Live data from Hacker News

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

rareese.com

311–320 of 716 posts

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

#311
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you using now? Asking for a friend

I use rsync.net. You can use basically any SSH tool or rclone interface. They have a cheaper plan for "experts" if you want to forgo zfs snapshots, https://www.rsync.net/signup/order.html?code=experts .

Rsync.net is really really good.

Just this weekend, my backup tool went rogue and exhausted quota on rsync.net (Some bad config by me on Borg.) Emailed them, they promptly added 100 GB storage for a day so that I could recover the situation. Plus, their product has been rock solid since a few years I've been using them.

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

#312
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they have the necessary pipes to serve the rate they sell you 24/7. Nobody has turned the moon into a hard drive yet.

Since I know how many of those businesses are run I'll let you in on the very obvious secret: there’s zero chance they have enough uplink to accommodate everyone using 100% of their bandwidth at the same time, and probably much less than that. Residential network access is oversold as everything else. The only difference with storage is there’s a theoretical maximum on how much a single person can use. But you could…

Yes, yes. We know. The business environment can't be arsed to maintain it's own integrity by actually building out the capacity they want to charge for. Everyone hides behind statistical multiplexing until the actuarial pants shitting event occurs. Then it's bail out time, or "We're sorry. We used all the money for executive bonuses!"

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

#313
I've been very content moving away from OneDrive/GDrive to a personal NAS setup with Synology/Ugreen. You can access a shared drive/photo drive and use Tailscale to mount your volume from anywhere.

I've also configured encrypted cloud backups to a different geographic region and off-site backups to a friend's NAS (following the 3-2-1 backup rule). It does help having 2.5Gb networking as well, but owning your data is more important in the coming age of sloppy/degrading infrastructure and ransomware attacks.

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

#314
post #245

Ultimately the author is ranting about something that is likely an unintended bug where some update along the line reset the default exclusions list. It almost seems like they’re taking it personally as some kind of intentionally slight against them. Most users would not want Backblaze to back up other cloud synced directories. This default is sensible.

Hidden default to not backup is incompetent not sensible.

It’s not hidden it’s right there in the exclusions list.

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

#315

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…

Any company that does the "unlimited*" shenanigans are automatically out from any selection process I had going, wherever they use it. It's a clear signal that the marketing/financial teams have taken over the businesses, and they'll be quick to offload you from the platform given the chance, and you'll have no recourse. Always prefer businesses who are upfront and honest about what they can offer their users, in a s…

I just read the Reddit post by their developer and my takeaway is that they have a very good understanding of “unlimited” really means. It’s not a shenanigan. It’s just calculated risk. It’s clear to me that they simultaneously intend to offer truly unlimited backups while hoping that what the average user backs up is within a certain limit that they can easily predict and plan for. It’s a statistical game that they are prepared to play.

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

#317
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…

Shoutout to Arq backup which simply gives you an option in backup plans for what to do with cloud only files: - report an error - ignore - materialize Regardless, if you make it back up software that doesn’t give this level of control to users, and you make a change about which files you’re going to back up, you should probably be a lot more vocal with your users about the change. Vanishingly few people read release…

Love Arq!

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

#318

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.

I was waiting for some kind of pop up, so I could click "Deny all" and then the text would be readable. But no. It just stayed essentially greyed out, like reading it is an invalid option (which turns out to be the case).

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

#319
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any more details? This is a pretty big deal. The differentiators between Backblaze and Hetzner mostly boil down to this kind of thing supposedly not being possible.

I’m on my phone so forgive the formatting, but here’s my entire support exchange: - - - Hey, I tried restoring a file from my backup — downloading it directly didn't work, and creating a restore with it also failed – I got an email telling me contract y'all about it. Can you explain to me what happened here, and what can I do to get my file(s?) back? - - - Hi Jan, Thanks for writing in! I've reached out to our engine…

This seems absurd from a company offering backups as a service.

Especially if they allow them restoring all your data onto a drive and shipping it to you, they pretty clearly should have enough information available to them to test restorations of data, and the number of times I've heard that failure mode ("oh, we didn't track deletions well enough, so we only found out we deleted it when you tried restoring"), plus them saying they have made improvements to avoid this exact failure mode in newer client versions, makes me think they should have enough reports to investigate it.

...which makes me wonder if they did, and decided they would go bankrupt if they told people how much data they lost, so they decided to bet on people not trying restores on a lot of the lost data.

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

#320
post #92

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…

Unlimited means without limits or restrictions. If a company uses the word unlimited to describe their service, but then attempts to weasel out of it via their T&Cs, that doesn't constitute a disagreement over the meaning of the word unlimited. It just means the company is lying.

Sorry but unlimited has never meant unrestricted. TOCs always have restrictions. If it were unrestricted it would be used for all kinds of illegal stuff they don’t want on their servers, child pr0n and whatnot. They can’t legally offer a service like this without restrictions as they operate within an existing set of laws.

Unlimited however, they can offer. I don’t see how people get into mental block of thinking something is nefarious when a company offers you unlimited hosting or data. Yes, they know it’s impossible if everyone took full advantage of that. They also know most people won’t and so they don’t have to spend time worrying about it. It’s a simple actuarial exercise to work out the pricing that covers the use of your users.

Back in the early 2000s I ran a web hosting service that was predominantly a LAMP stack shared hosting environment. It had several unlimited plans and they were easy to estimate/price. The only times I had an issue of supporting a heavy user, it would turn out they were doing something unrestricted. Back then, it was usually something pron or mp3 related. So the user would get kicked off for that. I didn’t have any issues with supporting the usage load if it was within TOS. The margins were so high it was almost impossible to find a user that could give me any trouble from an economic standpoint.

Post reply on HN