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Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

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Re: Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

#51

I can understand in theory why they wouldn't want to back up .git folders as-is. Git has a serious object count bloat problem if you have any repository with a good amount of commit history, which causes a lot of unnecessary overhead in just scanning the folder for files alone. I don't quite understand why it's still like this; it's probably the biggest reason why git tends to play poorly with a lot of filesystem too…

> If it'd been something like an SQLite database instead (just an example really)

See Fossil (https://fossil-scm.org/)

P.S. There's also (https://www.sourcegear.com/vault/)

> SourceGear Vault Pro is a version control and bug tracking solution for professional development teams. Vault Standard is for those who only want version control. Vault is based on a client / server architecture using technologies such as Microsoft SQL Server and IIS Web Services for increased performance, scalability, and security.

Re: Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

#52

I can understand in theory why they wouldn't want to back up .git folders as-is. Git has a serious object count bloat problem if you have any repository with a good amount of commit history, which causes a lot of unnecessary overhead in just scanning the folder for files alone. I don't quite understand why it's still like this; it's probably the biggest reason why git tends to play poorly with a lot of filesystem too…

I think they shouldn't back up git objects individually because git handles the versioning information. Just compress the .git folder itself and back it up as a single unit.

Re: Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

#53
post #33

My takeaway is that for data that matters, don't trust the service. I back up with Restic, so that the service only sees encrypted blobs.

What cloud backend are people using for restic? B2/S3/something else? I'm still just backing up to other machines using it (though I'd also heavily recommend restic)

Re: Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

#54
I guess the problem with Backblaze's business model with respect to Backblaze Personal is that it is "unlimited". They specifically exclude linux users because, well, we're nerds, r/datahoarders exists, and we have different ideas about what "unlimited" means. [1]

This is another example in disguise of two people disagreeing about what "unlimited" means in the context of backup, even if they do claim to have "no restrictions on file type or size" [2].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/backblaze/comments/jsrqoz/personal_... [2] https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup/personal

Re: Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

#55
post #33

My takeaway is that for data that matters, don't trust the service. I back up with Restic, so that the service only sees encrypted blobs.

Same, I use Restic + Backrest (plus monitoring on Healthchecks, self-hosted + Prometheus/AlertManager/Pushover), with some decent structure - local backups every half-an-hour to raid1, every hour a backup to my old NAS, every day a backup to FTP in Helsinki, and once a week some backups to Backblaze (via Restic). Gives me local backups, observability, remote backups spread across different providers - seems quite safe :) I highly recommend to everyone figuring out a good backup strategy, takes a day or two.

Edit: on top of that I've built a custom one-page monitoring dashboard, so I see everything in one place (https://imgur.com/B3hppIW) - I'll opensource, it's decent architecture, I just need to cleanup some secrets from Git history...

Re: Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

#56
post #20

To the author: please use a darker font. Preferably black. I’m only in my 40’s, I don’t require glasses (yet) and I have to actively squint to read your site on mobile. Safari, iPhone. I’m pretty sure you’re under the permitted contrast levels under WCAG.

+1

Firefox users: press F9 or C-A-R

Re: Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

#57
> My first troubling discovery was in 2025, when I made several errors then did a push -f to GitHub and blew away the git history for a half decade old repo. No data was lost, but the log of changes was.

I know this is besides the point somewhat, but: Learn your tools people. The commit history could probably have been easily restored without involving any backup. The commits are not just instantly gone.

Re: Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

#58
post #25

Hetzner storagebox. 1TB for under 5 bucks/month, 5TB for under 15. Sftp access. Point your restic there. Backup game done, no surprises, no MBAs involved.

Until there is. Backblaze was also trusted years ago. Selfhost, it became easy enough.

Re: Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

#59
post #20

To the author: please use a darker font. Preferably black. I’m only in my 40’s, I don’t require glasses (yet) and I have to actively squint to read your site on mobile. Safari, iPhone. I’m pretty sure you’re under the permitted contrast levels under WCAG.

I'm also pretty sure 14 points font is a bit outdated at this point, 16 should probably be a minimum with current screens. It's not as if screens aren't wide enough to fit bigger text.

Re: Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others

#60

Ironically drop box and one drive folders I can still somewhat understand as they are "backuped" in other ways (but potentially not reliable so I also understand why people do not like that). But .git? It does not mean you have it synced to GitHub or anything reliable? If you do anything then only backup the .git folder and not the checkout. But backing up the checkout and not the .git folder is crazy.

I use backblaze and have repos I dont push for this reason so I am a bit stunned lol
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