Concerns about the Authentication server.

Hi,

I am not an expert, but I presume once the authentication server shuts down, no one can connect anymore. I suspect the backups will continue until BB has to restart and authenticate again.

If you know a buddy and you need to restore, I believe a buddy can restore your files onto a USB drive by going to "Tools->Import/Export", then select "I'm helping a Buddy backup/restore", press "Next", then select "My Buddy is restoring their data..." and then press "Next".

For this reason I have two BB accounts and run BB on two separate machines. At the very least I have the other machine to restore from.

I hope this helps.

I just spent three weeks testing backup buddy.
EVERY FEATURE
I intentionally tried to break it. I couldn't
I backed up to USB HDD's as buddy. IT WORKED!
I swapped the USB's. IT WORKED!
I backed up to 6 remote buddy's with two copies and four copies. IT WORKED!
I backed up the music on a radio station, two copies to 6 buddies. IT WORKED!
I backed us the photos and articles from a local weekly news mag. IT WORKED!
I backed up person collection of 1,300 digitized 35mm slides. IT WORKED!

I tested recovery from every backup, including a complete recovery to a guest account onto a removable USB. IT WORKED!

I tested backing up live data from a web server, while the data was being edited and on-line. IT WORKED! ( More importantly, it did not interfere with the web server or the editing. )

I tested it on a live radio station that streams audio on the web and has an automation system that was transmitting the files on AM and FM. IT WORKED!

I tested it on a 12 year old very slow Dell single core computer I saved from a trip to the dumpster and a brand new quad core, on both of them, IT WORKED!

I tested it on XP, Vista, Win7 Ultra, windows 8.0, Windows 8.1 (tablet, laptop and dual monitor desktop). IT WORKED!
I tested it on Windows 10 technical preview all the way up to build 10122 on Intel and AMD (64bit) CPUs both as a hardware install and in a virtual machine. IT WORKED!

One of the most amazing observations was that, even with the BuddyBackup bandwidth limit options raised or turned off, and BuddyBackup uploading at 2.5mbps, on a single core CPU, the program did not cause any lag or audio/video glitches while the CPU usage was at 95% usage streaming windows media audio to 5 listeners AND encoding/up-streaming live flash video from a webcam, and, I did that test remotely using Teamviewer. I should mention that the PC under test, normally encodes and serves windows media audio streams, and at the same time stream video and audio to livestream.com. The computer is old, overloaded and normally stutters on the audio or video if you simply open a text file while streaming. Yet! Backup buddy was monitoring and backing up a shared local network folder and we watched in amazement as it backed up every change we made on the networked folder. It took only a few seconds to make two off-site backups each time we added a new file. We kept expecting to hear a stutter, pause or glitch in the audio stream. We never did. We repeated the test over and over and couldn't stop giggling we were so surprised.

I've tested the top 7 backup programs from a list of 25 most commonly recommended backup programs. NONE of them passed my tests. Currently the only backup solutions I recommend are the ones included with Microsoft and Apple OS's. Backupbuddy was not even on my top 25 list, but a friend mentioned it. The unusual feature of baking up to friends computers, instead of a cloud server peaked my interest. I had to test it.

It seems the only stumbling block is the possibility that url for the authentication might go away.

I'd like to promote Backup Buddy, but there needs to be a business plan and multiple servers for authentication.

How can we make that happen?

In the next few days i'll spent some time trying to find out how the authentication process works.

Who was the buyer of the source code?  If the project is dead then maybe we can get them to release it as open source.