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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

#281

Post by jeremyjh »

klausa wrote: post #136
willis936 wrote: post #108

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 reminds me of the Seinfeld riff on car rental reservations. Anyone can make a backup. The important part is holding the backup. If Backblaze doesn’t always do that then it is practically worthless to everyone.

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

#282

Post by Dylan16807 »

gambiting wrote: post #197
dmantis wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, multiple TB isn't close to your bandwidth rating. It only takes 2% of your connection in a single direction to hit 6TB a month.

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

#283

Post by NetMageSCW »

bayindirh wrote: post #217
Dylan16807 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds very acceptable to get those files backed up. It shouldn't stress things to spend a couple weeks relaying a terabyte in small chunks. The most likely strain is on my upload bandwidth and yeah that's the cost of cloud backup, more ISPs need to improve upload.

I mean, cycling a couple of terabytes of data over a 512GB drive is at least full 4 writes, which is too much for that kind of thing. > more ISPs need to improve upload. I was yelling the same things to the void for the longest time, then I had a brilliant idea of reading the technical specs of the technology coming to my home. Lo and behold, the numbers I got were the technical limits of the technology that I had at…

Why would it do that more than once unless you are modifying 4TB of data every day, in which case you are causing the problem.

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

#284

Post by NetMageSCW »

jonhohle wrote: post #247
Dylan16807 wrote: post #233

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?

How do you know how often those files need to be backed up without reading them? Timestamps and sizes are not reliable, only content hashes. How do you get a content hash? You read the file.

If timestamps aren’t reliable, you fall way outside the user that can trust a third party backup provider. Name a time when modification timestamp fails but a cloud provider will catch the need to download the file.

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

#285

Post by NetMageSCW »

ethbr1 wrote: post #88
embedding-shape wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's a clear signal that the marketing/financial teams have taken over the businesses Or that they're targeting the mass retail market, where people are technically ignorant, and "unlimited" is required to compete. And statistically-speaking, is viable as long as a company keeps its users to a normal distribution.

>and "unlimited" is required to compete.

And there speaks marketing.

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

#286

Post by jrmg »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #277
jrmg wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good point (I’m assuming you’re right here and it trusts file metadata and doesn’t read files it’s already backed up?)

It would still happen with the first backup - or first connection of the cloud drive - though, which isn’t a great post-setup new user experience. It probably drove complaints and cancellations.

I feel like I’ve accidentally started defending the concept of not backing up these folders, which I didn’t really intend to. I’d also want these backed up. I’m just thinking out loud about the reasons the decision was made.

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

#287

Post by himata4113 »

restic and with cloudflare r2 (safety) or new hetzner storage boxes(cost effectiveness) are almost cheaper than backblaze 'unlimited' with full control and 'unlimited' history.

I still like backblaze, they've been nice for the days where I was running windows. Their desktop app is probably one of the best in the scene.

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

#288

Post by bayindirh »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #283
bayindirh wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, cycling a couple of terabytes of data over a 512GB drive is at least full 4 writes, which is too much for that kind of thing. > more ISPs need to improve upload. I was yelling the same things to the void for the longest time, then I had a brilliant idea of reading the technical specs of the technology coming to my home. Lo and behold, the numbers I got were the technical limits of the technology that I had at…

Why would it do that more than once unless you are modifying 4TB of data every day, in which case you are causing the problem.

I don't know how your client works, but reading metadata (e.g. requesting size) off any file causes some cloud clients to download it completely.

Of course I'm not modifying 4TB on a cloud drive, every day.

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

#290

Post by NetMageSCW »

noirscape wrote: post #172
adithyassekhar wrote: post #147

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…

Actually once the initial backup is done there is no reason to scan for changes. They can just use a Windows service that tells them when any file is modified or created and add that file to their backup list.
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