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Origin Story: Backup From Real Customer Pain
- Backblaze began because a co-founder repeatedly helped friends recover from laptop crashes and realized most people never backed up their data.
- They built a simple fixed-price, automatic backup service and solved storage by designing cheap hardware plus software.
Software Can Replace Expensive Storage Appliances
- Backblaze chose to build its own storage because S3 and traditional arrays made their unit economics unviable.
- They realized raw drives plus software could dramatically lower cost versus $1,000/TB enterprise boxes.
From Plywood Prototype To Production
- Early Backblaze prototypes included a plywood server racked in a San Francisco data center.
- That crude test proved the design and led to production steel iterations.