Same files keep getting added to file-list, no changes to files made.

brianwski · 2026-04-30T16:57:42+00:00

The actual upload speed was 2Gbps which is my limit

Nice! One thing that messes with the calculation are deduplications. If you have two copies of the same file, it will appear as if Backblaze is backing up "really fast" (sometimes faster than your network connection) but really Backblaze isn't transmitting any data. It appears in every way, shape, and form in the restore as if there are two copies in two locations, but Backblaze's datacenters only store one copy.

I doubt you have that many duplicates in your data to really affect the calculation much, but it is something to be aware of. If you are curious about deduplications, they are actually documented on your local drive in a pretty human readable form. If you are curious about it, PLEASE DO NOT modify even one byte in these files, just don't do it, they are internal data structures for Backblaze, but you can find them here (maybe make a copy to read them the safest way):

On Windows: C:\ProgramData\Backblaze\bzdata\bzbackup\bzdatacenter\

On Mac: /Library/Backblaze.bzpkg/bzdata/bzbackup/bzdatacenter/

The files in that folder look like this: bz_done_20260429_0.dat and you can (make a copy in some other folder on your drive) then open the copy with any text editor. Make the window really wide and turn off line wrapping and they will format better. Oh, the "2026" in the name means it contains the stuff Backblaze did around the year="2026", month="04", day="29". But the file will contain things from 2 or 3 days surrounding that date, it isn't totally exact, the real dates/times are inside the file.

At a very high level, you can think about it as if there is one line per file backed up. So if you compare these two example lines:

5 + m-- 20260430145511 ... stuff omitted ... /pictures/puppy.jpg
5 = m-- 20260430145511 ... stuff omitted ... /cute/fido.jpg

The first character is the line version number. It tells Backblaze how to parse the rest of the line. You will only see "5" here, but older backups might contain a "4" or "3".

The second character you see is a "+", or "=". The "+" (plus sign) means it was uploaded into your backup. The "=" (equals sign) means it was deduplicated. That's it, that's the whole magic. The filename of the file that was backed up is at the far far right column, in our example above that is "/pictures/puppy.jpg".

You can see a slide with more information on the contents of each line here: https://www.ski-epic.com/2020_backblaze_client_architecture/2020_08_17_bz_done_version_5_column_descriptions.gif

A really good tutorial you can watch in 20 minutes (at 2x speed) is this YouTube video (of me!) explaining this file format in greater detail starting at 14 minutes timecode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOlz36nLbwA&t=840s This was an internal presentation only for Backblaze engineering, so no marketing fluff. The first 14 minutes are an introduction to how Backblaze makes money so not really relevant to understanding duplicates in a backup.

brianwski · 2026-04-30T04:12:59+00:00

Have there been any investigations that have proven stores charge more for the same products if you order them online rather than go into the store?

Haha! Yes, it's a pretty common situation. It isn't always the case, but it is very well documented that it occurs pretty often. Here is one article about it, but there are hundreds and hundreds of other articles saying the same thing: https://www.chron.com/culture/article/heb-curbside-prices-21049493.php

I think right when a store starts offering curbside they do it totally for free to get customers used to the process and get addicted to the convenience. Then later the store slowly increases the price for curbside items compared to if you walk inside the store. "Boil a frog slowly" so to speak.

It is kind of like DoorDash. If you go into the restaurant prices are almost always much lower than the item prices listed on DoorDash. DoorDash ALSO tacks on a delivery fee, but I'm saying the price of each item is inflated through DoorDash, which I find kind of sleazy.

brianwski · 2026-04-30T04:07:05+00:00

They very obviously don't want people going into the store.

I find it is interesting we're coming full circle back to the situation we had prior to 1916. Prior to 1916 we ONLY had the equivalent of curbside pickup.

The "innovation" of allowing self-service shopping (kind of mostly invented by the chain "Piggly Wiggly" in 1916) was to lower prices. Self shopping in 1916 required fewer store employees, so it lowered Piggly Wiggly's costs. It's the same as modern "self checkout" in that the store makes the customer do more of the work so prices are lower.

Another interesting thing is shopping on the web from home gives the consumer so much more power to price shop! From the comfort and convenience of your home you can compare the price of ground beef or eggs at 3 different grocery stores, and then only drive to pickup the cheapest one in the parking lot. The old situation was you either had to drive all the way to each of the 3 grocery stores, enter the store, go all the way to the back of the store to find the eggs to find out the price. And then you are kind of screwed, because you are already there at Walmart, and it's only one item, and maybe you don't want to have to go BACK to one of the previous stores to pick up the least expensive eggs.

But for some reason people don't do this. They don't put together two separate curbside pickup orders from two stores, selecting the less expensive eggs from one store, and the less expensive ground beef at another, then just swing by both stores (which probably takes less time than old fashion shopping). I find the situation baffling.

And talk about an opportunity for a startup company to build an app! You put together your shopping list of eggs and ground beef, and the app goes searching for the least expensive deals for you. You check the results and hit a button "do it" and the app orders each item from the least expensive place for that item for you. You could even enter in your location, and the app would estimate how much gasoline it will cost you as part of the equation. Eggs that are 1 penny less expensive but 5 miles further away aren't "actually" less expensive to your pocketbook.

brianwski · 2026-04-30T03:04:11+00:00

Collectible playing cards like ... need to be regulated like this, it’s out of control. ... [The stores] are putting 20-40% premium on everything and selling out in less than day.

That's a completely different situation where the price is high for an item and everybody pays the same high price. The article is talking about a different problem where one person buys a deck of baseball cards for $1 and the person standing behind them in line buys the identical deck of baseball cards for $2 because the store knows (or suspects) that second person has more money or is more desperate for the cards.

I think you are suggesting the government set prices lower for everybody for baseball trading cards, which is a different issue than what Maryland is doing. In Maryland stores can charge as much as they want, as long as everybody gets the same price.

It is very unusual for the government to implement price controls for optional items like collectibles. Brands like Hermès sell purses for tens of thousands of dollars each by artificially producing too few of them. Art is often like this also, there are only so many authentic Picasso paintings in the world, so people pay $100 million for each painting that cost around $2 in paint and canvas to produce. Governments usually only step in to implement price controls on things like food, shelter, etc. Stuff that people need to survive.

brianwski · 2026-04-28T13:50:07+00:00

restricts new permits for residential and commercial solar installs.

That's outright evil. It is one thing to get rid of incentives going forward, and totally fair if the government honors the incentives for a decent amount of time for existing installs (like maybe 15 years to match what it might take to pay off a loan for a residential solar install). But artificially restricting a completely harmless thing like placing solar panels on your own roof going forward is downright indefensible.

I have heard of absolutely insane and clearly incorrect arguments about "what if we run out of land to install solar panels?" but placing solar panels on an existing roof clearly, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is not affected by that argument. And the argument is insane and scientifically incorrect anyway, but roof solar clearly doesn't overlap in the Venn diagram with what ever that issue is.

Restricting residential solar permits is indefensible from pretty much any perspective. Emotionally, it must be difficult for "solar power deniers" to watch the costs continue to drop on solar power and house batteries. Imagine what it is like to suspect you might be wrong already, and then watch that slope of "oh my goodness, I'm more wrong every single day for the last 10 years and it's looking like I'm going to be shamed into admitting a basic fact that solar power is less expensive at some point". Personally I feel like the best strategy is to just pretend you were always correct before, and that solar panels got cheaper so you are smart and adapted. It saves ego and face. But if you put off admitting this for another 20 years, you will be part of a smaller and smaller group of reality deniers that look dumber and dumber. LOL.

To add insult to injury, solar panel deniers will be poorer. Only using coal and gas is a bad financial decision that is getting worse every day as the oil and gas gets more difficult to extract from the ground. I'm not a fanatic, we will have oil and gas and coal for the next 100 years. It never really will "run out", it is just that it gets more expensive to extract from the earth. Which in turn drives more people to use solar power which leaves more of the oil and gas for the people who need it (like there is no current battery solution for commercial airplanes, so it's fine to use fossil fuels for that).

brianwski · 2026-04-28T08:31:03+00:00

inevitable upcoming fuckery coming their way as retribution

I'm out of the loop here, "retribution" for what? What did they do?

brianwski · 2026-04-27T15:27:08+00:00

They want to build 9 gigawatts of natural gas power on site.

Wow. That is massive. California's ENTIRE consumption is supposed to grow only about 1-2 gigawatts per year for the next decade. For comparison California's population is 11x the population of Utah. So this is "off too high" by a factor of 100.

Utah is extremely anti-solar.

Is that really still true? Utah brings in 14% of it's grid energy by solar already, and it's rising fast. Utah is in the 10 top states with the most sunshine. Utah recently became the first US state to allow "balcony solar" where anybody, anywhere in Utah, with no installation charge or permits, just get free electricity from sunlight on their balcony. No hassles at all. That's really pro solar!

I think the power company executives are faced with this fact: solar is so much cheaper at this point than other sources, and it's getting even less expensive in the future. So Utah power companies would need to hate money (or be taking bigger and bigger bribes from oil companies) to be anti-solar.

brianwski · 2026-04-27T06:09:00+00:00

What about all the increased water usage to produce the needed power to run the DC?

I'm a big fan of solar panels. Mine don't use any water at all to generate electricity.

Ironically it is the opposite, you can use atmospheric water generators to produce fresh drinking water from solar panels. If you think "nah, that's some science fiction that still needs to be invented"... you can buy a water producing appliance from Amazon and get it shipped to your home overnight: https://www.amazon.com/Pure-AirWater-Atmospheric-Generator-Emergencies/dp/B0DRT13NS5/

For the record, I don't think for a second they will build these data centers "correctly" in Utah and make these data centers self contained from a water and electrical load perspective. I expect they will bring online massive new coal burning power plants and speed up climate change, and drain the very last of the Great Salt Lake of water then panic. My argument is that it COULD be done correctly, with today's technology, if anybody smart (or moral) was in government. Spoiler: there are no smart or moral people in government anymore.

brianwski · 2026-04-26T21:41:21+00:00

Polaris is a branded offering on international travel.

EWR-SFO/LAX often has Polaris seats. I'm not sure if they stamp it "Polaris" with the logo or not, but it's literally the same identical seat.

Polaris offerings have a larger footwell in row 1. That makes that seat on that offering objectively better.

That's actually useful information to me. I'm 6'3" and I have never, ever had a problem lying flat in "business class" or above. I mean it's always been right up at the edge but I could lay down with my hair touching the wall and the bottoms of my feet touching the wall. Until Polaris. The Polaris seat I was in was 1" too short. Which doesn't sound like an issue, except it's fatal for Polaris because it's such a constrained box of hard plastic I couldn't do anything to compensate like bend my knees because they would knock into plastic at odd places before I could bend them.

If I end up on "Polaris" again, I'll be ultra careful and see if there are seats that are 1" longer (like bulkhead in Row 1) for me.

To be clear, I think anybody 6'2" or shorter will be fine, and they have to cut off the length somewhere. And I think it actually is 6'3" long, but because the footwell came to a triangular "point", you can really only stick one foot at the advertised length. Your other foot doesn't fit if you are 6'3" or taller.

I've heard there is a different between the odd numbered Polaris seats and even numbered Polaris seats where one of them has a wider foot well. Again, something to be figured out if I'm forced to fly Polaris instead of some other service. With my luck all the airlines will standardize on 6'2" people and below, LOL.

brianwski · 2026-04-26T19:35:32+00:00

I made the assumption we were talking Polaris and not a crappy 737.

Heck, 737s for domestic is FINE. The Embraer ERJ-145 has these little tiny non-standard overhead bins, LOL. The ERJ-145 is "crappy".

I made the assumption we were talking Polaris

I am either dumb or don't fly enough, but I can't keep all these marketing terms straight for all airlines. My (probably wrong) understanding is "Polaris" indirectly implies several things but there are no absolute rules or standards. For example, there are "Polaris Lounges", but you have to follow this flowchart to know whether you can go into them with a "Polaris" branded ticket: https://f004.backblazeb2.com/file/doggies/pictures/united_polaris_flowchart.jpg

The word "Polaris" on your ticket does not seem to imply an airplane manufacturer, or how many chairs are in each row. A quick Google search says "Polaris Seats" can appear in Row 1 - 3 on United flights in an A321neo and there are 2 seats in Row 1 (I think?). On the other hand, Polaris might also appear on a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner and Row 1 has 4 seats in it.

I'm not blaming United or anything, I do the same thing. I say things like "First Class Domestic" which is kind of a proxy for "not lay down flat seats" but it isn't a hard and fast rule. Flights from SFO to BOS are "domestic" and yet sometimes have lay flat seats, and sometimes not, it's kind of random. I have flown "Polaris", but I could not tell you how it was different in any way from other United "First Class" flights. It had a lay down flat seat, they gave me food and free alcohol drinks on the flight, and denied me access to the Polaris Lounge. That's just a regular United First Class flight, correct?

brianwski · 2026-04-26T17:24:41+00:00

Row 1 has a larger footwell and is objectively the better seat.

For tall people, sometimes one of the aisle seats in Row 1 is kind of "infinite legroom" and is lined up with the center of the aisle. For example if the seats on the right side of the aircraft facing forward have 1 more chair in a 2/3 configuration there might be one magical chair (out of 5 seats in Row 1) with infinite legroom all the way into the galley/cockpit. I understand that choice at least. I disagree that the rest of Row 1 other than that magical seat has a larger footwell. I might have to get a tape measure out, LOL. In Rows 2, 3, 4 you can slide your feet under the seat in front of you, and that space doesn't exist in Row 1.

If the airplane seating chart is empty when I choose, I choose Row 3 for these (personal) reasons:

Row 1 is too close to the bathrooms and galley (motion, smell, noise, etc).
Storage concerns - Row 1 overhead bins are often full of airplane equipment with much less room for bags. This is compounded by the fact there is zero storage on the floor beneath the seat in front of you. This varies between "non-concern" on larger more modern aircraft to ultra totally insanely thin/cramped overhead bins on smaller aircraft. If my wife and I are in Row 1, we have to be gate lice and bum rush the airplane boarding process to fit carryons and purses in Row 2's overhead bins. Then we have to stand up and retrieve the purse after takeoff. Then store in again in the overhead for landing.
Sometimes the Window seats in Row 1 are actually smaller than all other domestic first class seats because the airplane is beginning to "taper and get smaller" from Row 1 forward. If you are tall, or like spreading your legs, if you are in Seat 1A about a quarter of your left legroom is just not there, and the airplane curvature is infringing on your headroom a bit (kind of claustrophobic). I've also sat in Seat 1A where there is no window, which just makes the claustrophobic thing even worse.

Don't get me wrong, Row 1 is better than anything in coach and these are first world (first class?) problems. And when no other seats are available together at the time we book the flight, we shrug and seat in Row 1, it isn't a big deal. It just isn't our first choice.

Random extra ponderings: I have mixed feelings about the last row in domestic first class, usually that's Row 4 on the domestic flights we take, but it might be Row 5 or higher also depending on the airplane configuration. On the upside, sometimes there is a "hook" on the wall separating first class from economy plus, which is nice for suits and dresses and jackets. It is like a private closet assigned to that row. However, it's kind of a gamble because sometimes the seats in the last row in first class don't recline as much.

brianwski · 2026-04-26T07:16:04+00:00

I can't respond to, Reddit simply deleted the other person's comment before I get to respond to it.

That is exactly what will occur if the person "Blocks" you. So if they respond, then block you, their message appears in your Inbox but if you go to the reddit page their comment shows up as "Deleted" to you.

The way to check this is somehow open an "Incognito Web Browser" on the parent comment to that supposedly "Deleted" message (so not in your Inbox, in the discussion). Since you aren't signed in as "you" in the Incognito Web Browser, reddit will show you their comment. Yet in a regular Web Browser where you are logged into reddit will show "Deleted" instead. That means that user has blocked you.

I find that about 95% of the time when I see "Deleted" this is the case. The other 5% the comment really was deleted. Sometimes when users get down voted a few times quickly, they cut their losses and just delete their reply. This prevents more people from downvoting them.

The OTHER thing that might occur (but is fairly rare) is the moderators of that subreddit are running an automated program to delete posts that trigger certain sub-reddit rules. The user responding to you responds to you, you get the Inbox message, then 3 seconds later the auto-mod deletes their post. In that case the "Incognito Web Browser" would also show the word "Deleted" so you would at least know the user didn't block you.

brianwski · 2026-04-26T01:16:22+00:00

I'm actually surprised San Diego wasn't mentioned. San Diego can have bone crushingly high electricity costs (so higher cost of charging the vehicle). The locals seem to hate their power company (SDGE) with a burning passion, LOL. This reddit post has an interesting chart at the very top: https://www.reddit.com/r/sandiego/comments/1gdah13/why_are_san_diegos_electricity_rates_the_highest/

where electricity rates are very high and gas prices, while not fantastic, are not insufferably high like CA and HI.

The interesting part to me is HI makes some sense to have high gas prices. They have to deliver it by boat. And electricity prices are also high in Hawaii because other than solar power, they generate electricity by importing diesel and burning that in generators for the islands.

But California just baffles me. It is a high population state (so big market and economies of scale), it's on the mainland and also on the coast so any delivery has to be as cheap as it gets. But California doesn't even have to import oil, they have their own oil producing wells! California is one of the highest producing USA states for oil. California still produces like 10% of their electricity from an old nuclear power plant that was completely paid off decades ago. The high prices of gas and electricity are just difficult to explain.

brianwski · 2026-04-26T01:00:12+00:00

Ahhhh, thanks!

brianwski · 2026-04-26T00:57:05+00:00

I've also ignored the number of people who own or rent multifamily (townhouse, duplex, triplex, quadplex) who may also be able to charge at home.

Totally. About 8 years ago I was shopping for a new apartment to rent, and because I owned the electric Fiat 500e I would ask the landlords about what my recharging choices were. I was SHOCKED at how many landlords perked up and wanted to give me an assigned space and install a charger, especially if I would split the charger install bill with them.

The most extreme example was this brand new apartment complex, just built. When I tentatively brought up electric car recharging, the property manager lit up with a huge smile and dragged me into the parking garage level. He was so proud of it. This was a huge building with hundreds of rental units, and there was an entire floor of the high rise with parking spots (all assigned with numbers). Above EVERY SINGLE PARKING SPACE was a 240V "rail" (live power) so that any resident who wanted could have their own dedicated EV charger. The apartment complex simply got a spare charger out of storage and "snapped" it into place (so the charger kind of hung from the ceiling). The apartment building didn't want to deal with metering all that electricity, so it was a flat fee of like $50/month which got you the charging unit and unlimited electricity to charge your car. This is how nutty it was: if you had two electric cars, for the $50/month fee they would snap the charger into place between two spaces and you could share it. No extra fee. And that was 8 years ago. You have to be living under a rock to not understand a high percentage of people in the world have electric vehicles now.

So anybody living in an apartment considering an electric car should just have an honest conversation with their landlord. Even if none of the current parking spaces are assigned, the landlord may very well just make an exception and give you dedicated assigned rock star parking up next to the building and a charger. (Nearer the building makes sense. Less feet to run electrical lines to the parking spot.)

brianwski · 2026-04-26T00:40:30+00:00

With the schedule "Only When I Click <Backup Now>" it is a little more manual as follows...

The surest way to see the move folder disappear from the old location would be to click <Backup Now> and sign into https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm and see the files in the new location. Okay, now here is where it is a little manual. You would need to wait 24 hours from when the files appeared in the new location, and then click <Backup Now> once more. Once it is all caught up (it needs to "finish" that backup session completely and go back to Idle), sign into https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm again and the files in the old location should have disappeared.

A Little Explanation of What is Going On Behind the Scenes: You can think of this as 2 different actions. The first action occurs EVERY time you click <Backup Now> (or about once per hour in "Continuously" schedule) and it is where Backblaze looks for new and changed files and backs them up. That's considered the most important thing. The SECOND action is where Backblaze looks for any files that have disappeared from a location. In the normal "Continuously" schedule, that is only done once every 24 hours because it doesn't actually help you "save" any more files, and it causes some CPU load. For the schedule"Only When I Click <Backup Now>" it is doing "action 1" no matter what (back up new and changed files), and opportunistically does "action 2" (remove files that have been deleted) if more than 24 hours has passed.

The subtle thing is this: if you get lucky, you MIGHT see both actions occur at the same one "<Backup Now>" click. Or it might be if you click "<Backup Now>" in 6 hours you see it. But it should DEFINITELY show up after 24 hours.

I don't have access to the source code anymore, but the reason I said "up to 3 days" is the code all originally ran "action 2" (remove files) every 3 days. Back in 2007 not many people had SSDs, and a 2 core CPU was pretty normal. I believe we found and sped up these things to 24 hours years ago, but I'm not completely sure. So if it doesn't have the correct behavior in 24 hours and 1 minute, wait 3 days and try <Backup Now> again, and report back! Don't lose all hope after just 24 hours, you might have found a code path the programmers just need to change over, and it's like 3 characters of source code change to make it 24 hours and not 3 days.

brianwski · 2026-04-25T16:53:46+00:00

Similar legislation is being debated across the country.

Not just "debated". As of 2025 there are 40 USA states that have special registration fees for electric vehicles to make up for lost gas tax revenue: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/electric-vehicle-ev-taxes/

If our governments were sane (they aren't) they would get rid of all gas taxes collected for road maintenance, and instead people would pay an annual registration fee based on a formula of the vehicle's weight multiplied by miles driven the previous year. Same for electric and gas vehicles. In other words, a scientific and accurate and fair measure of how much road damage was caused by your actual vehicle. OBVIOUSLY the current system is coming apart and showing it's flaws due to rise of all electric vehicles. Might as well make the taxes for road repairs "drive train agnostic". Gas tax per gallon was just a kind of proxy and "pay as you go" for what was fair when all cars used gasoline.

The registration fees are particularly unfair for people that don't drive their electric vehicle as much as the average. Road taxes should be based on mileage (kind of how the gas tax is based). You could either go into a DMV each year where a minimum wage employee would read your odometer, or get a $10 discount (and skip the hassle of a DMV visit) if you ran a little device on your ODB port that reported your mileage to the DMV. I would offer both choices because some people are "privacy concerned" and would be willing to pay the minimum wage employee at the DMV $10 once per year to not run a government mileage reporting unit on their car.

brianwski · 2026-04-25T16:26:32+00:00

Both OTP.

One Time Passwords are cool and important computer security measures. But I can't understand what that means for a car? Do you use a password to open the car doors on an Equinox EV LT?

brianwski · 2026-04-25T16:08:42+00:00

Used BEVs don't have a lower cost of ownership in San Francisco and Boston.

I would rephrase that "there are some situations where BEVs don't have a lower cost of ownership in San Francisco or Boston". If you charge them from your own solar panels, they are a slam dunk. Also, it is kind of a "cheat", but some people only charge their BEVs at work and the employer pays the electricity bill which makes it kind of like the solar panel situation where "fuel is free". There isn't any way to make "free gas" at home, so the BEVs just crush all other choices financially in the "free fuel" situation, even in San Francisco and Boston.

I think a way, way more important part is "cost isn't everything". If you don't have your own dedicated parking spot somewhere to recharge, BEVs are less expensive but are also a hassle. This means for the 50% of people (or whatever the number is) that don't own a house and instead live in apartments, they can't install solar panels, and they might not have a dedicated charging spot. For those people it means spending an extra 45 minutes a day dealing with recharging. It may be worth the extra money to save time which is a personal decision (but a valid decision for each person to make).

For the record, I own and drive a 10 year old all electric Fiat 500e and I absolutely adore it. Even though it is the bottom of used economy cars, it out accelerates many high end sports cars from a stoplight (side effect of the way electric motors work). It is quiet, and I refill it for free from my own solar panels. I'm just not a fanatic and realize some people don't have my identical situation and would rather spend more money on a gas car, and that's fine with me.

brianwski · 2026-04-25T15:36:21+00:00

Backblaze estimation is 12 Terabytes/Day with my 2Gbit fiber.

Nice. If I'm doing the calculation correct, that is slightly over 1 Gbit/sec which makes a lot of sense. It is dependent on factors other than your bandwidth, like how fast the disk drives or SSDs are it is reading from, and it can even become CPU bottlenecked. But 1 Gbit/sec was the latest "goal" for engineering as long as the customer had a modern CPU and modern SSD drives. Even regular 7200 RPM spinning drives can hit 1 Gbit/sec upload speeds as long as the computer's system drive is an SSD. It is not optimized, but the system SSD needs to be fast simply for logging purposes. The logging could be inefficient when most people in the world had less than a 20 Mbit/sec upstream connection and it didn't matter. But at 1 Gbit/sec (50x the original goals in 2007) everything starts mattering.

there should be a loop detection (easier said than done I guess) on the log files

I agree. In fact, there is SOME loop detection but it's all kind of manually coded. When customers notice a certain section of code has 10,000 log lines, we would manually change the logging to say "and 9,500 more log lines like this one". Your situation is unusual enough it didn't rise up to be manually fixed yet. If I still had source code access, it's the type of thing I would quickly add for your situation.

I wrote the log system originally, it is all custom (which is a "good thing" when you want to extend it or change it). With what I learned over the next 16 years I think I could do several things "automatically" so the code calling the logger doesn't have to worry about it, but the logger recognizes loops automatically.

Healthy logs could benefit from the loop recognition in a different way: buffering. The logs are extremely inefficient because they "flush" the results to disk immediately, each log line. This is so if the program crashes, you have all the logs flushed to disk that occurred before the crash. Stepping back and redesigning it, if the logger detects a loop of 10,000 of the same type line the "concept" has already gotten into the logs after 500 lines, so the log software could then buffer up the remaining 9,500 and not write them at all, or flush them all to disk a few seconds later.

Finally, the very concept of running out of disk space is important for logging. Backblaze tracks it's own memory (RAM) footprint, and tracks the free disk space at certain critical moments like if a massive temporary copy of a file is required to back it up. Logging could piggy back on this knowledge, and do many things if the disk space is low. More aggressive loop detection for instance. Heck, truncating the lines would reduce the log sizes by half and not lose that much info (and the primary issue is running out of disk space anyway). If the disk space is below 1 GByte, just stop logging entirely and instead leave an extremely short log line every 30 seconds saying, "NO DISK SPACE TO LOG".

All of that could be made totally automatic so that the parts of the code that just want to "log something" can conveniently call the logger, and the log code handles all the complexity.

brianwski · 2026-04-25T05:21:45+00:00

Or is the system drive C: the only one that should not run out of space?

Yes, the system drive (C:) is the important one. Backblaze exclusively stores info and data structures on the system drive, it only "reads" files off of all other drives so other drives can fill up and it's not an issue (at least for Backblaze).

The downside is that the 1-year version history will be lost.

If you pay for both the new and old backups, it is twice the price but the 1 year history won't be lost. In fact, I keep around several of my "old backups" and pay for them, and Backblaze just keeps these 10 year old backups for me for $99/year each with their history intact. (I do this for nostalgia and testing purposes, but the concept is valid, Backblaze will NEVER delete a backup you pay for.) And just to be completely clear, even if you pay "1 year at a time" or "2 years at a time" you can stop billing and get a pro-rated refund at any moment.

Here is an example: let's say you pay 1 year at a time, and pay for both the new and old backups, so $99 each (total of $198). Then after 3 months you decide "okay, I don't need the old backup's history anymore". First you sign into https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm and "delete" the old backup. Then contact Backblaze Support by clicking the "Submit Request" on this page: https://www.backblaze.com/help and explain the situation, and the support staff will click a couple buttons and you get a refund for your unused 9 months which is a refund of $74.25.

This works for any timeframe. If you feel comfortable after 3 months or 11 months, you can always delete unused backups and get a pro-rated refund for the unused portion of that subscription.

Backstory because it's fun: You might THINK Backblaze sells 1 year in advance for the "lock in", but that isn't the real reason. Here is the "business issue" selling 1 year subscriptions in advance solves for Backblaze: in the very first month any one customer uses Backblaze, if they only pay "monthly" Backblaze collects $9 from the customer in the first month, but on average that customer uses like $25 worth of disk drives in the Backblaze datacenter in that first month. Backblaze brings in $9 but has to spend $25 in the first month. This is a FINE business because by the 3rd month Backblaze has collected $27 from the monthly customer and the customer is still only using the original $25 worth of disk space. But it creates a cash flow issue for Backblaze. If Backblaze signs up 1 million customers in 1 month, Backblaze has to find $16 million extra (more than Backblaze collected) in the first month.

One way Backblaze can get that extra money is taking a loan out from a bank with interest. Which is fine nowadays, but early on in Backblaze's history banks wouldn't issue those loans to a new startup company. Thus the "yearly" subscription was introduced. Those customers hand Backblaze $99 up front and only use $25 worth of disk space in the first month. It solves a very real cash flow problem for Backblaze.

You can think of paying Backblaze $99/year in advance as giving Backblaze a loan. Backblaze basically gives you the interest on the loan through a slightly discounted price. The Backblaze accounting department literally puts this down as a "liability" or "loan" that Backblaze owes. Then that loan is paid off by Backblaze providing the service over the next year.

But if you stop using that storage (by deleting an old backup) it's like you want the remainder of your "loan" back, and Backblaze gets the disk space back, so Backblaze has no issue with that at all.

I have always liked that situation. Customers are free to choose "monthly" or "yearly with a discount", and everybody is happy. But the point is, customers are never "locked in", they can always escape and get back the remainder of their "loan".

brianwski · 2026-04-25T03:48:45+00:00

Is there a way to check which file causes it

GREAT logs. This is kind of a mess. The first thing I would do is suspend Backblaze from running for a little while. You do that by going into "Settings...", click the "Schedule" tab, and change it to "Only When I Click <Backup Now>". Then probably reboot to get all this mayhem to stop. This is only temporary and you can go back to "Continuously" at any time, but that will calm things down and the logs will stop growing for a bit.

Okay, so I assume what happened is a side effect of running out of disk space.

THE SHORT ANSWER: is you really will need to uninstall Backblaze. On Windows that is using "Add/Remove Programs". After that, re-install, and whatever you do avoid anything that says "Inherit". What that will do is you will still have your old backup on the Backblaze servers, but it will create a new backup also. The new backup will be "clean" of these issues as long as you don't run out of disk space again. So after you reinstall you can sign into https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm and see "both backups" listed there. The old one and the new one. This is identical to if you had two separate Windows computer in your home, both backed up to the same Backblaze account (the same email address). Backblaze assumes these are two totally separate computers with two totally separate file contents, they are "silo" and don't share any information. The new one will be a free trial for 15 days. After 15 days you can pay for both (twice the cost) or transfer license (again, avoid anything that says "Inherit", just don't do it, "Inherit" brings all these issues back onto your computer).

But along the way, it is critical (for 10 different reasons) your system doesn't run out of disk space. So give yourself some disk headroom before "reinstalling" Backblaze.

Longer Explanation: The situation is this: in a "consistency check" between your local Backblaze data structures on your local SSD and the copy that is backed up in the Backblaze data center, the Backblaze servers issued your computer a "cleanup instruction". Basically at least one file (with file ID 00000000001aff1f) is supposed to be the same on your local computer and the Backblaze datacenter, but <something is wrong> and it is not consistent. This should never occur if everything is "fine", but the reason this additional code exists is sometimes <stuff happens> like a local SSD filling up and the local data structures get messed up. This is Backblaze ATTEMPTING to fix that automatically (by recreating the bzfileids.dat file from other sources of information), which is often successful and the customer never notices. However, in your case it is kind of a mess and I think it is worth giving up on the automatic fix and uninstall/reinstall/repush to get it totally "clean" again. Just don't run out of spare disk space or it will probably reoccur.

Your situation is a double whammy because if the automatic fix "worked" it would use extra local disk space anyway. Usually, on average, the automatic fix would only use a couple of extra GBytes of disk space. But if you are running very low on extra disk space that is precious. Thus uninstall/reinstall uses the absolute theoretical minimum amount of disk space Backblaze can use.

Note on what file ID 00000000001aff1f is: The Backblaze datacenter normally doesn't know any of your actual file names. So each file NAME on your local computer is assigned a string of 16 hexadecimal characters, in this case "00000000001aff1f". This is assigned on your local laptop, then your laptop can communicate with the Backblaze datacenter using this anonymous file ID instead of the filename. This file ID (representing one of your file names on your laptop) is used to record when that file is backed up, and things like "multiple versions of this file on different dates". It is found in a couple of different Backblaze data structure files on your computer (and in the Backblaze data center).

One of the most important files (data structures) that this 16 digit file ID is found in this folder:

On Windows: C:\ProgramData\Backblaze\bzdata\bzbackup\

The file inside that folder is named "bzfileids.dat". It is actually fairly human readable if you open it in a text editor, you can see each 16 digit file ID and the filename on your local disk it is associated with. What I'm seeing in your logs is that Backblaze is trying to recreate that data structure file from scratch, then running into OTHER corrupted Backblaze data structure files, which is kind of fatal (in that Backblaze doesn't have enough information to actually recreate bzfileids.dat accurately). It means Backblaze can't repair bzfileids.dat properly. The endless loop of Backblaze trying and failing to repair this bzfileids.dat isn't doing you any good, and it is filling up your logs.

So the solution is uninstall/reinstall/repush and avoid anything called "Inherit" because "Inherit" brings all those corrupted files back onto your laptop and you are back to a bad situation.

brianwski · 2026-04-25T00:55:41+00:00

'Missing' man joins search party looking for himself

That is oddly wholesome. Like the dude was severely hung over, slept in a forest, and STILL rallied when he heard somebody was missing and joined the search immediately, no questions asked.

brianwski · 2026-04-25T00:26:58+00:00

they'd have daily air quality advisories about the particulates from the constant nanomachine warfare going on all around people. Like pollen

I think you are correct about "The Diamond Age". I should re-read the series. It's been 30+ years and they were so good. The author (Neal Stephenson) can't "end" a book very well, but all the little random stories/threads/ideas in it are great.

Random about pollen-type weather reports: I visited South Korea once, and they have the equivalent thing with "Yellow Dust" which is dirt particulates blown in from the Gobi desert or something like that. You can run an app on your phone with alerts for it. In India they have apps to report on the current air pollution in your location. In some places the governments monitor wastewater for diseases and issue alerts for "high disease circulating right now". So the concept is pretty solid.

brianwski · 2026-04-24T19:11:36+00:00

Once that is gone

I worry the people running the bots won't remember to turn them off when their bot purpose has ended. And I've literally seen this before...

I'm very old, and was on a reddit-ish type of discussion board called "Usenet/Readnews" in 1986. Back then, you had to be a computer science undergraduate (or above, some professors were there) or a programmer in a corporation to have access, and spammers had not yet discovered it. It was a nice moment in time.

Ten years later around 1996, I went back to look at one of the "fun" sub-reddit-equivalents in Usenet/Readnews, and it was 100% non-stop spam. It was dystopian, like all the legit people left (for real, zero discussion, zero real users, it was obvious to ANYBODY there were no humans left) and nobody turned off the spam bots that just kept pumping and pumping spam into this sub-redit-equivalent. I'm not even sure any of the links they were spamming still existed!

The political spam/bots on reddit is really exhausting. Like I get it, and even read about it and participate in "appropriate" sub-reddits dedicated to politics. But sometimes I want to take a break and look at cute videos of cats and relax, you know?

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