Category Archives: Backblaze

Random Short Take #109

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Random short take #109. Looking for news that’s old? You’ve come to the right place. Let’s get random.

  • This opinion piece would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so alarmingly accurate. We weren’t allowed to trust Wikipedia articles but whatever AI tells us is just fine? Let’s pump the brakes and reflect, please.
  • And speaking of art and artifice, this post from John Birmingham on digital media versus holding the art in your hand was great.
  • Need to store that digital media somewhere? Backblaze knows a bit about that. Read the Q2 2026 Drive Stats report here.
  • Speaking of storage, this article over at El Reg on the Domesday Project was pretty cool.
  • And while we’re talking long-term storage, in press release news, check out what Cerabyte has been up to.
  • In people news, Preston de Guise is looking for a job. Hire him if you need someone smart who can really help your organisation.
  • I’m not looking to return to the world of home lab builds, but if you’re looking for a primer, this article covers off some of the basics really well.
  • And this is just … ugh.

Random Short Take #107

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Random short take #107. Looking for old news? I’ve got just the thing. Let’s get random.

  • This article from Matt Allford struck a chord. I have an awful lot of USB cables in my house, and I have no idea what the specs of most of them are.
  • Speaking of things I only have a superficial understanding of, this article from Christian on Intel Arc SR-IOV hardware transcoding with Plex on Proxmox VE was great.
  • Still using an Apple Time Capsule? You’re out of luck and in luck at the same time, as is explained over at The Register.
  • Speaking of backup and recovery, this article about Backblaze has me questioning everything I’m doing to keep stuff safe at home. I’ve checked that my iCloud data is protected (and recoverable), but only because the machine I have Backblaze installed on has downloaded copies of that data. For the stuff I keep on Dropbox and Google Drive, it doesn’t seem as straight forward. Not that I’d ever recommend you only keep data with one provider. Maybe I need to write something more about this, if only to confirm that I’m doing correctly myself.
  • In resilience news (is that really a category?), this was an interesting article on AWS and what’s happening in the Middle East. The response from AWS has been fascinating, as have some of the hot takes from so-called “disaster recovery experts”. I’m looking forward to talking with customers in Western Queensland about the risk matrix they’ve drawn up that has them in a tizzy about losing three availability zones. There’s preparedness and then there’s how you recover, I guess.
  • Missing using FireWire with the most recent version of macOS? This article from Jeff Geerling might be of use if you still have a MiniDV camera you need to connect to something. It just won’t be with macOS.
  • Speaking of things not working after updates, you could always follow John Birmingham’s advice and just never update. But I’m not sure that’s really sustainable.
  • I think Netflix does some really cool stuff from a technical perspective, but for the most part the catalogue seems to be trash. So these kinds of posts from people rediscovering physical media are always nice to read.

Random Short Take #105

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Random short take #105. Want news? Sorry I’ve had a bit on. Let’s get random.

Backblaze – Resolve bzfileids.dat File Error

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This is a quick one. I recently had this Backblaze error pop up on one of my Mac computers.

Turns out you don’t need to contact support to resolve it, but you do need to follow the instructions in this article. I’ve copied the steps below  so you don’t need to read the article if that’s all too much for you.

Revalidating your Backup Data (Mac)

  1. Navigate to https://secure.backblaze.com/update.htm.
  2. Download the installer for macOS.
    Warning
    Do not uninstall the Backblaze Client, and do not skip the next step.
  3. Restart your computer.
  4. When your computer is back up, open the installer and click Install Now.
  5. Restart your computer.
  6. Click the Backblaze icon in your menu bar to open the Backup Client.
  7. Select Preferences.
  8. Press and hold the Option key, and click Restore Options.
  9. Let the process run for three to four hours.

Why Does This Happen?

According to the article, “[i]f you back up an extremely large number of files, or if your computer has used the Backblaze Computer Backup software for a very long time, the bzfileids.dat file may become too large to be fully loaded into RAM, prompting an error message”. I think I’ve been doing both, so there you go.

Random Short Take #95

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Welcome to Random Short Take #95. Let’s get random.

  • Chris M. Evans put together an editorial on why centralised storage refuses to go away. I thought the point about ransomware was an interesting one, although some of the systems I’ve seen out there haven’t been secured terribly well.
  • Speaking of storage and ransomware, there’s an excellent article over at Backblaze on Object Lock. Worth checking out as I think a lot of people like to talk about Object Lock without understanding what it is (and isn’t).
  • Speaking of storage, Mellor covered a recent presentation by Tom Lyon – eminent Sun alumnus says NFS must die. I came from the block side of things, so NFS was always a little quirky but gee whiz you can do some good (and dumb) stuff with it.
  • I’ve followed Frances for some time, and really enjoyed this article on her experiences in the transition from VMware to Broadcom. I think everyone’s journey has been different, and it’s invariably a little more nuanced than The Register would have us believe. But as I’m an employee that’s probably all I’ll say about that publicly.
  • Speaking of Broadcom, Tony put together this excellent article on Cloud Director Tenancy Container Applications. It’s very thorough, and he’s promised me he’ll be doing more soon.
  • In press release news, Hammerspace are dong stuff with GPU data orchestration capabilities to accelerate access to S3 data. If you haven’t looked into Hammerspace, you really should.
  • In other PR news, Datadobi has unveiled StorageMAP 7.0. I tried to catch up with the Datadobi folks before I went on leave but it didn’t work out. Hopefully I can get hold of them to dive in a little deeper on this in the near future.
  • Finally, JB published a great piece entitled Existential Having. If you follow me on the photos social media you’ll know that I have a lot of records. And basketball jerseys. And sneakers. I don’t know why I have these things, but they bring me comfort. For a period of time. And then I Marie Kondo that crap and start all over.

Random Short Take #88

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Welcome to Random Short Take #88. This one’s been sitting in my drafts folder for a while. Let’s get random.

Random Short Take #86

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Welcome to Random Short Take #86. It’s been a while, and I’ve been travelling a bit for work. So let’s get random.

  • Let’s get started with three things / people I like: Gestalt IT, Justin Warren, and Pure Storage. This article by Justin digs into some of the innovation we’re seeing from Pure Storage. Speaking of Justin, if you don’t subscribe to his newsletter “The Crux”, you should. I do. Subscribe here.
  • And speaking of Pure Storage, a survey was conducted and results were had. You can read more on that here.
  • Switching gears slightly (but still with a storage focus), check out the latest Backblaze drive stats report here.
  • Oh you like that storage stuff? What about this article on file synchronisation and security from Chin-Fah?
  • More storage? What about this review of the vSAN Objects Viewer from Victor?
  • I’ve dabbled in product management previously, but this article from Frances does a much better job of describing what it’s really like.
  • Edge means different things to different people, and I found this article from Ben Young to be an excellent intro to the topic.
  • You know I hate Netflix but love its tech blog. Check out this article on migrating critical traffic at scale.

Bonus round. I’m in the Bay Area briefly next week. If you’re around, let me know! Maybe we can watch one of the NBA Finals games.

Random Short Take #85

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Welcome to Random Short Take #85. Let’s get random.

Random Short Take #84

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Welcome to Random Short Take #84. There’s a bit going on, so let’s get random.

Random Short Take #81

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Welcome to Random Short Take #81. Last one for the year, because who really wants to read this stuff over the holiday season? Let’s get random.

Take care of yourselves and each other, and I’ll hopefully see you all on the line or in person next year.