# Unable to write to last block of device error?



## charlieclouser (Feb 9, 2022)

Time for me to extract some tech support from the vi-control crowd:

• Mac Pro 6,1 on MacOS Mojave 10.14.6. 

• Just got four brand new 16tb Ultrastar DC HC550 mechanical SATA hard drives.

• Inserted into OWC dual drive dock (the two-drive, toaster-style external dock, but one model before the current USB-C ones, mine have 2x TB2 + USB3.

• Drive spins up, MacOS throws the "Drive not formatted, Initialize?" dialog as expected.

• Initialization fails with the error "Unable to write to the last block of device".

These docks have worked flawlessly for years with 4tb, 8tb, 10tb, and 14tb drives from the same product line. I've tried two of the new drives, two different docks, two different Apple TB2 cables, switched to 3-foot USB-3 (blue connector) cables.... same errors.

Any ideas?


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## studioj (Feb 9, 2022)

I had the same happen with 1 of 2 brand new Seagate Exos 16TB drives and an OWC quad thunderbolt 3 enclosure last year. I sent the drive back (amazon) got a new one, and all has been ok for about 6 months. 

That's bizarre that it's happening on both the drives. But yes I had the same exact error when trying to initialize. Maybe you got 2 bad drives!?


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## David Kudell (Feb 9, 2022)

I have that dock but haven't seen that issue before. From what I could see online, a couple suggestions were to try to format in Disk Utility in recovery mode (hold command R on startup) or else format on another computer first.









Fixing an Unable to Write to the Last Block of the Device Error in OS X


Try our step by step guide to fix an "unable to write to the last block of the device" error in OS X®




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## Tralen (Feb 9, 2022)

I'm certain there is a better solution while staying on the Mac or replacing the drive, but as a last resort:

I had a friend with the same problem and he asked me to try the HDD, I run Linux. I had no trouble partitioning the disk and formatting it, and from then on, he was able to format it to Mac's filesystem.


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## studioj (Feb 9, 2022)

FWIW, I tried various fixes after researching the issue, and nothing worked for me except getting a new drive.


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## charlieclouser (Feb 9, 2022)

Tralen said:


> I'm certain there is a better solution while staying on the Mac or replacing the drive, but as a last resort:
> 
> I had a friend with the same problem and he asked me to try the HDD, I run Linux. I had no trouble partitioning the disk and formatting it, and from then on, he was able to format it to Mac's filesystem.


Yeah it seems that many solutions proposed online involve booting into Linux and formatting the drive there. I have no Linux machines tho.... if there's a simple way to build a bootable USB Linux Stick for Mac, then I might try that, but I have no idea where to start with that.


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## Tralen (Feb 9, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Yeah it seems that many solutions proposed online involve booting into Linux and formatting the drive there. I have no Linux machines tho.... if there's a simple way to build a bootable USB Linux Stick for Mac, then I might try that, but I have no idea where to start with that.


The Ubuntu knowledge base has a tutorial to create the USB on Mac (it is quite complete and well explained, I was fooled thinking it was a useless one-page article).

Ubuntu will do just fine, but there is a Linux distribution specific for handling disk issues, GParted Live, which is a bit more technical but can help if the other one fails.

If you are unable to create the bootable USB with the tutorial, it is possible to do it in the command line. Let me know if you need some guidance there.


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## JonS (Feb 9, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Time for me to extract some tech support from the vi-control crowd:
> 
> • Mac Pro 6,1 on MacOS Mojave 10.14.6.
> 
> ...


Do you have Alsoft Disk Warrior? Can you try to format that SATA HD in a different mechanism first or directly without using the OWC dual drive dock to see if it will format?


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## David Kudell (Feb 9, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Yeah it seems that many solutions proposed online involve booting into Linux and formatting the drive there. I have no Linux machines tho.... if there's a simple way to build a bootable USB Linux Stick for Mac, then I might try that, but I have no idea where to start with that.


What about another Mac maybe?


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## charlieclouser (Feb 9, 2022)

JonS said:


> Do you have Alsoft Disk Warrior? Can you try to format that SATA HD in a different mechanism first or directly without using the OWC dual drive dock to see if it will format?


Okay, out of the four drives that arrived today from B&H, three failed with "Unable to write last block on device", but one of them formatted just fine as expected! And I'm now copying 10tb of data to that drive to see if it acts up during copying.

B&H, as usual, has great customer service and return policies, and I got them on the phone in two minutes and they issued an RMA for the three opened and non-functioning drives, and they will send replacements overnight.

But I'm still going to try Disc Warrior (which has saved my ass many times over the years and I still keep it current) to see if it can force-format any of the three dead drives. If not, then they'll go back to B&H.

If all four drives were failures, I'd be more likely to think that it's a software issue and get to whacking at them with Disc Warrior or trying to build a Linux boot stick - but since one of them works, it really may be a hardware failure / damaged in shipping issue. 

Thanks for your help everyone, and I'll update this thread with more info as I find out.


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## JonS (Feb 9, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Okay, out of the four drives that arrived today from B&H, three failed with "Unable to write last block on device", but one of them formatted just fine as expected! And I'm now copying 10tb of data to that drive to see if it acts up during copying.
> 
> B&H, as usual, has great customer service and return policies, and I got them on the phone in two minutes and they issued an RMA for the three opened and non-functioning drives, and they will send replacements overnight.
> 
> ...


I use SSDs to trigger sample libraries and SATA for backup data and music recording. How are you using SATA drives?


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## charlieclouser (Feb 9, 2022)

JonS said:


> I use SSDs to trigger sample libraries and SATA for backup data and music recording. How are you using SATA drives?


Offline backups. Besides my work drives which are all SSDs, the backups consist of six copies of everything, two at my house, two in a safe deposit box at my bank across town (in case of brush fire evac), and two that live at my sister's house on the other side of the continent and are swapped twice a year (in case Los Angeles is destroyed by alien invasion). 

These 16tb drives will hold my entire Kontakt library; the drives used for sample playback on my rig are Samsung 4tb 860pro 2.5" SATA SSDs in a BlackMagic MultiDock.


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## charlieclouser (Feb 9, 2022)

Some updates: 

• I checked with OWC to see if there was any known issues with drives above 14tb in size in their dual-drive "toaster style" docks, maybe the SATA > TB bridge chip inside, etc. (just remembering the old "Oxford" chip debacle on FireWire drives) and they said nope, you should be good to go with high-capacity drives, and it's probably the drive mechanisms.

• Tried the latest version of Disk Warrior to see if it could wake up the dead drives - no go. It sees them but as they are not formatted, there is no MacOS partition for Disk Warrior to try to recover. Disk Warrior does not have the ability to just format raw drives, so that was a dead end as well.

• After reading some tips on various Apple support forums, I even tried booting the Mac in Recovery Mode and accessing Disk Utility from there, same result as using Disk Utility from the normal desktop.

• Tried two different OWC Drive Docks, two different TB2 cables (Apple and OWC), switched to USB-3 connection on blue-tip cable, on three different Macs, running three different versions of MacOS (Yosemite, El Cap, and Mojave) - all results the same.

So it really does seem that three of the four drives I received were DOA. Never had that happen before. Ultrastar DC HC550 helium-filled drives have been very good to me until now. Fortunately B&H Photo has a great return policy and emailed me a pre-paid shipping label and RMA form for the return. Easy.

Fingers crossed that the replacement drives will be okay...


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## guilder (Feb 9, 2022)

If you still have the drives or you expect the new ones soon, consider looking at Drivedx. I usually run a quick check on new drives mostly to ensure they’re actually new (some places have had issues with people returning drives and some vendors selling as new, although I’m sure that’s not likely with B&H).


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## JonS (Feb 9, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Offline backups. Besides my work drives which are all SSDs, the backups consist of six copies of everything, two at my house, two in a safe deposit box at my bank across town (in case of brush fire evac), and two that live at my sister's house on the other side of the continent and are swapped twice a year (in case Los Angeles is destroyed by alien invasion).
> 
> These 16tb drives will hold my entire Kontakt library; the drives used for sample playback on my rig are Samsung 4tb 860pro 2.5" SATA SSDs in a BlackMagic MultiDock.


That's very wise of you, Charlie.


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## IFM (Feb 9, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Offline backups. Besides my work drives which are all SSDs, the backups consist of six copies of everything, two at my house, two in a safe deposit box at my bank across town (in case of brush fire evac), and two that live at my sister's house on the other side of the continent and are swapped twice a year (in case Los Angeles is destroyed by alien invasion).
> 
> These 16tb drives will hold my entire Kontakt library; the drives used for sample playback on my rig are Samsung 4tb 860pro 2.5" SATA SSDs in a BlackMagic MultiDock.


Okay I’m glad I’m not the only one that does this. I only have 3x3TB deives in an a and b set with one set at a different location. I prefer QRecall for my backups right now and the drives live on a mac min in another room. Some point soon I need to get larger ones.


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## charlieclouser (Feb 9, 2022)

guilder said:


> If you still have the drives or you expect the new ones soon, consider looking at Drivedx. I usually run a quick check on new drives mostly to ensure they’re actually new (some places have had issues with people returning drives and some vendors selling as new, although I’m sure that’s not likely with B&H).


I do have DriveDX but forgot that I had it! I'll check to see if it can see these drives.

B&H has been pretty great, and by now I can pretty much tell when a drive is factory fresh. I only buy drives in "retail" packaging, ever since a bad experience where NewEgg shipped me four drives pulled from a multi-pack, completely bare (but still in their anti-static bags) just thrown in a box with a bunch of styrofoam peanuts. The drives bounced around so much during shipping that the die-cast metal housings (the black part with the mounting screw holes) were BENT. How hard do you have to hit a drive to bend the cast housing?!?

All four drives from NewEgg were DOA. I didn't even attempt a return, just chucked 'em and that was the first and last time I bought anything from NewEgg. I didn't even want whatever replacements they would have sent me.

With retail-pack drives, they come in nice individual cardboard boxes with the plastic shock mounts so they'll survive FedEx, and the little tamper-proof sticker that seals the box is impossible to remove without leaving a mark (believe me I've tried), and the anti-static bags are tear-open style that are also impossible to re-seal without being noticeable.

Back in my music store days we became experts at the art of the factory-fresh re-pack....


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## jcrosby (Feb 9, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I do have DriveDX but forgot that I had it! I'll check to see if it can see these drives.
> 
> B&H has been pretty great, and by now I can pretty much tell when a drive is factory fresh. I only buy drives in "retail" packaging, ever since a bad experience where NewEgg shipped me four drives pulled from a multi-pack, completely bare (but still in their anti-static bags) just thrown in a box with a bunch of styrofoam peanuts. The drives bounced around so much during shipping that the die-cast metal housings (the black part with the mounting screw holes) were BENT. How hard do you have to hit a drive to bend the cast housing?!?
> 
> ...


If you have issues with DriveDx and an external check this link..






DriveDx - external USB and FireWire drive diagnostics support







binaryfruit.com


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## storyteller (Feb 9, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> I do have DriveDX but forgot that I had it! I'll check to see if it can see these drives.
> 
> B&H has been pretty great, and by now I can pretty much tell when a drive is factory fresh. I only buy drives in "retail" packaging, ever since a bad experience where NewEgg shipped me four drives pulled from a multi-pack, completely bare (but still in their anti-static bags) just thrown in a box with a bunch of styrofoam peanuts. The drives bounced around so much during shipping that the die-cast metal housings (the black part with the mounting screw holes) were BENT. How hard do you have to hit a drive to bend the cast housing?!?
> 
> ...


Same story here. I ordered 5x16tb Toshiba drives from NewEgg a few months ago. This is how they arrived… packaging and all. And yes, one drive was severely dented upon arrival too… the die cast metal casing.






I shipped them all back and received a better packed box, but still nowhere like it should have been. The second delivery was one box with 5 smaller boxes inside. No padding inside. There was room for probably 3 drives in each single box on the second shipment but they all checked out fine.


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## charlieclouser (Feb 9, 2022)

storyteller said:


> Same story here. I ordered 5x16tb Toshiba drives from NewEgg a few months ago. This is how they arrived… packaging and all. And yes, one drive was severely dented upon arrival too… the die cast metal casing.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yep, that's basically what they did to me! But with styrofoam peanuts instead of air bags. That is just unbelievable!


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## storyteller (Feb 10, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Yep, that's basically what they did to me! But with styrofoam peanuts instead of air bags. That is just unbelievable!


Yeah you’ve got to think this is some sort of a shipping/insurance reimbursement scheme or something… else. They probably get reimbursed for the retail price vs sale price and figured out this makes them more money. Otherwise, how in he world would a business owner allow this to go on? I mean the cost of extra packing materials is definitely less than the price of return shipping+replacement shipping…


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## David Kudell (Feb 10, 2022)

This reminded me of the time a couple years ago when I ordered 9 non-retail 12TB Ultrastars for my QNAP NAS from Newegg, and the FedEx driver ignored the big plastic pool box I have at my gate for package deliveries that says PUT PACKAGES HERE. 

Knowing that these 9 drives would be making up a NAS that would store all of my clients' video footage for years to come, there was no way I was going to risk it. I promptly got in my car and drove that box right back to NewEgg and got replacements. Retail boxes for me from now on.


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## fakemaxwell (Feb 10, 2022)

On the subject of backups- Backblaze is 100% worth it, and you essentially don't have to do anything manually after the initial setup. Saved my butt when a hard drive decided it didn't like its partitioning info anymore. Quickly shipped me a drive and refunded after I sent it back.

Now I just keep an on-site backup of everything and let Backblaze handle the rest. Much more peace of mind!


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## AndrewS (Feb 10, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> But with styrofoam peanuts instead of air bags.


Could be a static discharge from the peanuts moving around during shipping fried a sensitive part of the drives


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## charlieclouser (Feb 10, 2022)

AndrewS said:


> Could be a static discharge from the peanuts moving around during shipping fried a sensitive part of the drives


I wouldn't know, I never even tried to power them up. All four were physically so dented that there was just no way. Plus one of them was definitely in maraca mode, so I just moved them to the e-waste pile and moved NewEgg to my "do not use" pile!


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## charlieclouser (Feb 10, 2022)

fakemaxwell said:


> On the subject of backups- Backblaze is 100% worth it, and you essentially don't have to do anything manually after the initial setup. Saved my butt when a hard drive decided it didn't like its partitioning info anymore. Quickly shipped me a drive and refunded after I sent it back.
> 
> Now I just keep an on-site backup of everything and let Backblaze handle the rest. Much more peace of mind!


The only thing stopping me from using BackBlaze is that I'm a little unclear on which plan I would need to use, since I have a bunch of computers, with archive + library drives that are not always connected to the rigs (but that I would want backed up), and almost nothing is stored in the default MacOS location (my "Documents" folders are almost totally empty) so I worry / wonder whether / how an app would deal with that stuff. I might need their B2 or Business plans instead of the cheap-n-cheerful Personal plan in order to deal with all that. Seems like the Personal plan is ideal for someone who has their whole life on a single laptop, but maybe not for someone with a room full of machines and a shelf full of drives that are constantly being swapped around.

Like, I have a projects archive drive set that is around 20tb and contains every single record, remix, and film score I've ever done, going all the way back to the 1980s, but I don't have these connected to the main rig at all times. So when the BackBlaze app sees that those archive drives are not mounted and not present on my system, will it think I want to delete those files from their backup? And what if I did the initial backup to BackBlaze from a drive called "Archives 10-a" and then one day I mount a drive that has identical contents but is called "Archives 10-b", will BackBlaze understand that the files haven't changed, or will it base its decisions on the volume name / unique identifier of the drive? 

Stuff like that, and tragic results from early backup schemes like Mezzo Media with DLT tape drives, keep me doing it the hard and manual way.... 

I still use Synchronize Pro X to do my on-site backups because it will compare two folders and show a list of files that need to be copied, and the first time around that list is NEVER exactly what I want. It may be technically "correct" based on file modification dates / sizes / etc., but I always need to visually check that list, cancel the operation, do some manual copies and cleanups, then run the comparison again until I like what I see in the list, at which point I let it do its thing. Like, a lot of times I delete files from the primary, and Sync Pro X wants to restore them from the backup, which I definitely don't want, stuff like that. Bummer because Sync Pro X is being deprecated, and the UI on ChronoSync is not nearly as simple and clear. 

But I guess I should probably give the friendly sales reps at BackBlaze a call....


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## fakemaxwell (Feb 10, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> The only thing stopping me from using BackBlaze is that I'm a little unclear on which plan I would need to use, since I have a bunch of computers, with archive + library drives that are not always connected to the rigs (but that I would want backed up), and almost nothing is stored in the default MacOS location (my "Documents" folders are almost totally empty) so I worry / wonder whether / how an app would deal with that stuff. I might need their B2 or Business plans instead of the cheap-n-cheerful Personal plan in order to deal with all that. Seems like the Personal plan is ideal for someone who has their whole life on a single laptop, but maybe not for someone with a room full of machines and a shelf full of drives that are constantly being swapped around.


With Personal, you can pick any combination of internal and external drives and it will back them up in their entirety. External drives will remain for up to 30 days after the last time it was plugged in (it'll pop up and remind you to plug the drive in at like 21 days).

At least for Personal, if you choose a drive with identical contents but a different name, it'll back it up separately. 

This all goes on in the background, which is why it rocks. I never think "ah fuck I forgot to backup that last project" or whatever, it's already in the cloud available for download. With the amount of time you spend on backup it's definitely worth looking into.


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## charlieclouser (Feb 10, 2022)

fakemaxwell said:


> With the amount of time you spend on backup it's definitely worth looking into.


That's all great info, thanks for that!

But definitely worth looking into, and I will for sure. Even if I have to upgrade to some pro plan in order to resolve the offline drive issues, it would probably be worth it. The cost doesn't bother me as long as there's a way around mounting the archive drives every four weeks to prevent them from being deleted from the backups, and a way around the different volume names of duplicate backup drives on-site. 

Like, if Archive 10-a has a hardware failure and I need to switch to Archive 10-b (which is a duplicate with a different name and serial number), I need a way to have comparison + backup done by a manual selection of parent folders or something. 

Also, if I rotate drives between the house, the bank, and my sister's house, now the in-house drives are Archive 10-e and Archive 10-f instead of -a and -b, so I need to find a way around that.

But I will sniff around with their sales team and see what's what.


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## rnb_2 (Feb 10, 2022)

From personal experience, and this may have changed in the intervening years (you'll understand why I haven't used Backblaze since this happened), you're not wrong to be careful with identically-named sources on drives you're backing up.

I had been happily using Backblaze to back up my photos for several months at the time, and it was a few years ago, so the data set was a lot smaller than it would be now - I think it was 3TB+. Like many photographers, I was using software that automatically downloaded my photos from my memory cards to two locations - two external drives, in my case - in identical folder hierarchies. One day, I'm checking my Backblaze account, and the vast majority of my data is gone - all of my photos are no longer there.

Naturally, I got in touch with their support, and they had me trying multiple options on my end to try to get the data backed up again (they didn't have any way to bring the data back at the time, and didn't seem to have a way for me to bring it back, either). This went on for several days, with me sending logs in, and trying in vain to get my data back to their servers (this was on a 25mbps down/8mbps up connection at the time, so backups were not fast).

In the end, it turned out that they had implemented a change in their client's behavior (that their support personnel were not aware of, and was not mentioned in the release notes), the effect of which was, if you excluded a particular folder path from the backup job on a single volume, it excluded the same folder path on *ANY VOLUME *(to speed up indexing). So, with two external drives with identical folder structures, one of which was my backup, I had excluded the backup drive from my Backblaze backup (why make it churn through all of those duplicate files, right?). Since this excluded Backup Volume/Photos/Year/Month/Day, when they flipped the switch on the new client behavior, it immediately excluded Main Volume/Photos/Year/Month/Day from my backup job and deleted everything that matched that in my existing backups.

They eventually admitted what had happened, but didn't offer so much as an apology for the month I spent wasting time on an issue they caused. They're the best of the "backup everything to the cloud, no hassles" options for most people, but they dropped the ball so dramatically in this case, that there was no way I could keep doing business with them.


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## David Kudell (Feb 11, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> The only thing stopping me from using BackBlaze is that I'm a little unclear on which plan I would need to use, since I have a bunch of computers, with archive + library drives that are not always connected to the rigs (but that I would want backed up), and almost nothing is stored in the default MacOS location (my "Documents" folders are almost totally empty) so I worry / wonder whether / how an app would deal with that stuff. I might need their B2 or Business plans instead of the cheap-n-cheerful Personal plan in order to deal with all that. Seems like the Personal plan is ideal for someone who has their whole life on a single laptop, but maybe not for someone with a room full of machines and a shelf full of drives that are constantly being swapped around.
> 
> Like, I have a projects archive drive set that is around 20tb and contains every single record, remix, and film score I've ever done, going all the way back to the 1980s, but I don't have these connected to the main rig at all times. So when the BackBlaze app sees that those archive drives are not mounted and not present on my system, will it think I want to delete those files from their backup? And what if I did the initial backup to BackBlaze from a drive called "Archives 10-a" and then one day I mount a drive that has identical contents but is called "Archives 10-b", will BackBlaze understand that the files haven't changed, or will it base its decisions on the volume name / unique identifier of the drive?
> 
> ...


I’m on the Backblaze business plan (B2B). I have a QNAP NAS configured to backup certain folders to Backblaze, mainly my active projects. You configure it all on the QNAP itself, and it happens automatically. A couple of Macs are connected to the QNAP using a 10Gbe connection and I edit video directly off it (I get around 900MB/sec). Can’t use it for sample playback though. 😀

The cost depends on how much you have stored. Don’t quote me on this, but I think around 10TB will run around $50-60/month or so. A lot more than the personal plan but I like that it’s integrated into the NAS and it’s much faster to download if I need to, and you can browse the backup contents easily from the Backblaze site. And way faster to upload as it uses your full internet bandwidth. So I know that a 1TB video shoot’s footage from today will be backed up that same night.


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## charlieclouser (Feb 11, 2022)

rnb_2 said:


> From personal experience, and this may have changed in the intervening years (you'll understand why I haven't used Backblaze since this happened), you're not wrong to be careful with identically-named sources on drives you're backing up.
> 
> I had been happily using Backblaze to back up my photos for several months at the time, and it was a few years ago, so the data set was a lot smaller than it would be now - I think it was 3TB+. Like many photographers, I was using software that automatically downloaded my photos from my memory cards to two locations - two external drives, in my case - in identical folder hierarchies. One day, I'm checking my Backblaze account, and the vast majority of my data is gone - all of my photos are no longer there.
> 
> ...


Big OOOOF. See, that's exactly the kind of stuff that keeps me in full-manual mode. I don't even use Time Machine on MacOS - don't trust it. I don't trust any kind of app that thinks it can tell what's changed, what I want to keep, which newer-but-smaller versions are the "real" one, etc. 

Then there was the years in the 1990's, when a 600mb hard drive that could hold exactly one CD's worth of 16bit / 44k audio was $3,995, when we had to use DLT tape drives and Mezzo backup software.... in road cases while on tour and we were trying to assemble the soundtrack album for Natural Born Killers. Did a backup in Berlin, couldn't recover it in Milan. How much luck do you think we had sending a runner from the Monza racetrack festival venue out to buy a Digidesign-branded rack-mount SCSI DLT drive? Yup, no luck at all. 

We eventually did dig our way out of that hole (thanks to my paranoia and a spare Micropolis drive I couldn't bring myself to wipe), but for some reason we kept using Mezzo and the DLT drive. Sure enough, eventually Mezzo software was discontinued, rendering all of our backups unreadable. 

Ten years later, I got a call from one of Trent's programmers asking if by any chance I had the backing vocals that never went to the analog multitrack or the ProTools sessions (no empty tracks, no empty voices). They had been running live during the mix, triggered from an E-Mu E4 rack sampler. By any chance, did I have them?

Of course I did. I had a double-set of normal CD-ROM backups of every single thing from 15 years ago, even the E4 banks, and I was able to get everything back for them. Those CD-ROMs were just normal Finder-readable volumes made using Toast software (remember that?). Still worked fine.

I do use Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate all of my boot drives every month, so I have a simple, Finder-mountable, normal duplicate of every single .plist, preference, bookmark, etc., but each time I do a clone I wipe the destination and just do a full new clone, not an incremental backup. I never ever do incremental backups except in full-manual mode using Sync Pro X to show me the difference between two folders and allow me to manually inspect what's going to get copied.

I'm still too scared to use any software help for backups. I've been bitten before. If BackBlaze would just allow me to mount the cloud volume on my desktop, and use my own methodology and tools (like Sync Pro X, ChronoSync, or just drag-copying) to compare my local versions to the cloud versions, and manually execute copies, then.... maybe I'd consider it. 

I suppose I could just buy some space on AWS and go full-manual, but I haven't really looked into it and I don't know if that methodology is even possible, or if I'd have to go back to using Fetch (remember that one?)


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## khollister (Feb 13, 2022)

charlieclouser said:


> Big OOOOF. See, that's exactly the kind of stuff that keeps me in full-manual mode. I don't even use Time Machine on MacOS - don't trust it. I don't trust any kind of app that thinks it can tell what's changed, what I want to keep, which newer-but-smaller versions are the "real" one, etc.
> ...


Also a former Backblaze user. It was quite slow and the cost-effective personal plan would not allow backups of network shares (my NAS that contains all my movies and music). I too am using CCC to backup to bare drives on a OWC toaster. Im my case 3 sets of clones - 2 stored in a safe at the house and 1 stored at the MIL's house in town.

In addition, I keep all my scanned records as well as purchased/downloaded music stuff (primarily soundware for various synths) on Dropbox and iCloud Drives handles my home directory Documents folder as well as email and Downloads folder.


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## charlieclouser (Feb 13, 2022)

khollister said:


> Also a former Backblaze user. It was quite slow and the cost-effective personal plan would not allow backups of network shares (my NAS that contains all my movies and music). I too am using CCC to backup to bare drives on a OWC toaster. Im my case 3 sets of clones - 2 stored in a safe at the house and 1 stored at the MIL's house in town.
> 
> In addition, I keep all my scanned records as well as purchased/downloaded music stuff (primarily soundware for various synths) on Dropbox and iCloud Drives handles my home directory Documents folder as well as email and Downloads folder.


More good info, thanks. What I really want is just a single, giant, cloud-based volume that I can mount on my desktop and arrange folders at will, uploading complete system drives with entire MacOS system volumes (as disk images if having bootable clones on a cloud drive is verboten), and to be able to use Sync Pro X / ChronoSync / whatever to scan and synchronize those folders. Like a cloud NAS I guess.

It probably exists but I haven't really searched too hard. I've found services like Wasabi etc. but I haven't really dug too deeply.

I am finally having a website built and the dev's day job is working on huge sites for Disney etc., so he's up on all the latest tech. I'm going to grill him on whether I can do this with AWS, which I trust since it seems a lot of sample library devs use AWS to host their 20gb orchestral library downloads. He's already suggested using an AWS container to store audio+video assets for my site, and maybe there's a service from them that can do the cloud-NAS thing the way I want.


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## FGBR (Feb 14, 2022)

What about simply having your own remote server? Set it up exactly the way you want it. I know plenty of people with their own servers (not in the music business, but data storage is data storage). Some have them at professional data centers or colocation centers, others in their parents' basement.

Might be a bit more complicated (and potentially costly) than some are comfortable with, but could be an option to consider.


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## charlieclouser (Feb 14, 2022)

FGBR said:


> What about simply having your own remote server? Set it up exactly the way you want it. I know plenty of people with their own servers (not in the music business, but data storage is data storage). Some have them at professional data centers or colocation centers, others in their parents' basement.
> 
> Might be a bit more complicated (and potentially costly) than some are comfortable with, but could be an option to consider.


Yeah, if I had to, then I guess I could do that... but I'd rather have a managed cloud-based "virtual NAS" than a strict single-machine co-lo server, like in one of those Mac Mini farms or whatever. My wife used a co-lo Mac Mini server for her various websites (which are photography forums and have shedloads of big .tiff files etc.) and it wasn't ideal. Capacity was set and could not change dynamically, etc. Eventually she switched to a slightly more expensive solution that allowed her to have storage that resized itself dynamically based on current needs, and everything was handled on their end - redundancies, multiple geo locations, etc.

If I can find a situation using AWS or similar that lets me just mount the volume on my desktop and use my own file management tools to send and retrieve data from it, with dynamic volume size and with the added benefit that it's getting backed up on their end (and possibly spread out across multiple geographic locations for further redundancy) then that would be ideal.


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## FGBR (Feb 14, 2022)

There are certainly some drawbacks  Single location/machine perhaps the biggest. If it's your own hardware it would be scalable within reason. Expanding storage space on a personal file server would be simple, but scaling up capacity/bandwidth for a large number of users is certainly a different story.

I'd be surprised if you couldn't find what you're looking for from a cloud service though. Much easier to deal with as well. At the expense of some control. And some people really enjoy the IT part, I know a few whose eyes light up when networking is mentioned.


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## tmhuud (Feb 15, 2022)

Your own remote server would be the way to go I would think.


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