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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

#531

Post by dreamcompiler »

embedding-shape wrote: post #73
azalemeth wrote: post #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 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…

Completely agree. This reminds me of the shady companies offering their employees "unlimited vacation" which translates to "you had better never take vacation because if you do it will be a major black mark against you."

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

#532

Post by rafabulsing »

bitfilped wrote: post #468
azalemeth wrote: post #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 rest…

When it comes to storage "unlimited" to me means a promise to be broken at some random point in the future. I'll never use a service that claims unlimited anything over having an actual cost model. Companies that charge by what you use have actually given consideration to the cost of doing business and have priced that in already.

I've long thought that words such as "unlimited", "infinite" and so on should be legally banned from marketing, or at the very least their use should be heavenly regulated.

_Nothing_ is actually infinite. Everything has limits.

"But X terabytes is functionally infinite for 99.99% of users"

Cool, then advertise that you offer Xtb of storage. Infinite means infinite, and if you offer anything less than that - and you do - then you shouldn't be allowed to say otherwise.

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

#533

Post by Dylan16807 »

rsync wrote: post #337
azalemeth wrote: post #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 rest…

"I guess the problem with Backblaze's business model with respect to Backblaze Personal is that it is "unlimited"." The new and very interesting problem with their business model is that drive prices have doubled - and in some cases, more than doubled - in the last 12 months. Backblaze has a lot of debt and at some point the numbers don't make sense anymore.

Is it that bad? When I look at the prices of new drives on amazon I mostly see increases just under 50%. I think used went up more but that's not affecting backblaze as much.

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

#534

Post by aborsy »

Dropbox is literally the worst anmong all. For every little feature, like setting a password it requires upgrading your already paid plan. It’s slow and offers nothing.

I put a Nextcloud snap on a VPS in the same city. Fast and no limitations.

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

#535

Post by noirscape »

toast0 wrote: post #448
masfuerte wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

IMHO, you can't do blazingly fast iteration over folders with small files in Windows, because every open is hooked by the anti-virus, and there goes your performance.

Not just antivirus, there's also file locking.

Windows has a much harsher approach to file locking than Linux and backup software like BackBlaze absolutely should be making use of it (lest they back up files that are being modified while they back them up), but that also means that the software effectively has to ask the OS each time to lock the file, then release the lock when the software is done with it. With a large amount of files, that does stack up.

Linux file locking is to put it mildly, deficient. Most software doesn't even bother acquiring locks in the first place. Piling further onto that, basically nobody actually uses POSIX locks because the API has some very heavy footguns (most notably, every lock on a file is released whenever any close() for that file is called, even if another component of the same process is also having a second lock open). Most Linux file locks instead work on the honor system; you create a file called filename.lock in the same directory as the file you're working on, and then any software that detects the filename.lock file exists should stop reading the file.

Nobody using file locks is probably the bigger reason why Linux chokes less on fast iteration than Windows, given that Windows is slow with loads of files even when you aren't running a virus scanner.

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

#536

Post by solarkraft »

freedomben wrote: post #81
solarkraft wrote: post #49

So what are HN’s favorite alternatives? Preferably cheap and rclone compatible. Hetzner storagebox sounds good, what about S3 or Glacier-like options?

> So what are HN’s favorite alternatives? I assume when asking such a question, you expect an honest answer like mine: rclone is my favorite alternative. Supports encryption seamlessly, and loaded with features. Plus I can control exactly what gets synced/backed up, when it happens, and I pay for what I use (no unsustainable "unlimited" storage that always comes with annoying restrictions). There's never any surprise…

That’s why I like rclone, but I’m concerned with where to actually put the stuff.

Those $50 indeed sound high to me. I think I’d be fine depending on the Glacier backup, is that rclone compatible? What do you pay for it?

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

#537

Post by ahhhhnoooo »

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #527
Anamon wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be half OK if it worked, but you can't trust it to. OneDrive, for instance, has an open bug for years now where it will randomly revert some of your files to a revision from several months earlier. You can detect and recover this from the history, but only if you know that it happened and where, which you usually won't because it happens silently. I only noticed because it happened to an append-only text f…

Even crazier is one drive has a limit on the total length of a file path, how is this even a thing that exists.

Unlimited strings are a problem. People will use it as storage.

No, I'm not joking. We used to allow arbitrary paths in a cloud API I owned. Within about a month someone had figured out that the cost to store a single byte file was effectively zero, and they could encode arbitrary files into the paths of those things. It wasn't too long before there was a library to do it on Github. We had to put limits on it because otherwise people would store their data in the path, not the file.

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

#538

Post by ValentineC »

klausa wrote: post #17

Exclusions are one thing, but I've had Backblaze _fail to restore a file_. I pay for unlimited history. I contacted the support asking WTF, "oh the file got deleted at some point, sorry for that", and they offered me 3 months of credits. I do not trust my Backblaze backups anymore.

> Exclusions are one thing, but I've had Backblaze _fail to restore a file_. I pay for unlimited history.

> I contacted the support asking WTF, "oh the file got deleted at some point, sorry for that", and they offered me 3 months of credits.

This happened to me with CrashPlan for Windows many years ago, because of some Volume Shadow Copy Service thing. I noped out of there right after.

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

#539

Post by noja »

julianozen wrote: post #346
julianozen wrote: post #335

We are going to drop blackblaze over this We discovered this change recently because my dad was looking for a file that Dropbox accidentally overwrote which at first we said “no problem. This is why we pay for backblaze” We had learned that this policy had changed a few months ago, and we were never notified. File was unrecoverable If anyone at backblaze is reading this, I pay for your product so I can install you on…

Also taking recommendations for a simple services I can install on my dads windows machine and my moms Mac that will just automatically backup the main drive to the cloud just in case

I like https://www.borgbase.com

It's set it and forget.

You will need to set it up for them, then you get an email (from borgbackup, not the client so it works when the client is not running) when a backup hasn't happened for a while.

As client there are more options now (like Vorta, from them), but I have had success with https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest and the Restic backend.

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

#540

Post by ValentineC »

peteforde wrote: post #203

Weirdly, reading this had the net impact of me signing up to Backblaze. I had no idea that it was such a good bargain. I used to be a Crashplan user back in the day, and I always thought Backblaze had tiered limits. I've been using Duplicati to sync a lot of data to S3's cheapest tape-based long term storage tier. It's a serious pain in the ass because it takes hours to queue up and retrieve a file. It's a heavy enou…

> Here's the thing: I'm paying about $14/month for that S3 storage, which makes $99/year a total steal. I don't use Dropbox/Box/OneDrive/iCloud so the grievances mentioned by the author are not major hurdles for me. I do find the idea that it is silently ignoring .git folders troubling, primarily because they are indeed not listed in the exclusion list.

A big difference here is that Backblaze only keeps deleted/changed files for 30 days. Deleted files can go unnoticed for some time, especially if done by a malicious app or ignorant AI.

I'd pay that extra few dollars for peace of mind.

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