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

rareese.com

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

#191
post #169

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 rest…

Why don't they charge by the Gigabyte

Because approximately no one wants that. Anyone who does already uses S3 etc.

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

#192
post #179

The issue with a client app backing up dropbox and onedrive folders on your computer is the files on demand feature, you could sync a 1tb onedrive to your 250gb laptop but it's OK because of smart/selective sync aka files on demand. Then backblaze backup tries to back the folder up and requests a download of every single file and now you have zero bytes free, still no backup and a sick laptop. You could oauth the bac…

Unless it does something very weird it won't trigger all those files to download at the same time. That shouldn't be a worry.

And, as a separate note, they shouldn't be balking at the amount of data in a virtualized onedrive or dropbox either considering the user could get a many-terabyte hard drive for significantly less money.

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

#193
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.

The font is dark enough, yet the weight is too light. Hairline or ultrathin or something. It's eye straining.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny that the same person asking for linux support would complain about B2 “not being for home users”. I sync my own backups to B2 and would set that up over installing linux any day of the week! It’s extremely easy.

What software/workflow do you use for this Linux to B2 backup please?

rclone on a cron job

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

#195
post #179

The issue with a client app backing up dropbox and onedrive folders on your computer is the files on demand feature, you could sync a 1tb onedrive to your 250gb laptop but it's OK because of smart/selective sync aka files on demand. Then backblaze backup tries to back the folder up and requests a download of every single file and now you have zero bytes free, still no backup and a sick laptop. You could oauth the bac…

Unless it does something very weird it won't trigger all those files to download at the same time. That shouldn't be a worry. And, as a separate note, they shouldn't be balking at the amount of data in a virtualized onedrive or dropbox either considering the user could get a many-terabyte hard drive for significantly less money.

> Unless it does something very weird it won't trigger all those files to download at the same time. That shouldn't be a worry.

The moment you call read() (or fopen() or your favorite function), the download will be triggered. It's a hook sitting between you and the file. You can't ignore it.

The only way to bypass it is to remount it over rclone or something and use "ls" and "lsd" functions to query filenames. Otherwise it'll download, and it's how it's expected to work.

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

#196
post #179

The issue with a client app backing up dropbox and onedrive folders on your computer is the files on demand feature, you could sync a 1tb onedrive to your 250gb laptop but it's OK because of smart/selective sync aka files on demand. Then backblaze backup tries to back the folder up and requests a download of every single file and now you have zero bytes free, still no backup and a sick laptop. You could oauth the bac…

This is a complexity that makes it harder, but not insurmountable. It would be reasonable to say that if you run the file sync in a mode that keeps everything locally, then Backblaze should be backing it up. Arguably they should even when not in that mode, but it'll churn files repeatedly as you stream files in and out of local storage with the cloud provider.

> Arguably they should even when not in that mode, but it'll churn files repeatedly as you stream files in and out of local storage with the cloud provider.

When you have a couple terabytes of data in that drive, is it acceptable to cycle all that data and use all that bandwidth and wear down your SSD at the same time?

Also, high number of small files is a problem for these services. I have a large font collection in my cloud account and oh boy, if I want to sync that thing, the whole thing proverbially overheats from all the queries it's sending.

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsure if sarcastic but most ISPs will throttle and "traffic" long before you use anything close to times .

I've been running RPI-based torrent client 24/7 in several countries and never experienced that. Eats a few TBs per month, not the full line, but pretty decent amount. I guess it really depends on the country.

I'm in the UK with Virgin Media on their 1Gbps package, going through multiple TB a month and I'm yet to be throttled in any way.

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

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume they are trying to enable Reader mode which is Ctrl+Alt+R

According to http://web.archive.org/web/20260317212538/https://support.mo... its F9 on Windows Ctrl + Alt + R on Linux Command + Option + R on macOS (It uses JS to only show the one for your platform but with view source you can see it mentions all three of these different OSes.) So I guess the first guy is a Windows user and you other two use Linux.

> (It uses JS to only show the one for your platform but with view source you can see it mentions all three of these different OSes.)

There is a dropdown at the top-right to select the platform - no need to view source.

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

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it does something very weird it won't trigger all those files to download at the same time. That shouldn't be a worry. And, as a separate note, they shouldn't be balking at the amount of data in a virtualized onedrive or dropbox either considering the user could get a many-terabyte hard drive for significantly less money.

> Unless it does something very weird it won't trigger all those files to download at the same time. That shouldn't be a worry. The moment you call read() (or fopen() or your favorite function), the download will be triggered. It's a hook sitting between you and the file. You can't ignore it. The only way to bypass it is to remount it over rclone or something and use "ls" and "lsd" functions to query filenames. Other…

Why would it use either of those on all the files at once? It should only be opening enough files to fill the upload buffer.

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

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is the right way to see this. Why should a file backup solution adapt to work with git? Or any application? It should not try to understand what a git object is. I’m paying to copy files from a folder to their servers just do that. No matter what the file is. Stay at the filesystem level not the application level.

I'm not saying Backblaze should adapt to git; the issue isn't application related (besides git being badly configured by default; there's a solution with git gc, it's just that git gc basically never runs). It's that to back up a folder on a filesystem, you need to traverse that folder and check every file in that folder to see if it's changed. Most filesystem tools usually assume a fairly low file count for these op…

7za (the compression app) does blazingly fast iteration over any kind of folder. This doesn't require special code for git. Backblaze's backup app could do the same but rather than fix their code they excluded .git folders.

When I backup my computer the .git folders are among the most important things on there. Most of my personal projects aren't pushed to github or anywhere else.

Fortunately I don't use Backblaze. I guess the moral is don't use a backup solution where the vendor has an incentive to exclude things.

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