, to find your computer if it is lost or stolen. Since then a number of people have recovered their computers.

However, one of our customers (let’s call him “Joe” as he requested anonymity since those who stole his laptop are connected to the mafia) shared an incredible story about what happened when the police recovered his laptop:

When they searched the apartment where my macbook was located they also found one million dollars in counterfeit bills. The story was all over the news here in Buenos Aires. Unfortunately for your company, the police and press kept referring to backblaze as a GPS locator. As many times as I told the police the program I was using, they didn’t totally understand what it was, and thought it was a GPS chip. Anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know the good news, and thanks to backblaze I got my stolen computer back, plus a counterfeiting ring was busted!!

While this story hasn’t been covered in the U.S., Joe shared some of the coverage it received in Argentina. The articles are all in Spanish, but the highlights are:
* $1 million in counterfeit bills
* 2450 sheets containing about 10,000 bills
* Mostly $100 denominations
* 1 person arrested; 6 people detained

The Mac and the counterfeit cash were found at Calle Carlos Calvo 1500, San Cristobal:

Clarin, the largest Argentinian paper, writes “Band of foreigners brought down with fake $1,000,000” (Google Translate version.) Other Argentinian sites including Infobae, Yahoo News, ElArgentino also covered this discovery.

Joe says, “Thanks again for the service. Best $5 a month I’ve spent.”

Thanks for sharing the story Joe. The Argentinian police should thank you as well!

There are many causes of data loss, but a lost or stolen computer has been a guaranteed reason to need Backblaze to recover data. Unfortunately, with some exceptions, the computer itself was gone.

Today, Backblaze announces “Locate My Computer” – a new feature of the Backblaze online backup service that shows you a map of your computer’s location.

We have heard many painful stories, such as that of the cure for cancer being stolen; and some amazing stories such as Mat Miller recovering his laptop when he noticed the thief backed up his college paper to Backblaze or Mark Bao catching the thief that stole his laptop by downloading a video the thief took of himself.

Since launching the company, we have had a steady stream of people contacting our support team saying, “my computer was stolen – is there anything you can do to help? With the exception of rare cases, unfortunately, there was little that we could.

Today, all that changes.

With our new Locate My Computer feature, Backblaze enables customers to:
* Accurately locate their computer on a map
* Get the ISP their computer is accessing
* See the IP address it is using
* And easily view new files being backed up

Locate My Computer is available immediately and is free to all Backblaze customers. Mapping is enabled for new users; users with existing accounts can “Turn On” mapping. To turn mapping on or off, sign-in and visit the Locate My Computer page. (Please click “Check for Updates” from your menu icon to ensure you are using the latest version.)

When Mark Bao posted the video of the thief he recovered from Backblaze, he posted it to YouTube with the title: “Don’t steal computers belonging to people who know how to use computers” With today’s launch we hope to change that to:
“Don’t steal computers from people who use Backblaze.”

I love hearing stories about how our online backup service helped someone recover their data. This letter that our support team forwarded to me was an interesting example of a time Backblaze came in handy:

My two year old son likes to listen to the same track from a certain CD every night before bed. It helps him to relax and always ensures he has a good night’s sleep (and therefore we do too). We recently went away on vacation and stupidly forgot to take the CD with us.

After attempting to sing it on the first night he was decidedly unimpressed, then I remembered that Backblaze had probably backed up the mp3 file. From my phone I logged into the Backblaze site, found that the file was indeed there and quickly downloaded it. The quality wasn’t that great when played through my phone’s speaker, but it made a very happy toddler and probably saved us from many miserable nights on holiday. Thanks Backblaze!

Kind regards,

Ste Robson

Glad to have been of help and thanks for sharing Ste!

Just shy of one year ago, my friend Vlad was getting married and told me Backblaze had saved him losing his mind the night before his wedding.

A few days ago he and his wife Jamie posted this exchange on my Facebook page:

Five times in one year? Cosmic rays? Aliens attacking the hard drives?

Either way, glad we could be there!

We hear from customers all the time who were able restore data using our online backup service after their laptop died or was stolen. Sometimes our customers even catch the thief using Backblaze such as this Digital 007 that wrote us a year ago.

It this case, Mark Bao was the Digital 007 and caught a bit of entertaining material on the thief in the process. Mark is an 18-year-old founder of several startups and non-profits. A couple months ago his laptop was stolen and with a bit of ingenuity, Mark has found out a number of items about the thief:
* That he lives close by.
* What is his Facebook page.
* And that he likes to record himself dancing to Travis Porter’s “Make It Rain”.

At this point, not only can Mark get all of his own data restored, but the police will likely have a pretty easy time recovering that laptop.

Read about it and watch the video at Beta Beat or Switched.

Update: thief heads to court.

Every day Backblaze restores data for over 100 people. Sometimes people share the stories of their data loss and recovery. This story was so good, though, I just had to share it outright. Enjoy.

Yesterday my wife was working from home; feverishly trying to finish a document she needed done today. She had been up since 3am, her team is pushing to have this project done before Christmas. About 10pm she came running into the bedroom “Come quick something’s wrong with the laptop, it’s making a really weird noise!”

(Oh no! says the little voice in my head, not the hard drive…not right before Christmas!)

Sure enough our laptop’s little drive decided this was its last Holiday Season and was chewing itself up as I scrambled to find a memory stick in the desperate hope I could snatch her document off the machine before it was too late. No luck, the drive was toast…no warning signs at all…just kablamo.

While she proceeded to initiate the sequence for an all out panic attack I realized this was also our primary drive for the family photos, videos and our iTunes music….everything! Thankfully this is not our first rodeo, we use an external drive and Time Machine. I remembered it was only a few days ago we had it connected so the family stuff was safe…but…

…her document was another story. She’d been saving it all day, but her only copy was local on the drive. She tells me it will take about 2-3 days to rework a new document from scratch and that means missing our Christmas vacation. Say what?! Seriously?!! … I asked

I’ve got my screwdriver flying around ready to rip into the MacBook thinking I’ll somehow pull the drive’s platen and magically find a way to get that document off it….because it’s Christmas and miracles happen on Christmas, right? Well that’s when I remembered about a year ago I signed up for Backblaze. Hadn’t thought about that in a long time. Never open it, never really checked to see if it was working.

Aha, maybe if we were lucky Backblaze had done a backup sometime during the day and a portion of her document may still be alive. We were more than lucky…I logged in from my other laptop and found Backblaze had completed a backup just 20 minutes before the drive failure! There was her document!!!!

I’m sure you do this sort of thing everyday, but this really was huge. You saved our Christmas vacation!

Have a great Holiday Season Team Backblaze…we will too, thanks to your service!

Warm Regards,
The Caldwells

Chris – thank you for sharing your amazing story and have a fantastic Christmas!

Over the Thanksgiving weekend I noticed the following tweet from @DigitalRoyalty:

My friend’s laptop was stolen. He tracked the thief via @Backblaze for weeks & finally identified him on Facebook & Twitter. Digital 007.

I know our online backup service saves user data every day, but physical theft recovery? That certainly caught my attention and I asked for the whole story. The friend who had their laptop stolen, Mat Miller, replied:

I received a DM from @DigitalRoyalty that you were interested in hearing the story of how I identified the thief of my computer using Backblaze, here goes:

I was in LA on a work trip and my laptop was stolen from the trunk of my car. Bummed out for sure but o’well at least my data was safe! I was insanely busy over the next week so I was logging in to the dashboard and grabbing files as I needed them. Then, about 4 days after the computer was stolen, I saw that a new user had been created on my computer.

The name was “jack”. I clicked on the folder and noticed that the thief had failed to remove the Backblaze program from applications and his files were being uploaded! On the first day I had a picture but nothing else (wait for it Miller).

A few weeks went by with no specific details to nail him on (I must admit everyday was quite exciting) until last Friday. He added a college paper on his desktop with his full name. I googled his name and came up with his Twitter and FaceBook pages!

I’ve filed a report with the LAPD as of today so we’ll see how this pans out. Backblaze is amazing!!!

Mat Miller

Wow. Nice sleuthing Mat, thanks for telling us about it, and hope you get your laptop!