Backblaze Personal is a solid product. It’s a one-Mac, one-flat-rate cloud backup, and for that job it works. macup is the move when you’ve outgrown those constraints. This guide handles the switch without leaving a gap.
What you’re actually leaving
Backblaze Personal ships a wide net for a flat monthly rate per Mac. Unlimited storage, unlimited history within their retention policy, one fee. If that shape still fits your life, staying there is legitimate.
macup wins when you need multi-Mac aggregation under a single account, multi-drive rotation policies, user-held encryption keys that nobody at macup can decrypt, multi-destination set definitions (so the same folder lives in both a cloud tier and an external tier), or an admin console for a team.
If you’re nodding at any of those, here’s the migration.
Step 1 — Force a final Backblaze backup
Before you change anything, open Backblaze preferences, click Back Up Now, and wait until it reports “Remaining Files: 0.” This guarantees your Backblaze cloud copy is fully current — the state of the world you’re about to leave behind is fixed.
Don’t skip this. Starting a new backup tool while your old one is mid-upload is how people create a gap and lose a file that was only in flight.
Step 2 — Retrieve anything you need from Backblaze
Optional but easier now than later. If there’s something you want from Backblaze’s archive that you don’t also have locally, grab it before cutting ties:
- Order a Restore by Mail drive from Backblaze’s restore page. Takes a few days to arrive.
- Queue a ZIP download from the restore page for smaller sets.
Both take time. Start them now so they’re ready during your parallel window.
Step 3 — Install macup
Follow “Install macup and run your first backup.” Download, approve the system extension, sign in, come back.
Step 4 — Add destinations
macup Cloud is the direct managed replacement for Backblaze Personal’s cloud tier — off-site, immutable, no bucket management. See “Back up to macup Cloud.”
If you’d rather own the bucket directly, bring your own S3-compatible storage. See “Back up to an S3 bucket.” That’s the route for people who want control over the bill, the data path, or the retention contract.
Step 5 — Mirror the Backblaze scope
Backblaze Personal backs up every attached drive, minus a default exclusion list. Recreate that in macup:
- Create a set called Everything.
- Include your home folder.
- Include any external drives you want protected.
- Open Backblaze’s exclusion list (Backblaze preferences > Exclusions) and copy the relevant patterns into the macup set’s exclude rules. See “Exclude files and folders.”
macup’s defaults already skip most system-level noise, so you probably only need to carry over project-specific excludes.
Step 6 — Start the parallel window
Let macup run alongside Backblaze. No conflict — they’re both reading your filesystem, nothing writes-back. Plan on 30 days of overlap. That matches Backblaze’s post-cancellation retention window, so you don’t leave a cliff-edge gap if you decide to reverse course.
Step 7 — Verify a restore on macup
Actually test it. Don’t just watch the progress bars fill up.
Delete a file, restore it from macup. Pull an older version of a document. See “Restore a single file” and “Restore a whole folder.” A backup you haven’t tested is not a backup.
Step 8 — Cancel Backblaze
At day 30, cancel Backblaze from your account page. Per their policy, your data remains accessible for 30 days post-cancellation — download anything else you want during that window. After day 30, Backblaze deletes. macup is now your sole cloud copy.
Set a reminder for day 20, not day 30. You want a buffer for the final pull.
Gotcha: external drives and the 30-day rule
Backblaze Personal quietly deletes cloud copies of drives that haven’t been plugged in for 30 days. This has bitten photographers and editors who rotate drives.
macup handles this differently. If a drive is unmounted, macup stops capturing new data from it — same as Backblaze — but the existing snapshots stay under your retention policy. They don’t evaporate at day 30.
To keep rotated drives properly backed up:
- Enable Only when mounted on that backup set.
- Plug the drive in at least once a month to catch new changes.
- Check the set’s last-snapshot timestamp in the macup menu-bar panel before you unmount.
Your rotation schedule is yours. macup won’t penalise it.