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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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 writes out of what, 3000? For something you'll need to do once or twice ever? It's fine. You might not even eat your whole Drive Write Per Day quota for the upload duration, let alone the entire month. > the technical limits of the technology that I had at home (PON for the time being) Isn't that usually symmetrical? Is yours not?

> 4 writes out of what, 3000? Depends on your device capacity and how much is in actual use. Wear leveling things also wear things while it moves things around. > For something you'll need to do once or twice ever? I don't know you, but my cloud storage is living, and even if it's not living, if the software can't smartly ignore files, it'll pull everything in, compare and pass without uploading, causing churns in ev…

> I don't know you, but my cloud storage is living

But you're probably changing less than 1% each day. And new changes are likely already in the cache, no need to download them.

> if the software can't smartly ignore files, it'll

Backblaze checks the modification date.

> GPON (Gigabit PON) is asymmetric. Theoretical limits is 2.4Gbps down, 1.2Gbps up. I have 1000Mbit/75Mbit at home.

2:1 is fine. If you're getting worse than 10:1 then that does sound like your ISP failed you?

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

#272

Commenting on the presentation, not the content: Why is there a white haze over the entirety of this website?

Hi-DPI displays have convinced web designers it's okay to use ludicrously thin fonts with barely any contrast.

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

#273
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…

That doesn't really make a lot of sense, though. Reading a file that's not actually on disk doesn't download it permanently. If I have zero of 10TB worth of files stored locally on my 1TB device, read them all serially, and measure my disk usage, there's no reason the disk should be full, or at least it should be cache that can be easily freed. The only time this is potentially a problem is if one of the files exceed…

Right, but even if that’s working it breaks the user experience of services like this that ‘files I used recently are on my device’.

After a backup, you’d go out to a coffee shop or on a plane only to find that the files in the synced folder you used yesterday, and expected to still be there, were not - but photos from ten years ago were available!

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

#274
post #64

After mucking around with various easy to use options my lack of trust[1] pushed me into a more-complicated-but-at-least-under-my-control-option: syncthing+restic+s3 compatible cloud provider. Basically it works like this: - I have syncthing moving files between all my devices. The larger the device, the more stuff I move there[2]. My phone only has my keepass file and a few other docs, my gaming PC has that plus all…

We need to talk about The Cone of Backups(tm), which you and I seem to have separately derived!

Props for getting this implemented and seemingly trusted... I wish there was an easier way to handle some of this stuff (eg: tiny secure key material => hot syncthing => "live" git files => warm docs and photos => cold bulk movies, isos, etc)... along with selective "on demand pass through browse/fetch/cache"

They all have different policy, size, cost, technical details, and overall SLA/quality tradeoffs.

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

#275
AFAICT Backblaze does back up .git directories. I have many repos backed up. The .git directory is hidden by default in the web UI (along with all other hidden files), but there is an option to show them.

You should try downloading one of your backed up git repos to see if it actually does contain the full history, I just checked several and everything looks good.

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

#276
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.

Hetzner Storage Box is not even remotely a similar product to B2, considering the only reliability offered is the disks being in RAID. There is no geo-redundancy at all. The number of simultaneous connections is also quite limited, though this might not matter for many use cases.

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

#277
post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really make a lot of sense, though. Reading a file that's not actually on disk doesn't download it permanently. If I have zero of 10TB worth of files stored locally on my 1TB device, read them all serially, and measure my disk usage, there's no reason the disk should be full, or at least it should be cache that can be easily freed. The only time this is potentially a problem is if one of the files exceed…

Right, but even if that’s working it breaks the user experience of services like this that ‘files I used recently are on my device’. After a backup, you’d go out to a coffee shop or on a plane only to find that the files in the synced folder you used yesterday, and expected to still be there, were not - but photos from ten years ago were available!

There’s no reason to think that would happen - files you had from ten years ago would have been backed up ten years ago and would be skipped over today.

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

#278
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.

Why would they do new backups of old files all the time? They would just skip those.

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

#279

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…

I actually emailed them years ago about it. Asked them point blank what'd happen if I dumped 20+ TB of encrypted, undeduplicable backups onto their storage servers. They actually replied that there'd be no problem, but I didn't buy it. Not at all surprised to see this now.

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

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the files are only on the remote storage and not local, chances are they haven't been modified recently, so it shouldn't download them fully, just check the metadata cache for size / modification time and let them be if they didn't change. So, in practice, you shouldn't have to download the whole remote drive when you do an incremental backup.

You can't trust size and modification time all the time, though mdate is a better indicator, it's not foolprooof. The only reliable way will be checksumming. Interestingly, rclone supports that on many providers, but to be able to backblaze support that, it needs to integrate rclone, connect to the providers via that channel and request checks, which is messy, complicated, and computationally expensive. Even if we co…

If you can’t trust modification time you are doing something so unusual that you probably need to be handling your backups privately anyway.
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