Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others • Hacker News Board

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

#671

Post by rsync » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC

subhobroto wrote: post #590

rsync wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your kind words. Just to clarify - there are discounted plans that don't have free ZFS snapshots but you can still have them ... they just count towards your quota. If your files don't change much - you don't have much "churn" - they might not take up any real space anyway.

I don't think a lot of people know you also support Borg 1.x (if you don't absolutely correct me!) It would be incredible if you started to look into S3 compatible object stores, unless you have made a business decision not to support it. Thank You for providing an affordable option for self hosters.

We will continue to specialize in filesystem provision, not object storage.

However, we do support interoperating with block storage, such as 's5cmd':

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44248372

... and, of course, rclone, which you can invoke remotely, on our end to move data between cloud accounts, etc.

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

#672

Post by defaultcompany » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 6:25 PM UTC

Tor3 wrote: post #641

defaultcompany wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They encrypt files on the client before transmission.

There was a Swizz cloud backup system existing until some years ago.. can't recall the name but it started with a 'V'. They also encrypted the files on the client side before transmission, but the files were encrypted with their own md5sum or some such as key, and therefore similar files from different systems, encrypted, could still be de-duplicated across their whole system.

Interesting! I can picture how the clients could calculate a hash prior to encryption and that would let the server know those files have the same contents once decrypted but how would that let them save on disk space? They still can’t see the contents of the file itself even if they know it’s the same so how could they deduplicate the storage? If they drop either one they are just left with a single encrypted version using only one clients key which they can’t serve up to anyone else.

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

#673

Post by zrm » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 7:00 PM UTC

dns_snek wrote: post #551

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You expect the files to still be accessible using relative paths. What do you expect to happen if your cloud storage file path is 50 characters long and is mounted in a folder which is 4050 characters long when PATH_MAX is 4096?

The sync application itself can handle this using openat(2) or similar and should probably be using that regardless to avoid races.

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

#674

Post by subhobroto » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #671

subhobroto wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think a lot of people know you also support Borg 1.x (if you don't absolutely correct me!) It would be incredible if you started to look into S3 compatible object stores, unless you have made a business decision not to support it. Thank You for providing an affordable option for self hosters.

We will continue to specialize in filesystem provision, not object storage. However, we do support interoperating with block storage, such as 's5cmd': https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44248372 ... and, of course, rclone, which you can invoke remotely, on our end to move data between cloud accounts, etc.

Thank You for that link!

> not object storage

Happy to email you, if that's better, but is this because of unsustainable competition in the space or the tremendous volatility in consumption that object storage customers bring to the table?

I ask because in this current market, I would imagine investing in storage infrastructure is painful, but then I wonder, you are still in the storage infrastructure space anyways, so it likely has to do with the user behavior or user expectations or both.

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

#675

Post by burnte » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC

srdjanr wrote: post #452

burnte wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 out of a thousand people might do that, the others will buy the product. That's why people use it, most people don't want to build everything themselves.

It's a reference to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

LOL I should have remembered. :D Sorry!

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

#676

Post by theshrike79 » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 7:56 PM UTC

jamie_ca wrote: post #469

julianozen wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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've been extremely happy with Arq https://www.arqbackup.com/ for several years as a quiet backup solution, bring your own storage. I've done a few small restores and it's been just fine, and it automatically thins your backups to constrain storage costs. Managing exclusions is something to keep vaguely on top of (I've accidentally had a few VM disk images get backed up when I don't need/want them) but the default ex…

Second vote for Arq, still on the trial but I have zero issues.

I'm using B2 as the backend, ironically, along with a Hetzner Storage Box. It just runs in the background, has decent defaults for "Don't backup useless crap" etc.

I'm still debating whether to get the single purchase version or pay $60 a year for 5 computers + 1TB of cloud storage.

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

#677

Post by NR-backblaze » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 8:21 PM UTC

Hello everyone. Natasha from Backblaze here. I wanted to offer some insight into what happened with backing up cloud-synced folders. You are correct that we recently updated how Backblaze Computer Backup handles cloud-synced folders. This decision was driven by a consistent set of technical issues we were seeing at scale, most of them driven by updates created by third-party sync tools, including unreliable backups and incomplete restores when backing up files managed by third-party sync providers.

To give a bit more context on the “why”: these cloud storage providers now rely heavily on OS-level frameworks to manage sync state. On Windows, for example, files are often represented as reparse points via the Cloud Files API. While they can appear local, they are still system-managed placeholders, which makes it difficult to reliably back them up as standard on-disk files.

Moreover, we built our product in a way to not backup reparse points for two reasons:

We wanted the backup client to be light on the system and only back up needed user-generated files.

We wanted the service to be unlimited, so following reparse points would lead to us backing up tons of data in the cloud

We’ve made targeted investments where we can, for example, adding support for iCloud Drive by working within Apple’s model and supporting Google Drive, but extending that same level of support to third-party providers like Dropbox or OneDrive is more complex and not included in the current version.

We are currently exploring building an add-on that either follows reparse points or backs up the tagged data in another way.

We also hear you clearly on the communication gap. Both the sync providers and Backblaze should have been more proactive in notifying customers about a change with this level of impact. Please feel free to reach out to me directly if you have any questions.

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

#678

Post by Backblaze-Jim » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

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…

Hello, Jim from Backblaze here. I wanted to offer some insight into what happened with backing up cloud-synced folders.

It is true that we recently updated how Backblaze Computer Backup handles cloud-synced folders. This decision was driven by a consistent set of technical issues we were seeing at scale, most of them driven by updates created by third-party sync tools, including unreliable backups and incomplete restores when backing up files managed by third-party sync providers.

To give a bit more context on the “why”: these cloud storage providers now rely heavily on OS-level frameworks to manage sync state. On Windows, for example, files are often represented as reparse points via the Cloud Files API. While they can appear local, they are still system-managed placeholders, which makes it difficult to reliably back them up as standard on-disk files.

Moreover, we built our product in a way to not backup reparse points for two reasons:

1. We wanted the backup client to be light on the system and only back up needed user-generated files. 2. We wanted the service to be unlimited, so following reparse points would lead to us backing up tons of data in the cloud

We’ve made targeted investments where we can, for example, adding support for iCloud Drive by working within Apple’s model and supporting Google Drive, but extending that same level of support to third-party providers like Dropbox or OneDrive is more complex and not included in the current version.

We are currently exploring building an add-on that either follows reparse points or backs up the tagged data in another way.

We also hear you clearly on the communication gap. Both the sync providers and Backblaze should have been more proactive in notifying customers about a change with this level of impact. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me or our support team directly if you have any questions. https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

We are here to help.

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

#679

Post by Backblaze-Jim » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 9:20 PM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #370

wafflebot wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to drop Backblaze for my entire company over this. I need it to capture local data, even though that local data is getting synced to Google Drive. Where we sync our data really has nothing to do with Backblaze backing up the endpoint. We don't wholly trust sync, that's why we have backup. On my personal Mac I have iCloud Drive syncing my desktop, and a while back iCloud ate a file I was working on. Backblaz…

Bidirectional auto file sync is a fundamentally broken pattern and I'm tired of pretending it's not. It's just complete chaos with wrong files constantly getting overridden on both ends. I have no clue why people still use it and I'd cut my losses if I were you, either backup to the cloud or pull from it, not both at the same time like an absolute tictac.