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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

#551

Post by dns_snek »

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.

What do you expect to happen when your cloud storage file path is 5000 characters long and your local filesystem only supports a maximum of 4096?

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

#552

Post by SSLy »

Lord_Zero wrote: post #334
appreciatorBus wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why no linux support?

we already have restic which is really really great.

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

#553

Post by robertjpayne »

While there may be some issues with Backblaze there's no real trusted alternative with such a long history.

Regardless to the OP's issues:

- on macOS since 9.0.2.784 released in 2023 all .git folders are included in backups - Cloud drives are problematic to backup because they all use extension plugins to hide the network and your local disk only contains stubs instead of actual files. If Backblaze scans it fully it'll download everything and exhaust your disk space there's no easy solution here.

I don't buy for a minute they were trying to be "sneaky" to save some $$ I instead feel like for the majority of users they felt it was misleading to backup stubs only and would rather not brick user computers by downloading all the files. Remember they can't access your cloud disk directly so the only way they can get the file contents is by doing an fread and letting the cloud drive client sync the content on demand.

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

#554

Post by varenc »

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…

Dropbox itself should already keep version history of files for 30 days with the free plan, or more if you pay.

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

#555

Post by ineedasername »

wrs wrote: post #391
ineedasername wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a pretty straightforward issue to solve, to simply backup only those files that are actually on the system, not the stubs. If it's on your computer, it should able to get backed up. If it's just a shadow, a pointer, it doesn't. Making the change without making it clear though, that's just awful. A clear recipe for catastrophic loss & drip drip drip of news in the vein of "How Backblaze Lost my Stuff"

The OP’s complaint is that the files were not backed up. If they had discovered that only stubs were backed up, I don’t think they’d be any happier.

Not what I meant: The other cloud storage services connected to the computer, eg OneDrive. Those files, when they are just stubs. I'm saying that Backblaze could simply not backup stubs, if the person isn't syncing the actual file to their drive. If they are, backblaze should back it up.

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

#556

Post by peteforde »

ValentineC wrote: post #540
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/chang…

Thanks so much! That is super valuable input.

I do notice in their GUI that they offer a >30 memory for extra $:

30-Day Version History (Current) Included

1-Year Version History

Forever Version History $.006/GB/Month for versions changed or deleted more than 1 year ago

They are not giving much information here at all. The above is not a pasting artifact; their page literally doesn't give any indication of how they price the 1-year history. Presumably it's not just as simple as click to 12x your retention for free.

Meanwhile, it's even more unclear whether that $.006/GB is assessed for change deltas or for the total file size. Indeed, it's not clear if it's assessed against your entire fileset or just files that changed.

I'll have to email them, I guess.

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

#557

Post by Jolter »

avazhi wrote: post #483
Jolter wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know, I got 140 upvotes on a nitpick so I think others agree with me it’s hard to read.

Didn't say it wasn't. I said invoking an accessibility standard when it comes to a guy's personal website is laughable because the way it was said implied he was compelled to change his site because some bureaucratic busybodies somewhere said he should. Unless you are a business or a government, most people aren't overly concerned about accessibility, nor should they be - especially if it comes about only through gui…

I don’t think I’ve insinuated any threats. WCAG are guidelines. It’s a great idea to follow them if you want your content to be consumed, but as you say most jurisdictions would only mandate accessibility for certain actors, not for everyone. Me, I have no idea what jurisdiction the OP is in, or who he/she is, or whether WCAG would be a compliance issue to them. I just used that term as a clue/hint that there are frameworks that can help guide web authors towards good practices. Like how WCAG 2.2 specifies a minimum contrast level. Nobody knows all of this stuff by default, we all have to learn it. Gotta assume good intentions and just point them towards the tools available.

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

#558

Post by stebalien »

noirscape wrote: post #19

I can understand in theory why they wouldn't want to back up .git folders as-is. Git has a serious object count bloat problem if you have any repository with a good amount of commit history, which causes a lot of unnecessary overhead in just scanning the folder for files alone. I don't quite understand why it's still like this; it's probably the biggest reason why git tends to play poorly with a lot of filesystem too…

I've actually spent some time debugging why git causes so many issues with the backup software I use (restic).

Ironically, I believe you have it backwards: pack files, git's solution to the "too many tiny files" problem, are the issue here; not the tiny files themselves.

In my experience, incremental backup software works best with many small files that never change. Scanning is usually just a matter of checking modification times and moving on. This isn't fast, but it's fast enough for backups and can be optimized by monitoring for file changes in a long-running daemon.

However, lots of mostly identical files ARE an issue for filesystems as they tend to waste a lot of space. Git solves this issue by packing these small objects into larger pack files, then compressing them.

Unfortunately, it's those pack files that cause issues for backup software: any time git "garbage collects" and creates new pack files, it ends up deleting and creating a bunch of large files filled with what looks like random data (due to compression). Constantly creating/deleting large files filled with random data wreaks havoc on incremental/deduplicating backup systems.

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

#559

Post by thebrain »

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.

Everything needs limits otherwise someone will figure out how to or accidentally break it.

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

#560

Post by malfist »

peteforde wrote: post #429
justin66 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Maybe they're only incompetent in the ways that have been enumerated in this blog post" does not seem like much of a sales pitch. Baffling.

I'm happy to pay an annual fee for a one-size fits all approach that I don't have to think about. I read the post and I'm just saying that his blockers are not blockers for me. I would ask you: what is the better alternative? That's not a rhetorical question; they don't have my credit card details for another two weeks.

This whole post is saying that you _do_ have to think about it.
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