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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

#681

Post by Backblaze-Jim »

fuckinpuppers wrote: post #12

I noticed this (thankfully before it was critical) and I’ve decided to move on from BB. Easily over 10 year customer. Totally bogus. Not only did it stop backing it up the old history is totally gone as well. The one thing they have to do is backup everything and when you see it in their console you can rest assured they are going to continue to back it up. They’ve let the desktop client linger, it’s difficult to add…

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

#682

Post by Backblaze-Jim »

peteforde wrote: post #556
ValentineC wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pr…

Hi, Jim from Backblaze here.

About 2 years ago now, we started including the 1-Year Extended Version History for all accounts.

We did not automatically turn it on for everyone, as it is not something everyone wants.

But there is no longer an extra charge for the 1-Year Extended Version History option when enabled.

You can also enable the Forever Extended Version History option, which will keep any deleted/changed/updated file for a year as part of the base plan, and then after that year that file will begin accruing a storage cost at our current B2 per GB storage cost.

So if you have 1TB of files in the Forever Extended Version History plan, it would cost you an extra $6 per month on top of your current plan.

The storage charge is only charged on files that have not been seen on the customer's computer in over 365 days.

I hope this helps, but please don't hesitate to email us still if you have questions. We are here to help.

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

#683

Post by betadeltic »

Backblaze-Jim wrote: post #680
qsi wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very well put, and echoes my sentiments! I had installed Backblaze on my own home machine many, many years ago, and it has saved my bacon a few times. Since then I've also installed it on any family members' machines that required backup and recommended it to friends. And I've been happy to pay for the service. The deal was that Backblaze backs things up and I don't have to worry about it. Learning that it do…

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 rest…

I'm missing the WHY this wasn't communicated.

Isn't it obvious you need to let your users know there is a new constraint they don't expect?

Seems incredibly short-sighted to me.. The trust you build for years gets destroyed in seconds..

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

#684

Post by jamesfinlayson »

fluoridation wrote: post #642
jamesfinlayson wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah... I remember Windows behaving weirdly when I tried to copy some files with long names into a deeper directory tree. And it was just weird behaviour - no useful error message.

Windows in particular supports at the API level paths tens of thousands of characters long, much longer than Linux. The problem is applications need to explicitly support such paths using the long path syntax, otherwise they're limited to 255 characters.

Yeah I thought there was some way of doing it, but weirdly it was explorer.exe that was behaving in odd ways.

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

#685

Post by Vegenoid »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #598
Vegenoid wrote: post #275

AFAICT Backblaze does back up .git directories. I have many repos backed up. The .git directory is hidden by default in the web UI (along with all other hidden files), but there is an option to show them. You should try downloading one of your backed up git repos to see if it actually does contain the full history, I just checked several and everything looks good.

I'd be really curious to know why that's working for you and not me. I just tried restoring and none of my .git directories were included; just the working copy. I tried with both the web and desktop restore tool. There's no mention of .git being excluded in the Settings or on their support page ( https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/supported-bac... ); they just silently decided to not back up a bunch of m…

Unfortunately I do not know, I haven’t done anything to configure this as far as I am aware. I am on macOS.

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

#686

Post by qsi »

Backblaze-Jim wrote: post #680
qsi wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very well put, and echoes my sentiments! I had installed Backblaze on my own home machine many, many years ago, and it has saved my bacon a few times. Since then I've also installed it on any family members' machines that required backup and recommended it to friends. And I've been happy to pay for the service. The deal was that Backblaze backs things up and I don't have to worry about it. Learning that it do…

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 rest…

As others have said, this is something that should have been communicated very clearly. The reason for using Backblaze is to have my data backed up, and not to worry about it. You say so yourself on your website.

Could you also provide an exhaustive list of items that are NOT being backed up, e.g. the .git folder? I can't find any reference to that anywhere on your website or in the app. What else is not being backed up? I know about the exclusion list in the app, which I have adjusted to suit my requirements, but you need to be clear, explicit and upfront about what you are not backing up. This is critical information.

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

#687

Post by sam345 »

julianozen wrote: post #663
qsi wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very well put, and echoes my sentiments! I had installed Backblaze on my own home machine many, many years ago, and it has saved my bacon a few times. Since then I've also installed it on any family members' machines that required backup and recommended it to friends. And I've been happy to pay for the service. The deal was that Backblaze backs things up and I don't have to worry about it. Learning that it do…

Most people have recommended Arq to me. I will try it next time I visit my parents https://www.arqbackup.com/

Shsh... It's an excellent reliable no frills service. People might flood it.

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

#688

Post by Tor3 »

defaultcompany wrote: post #672
Tor3 wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 versio…

I assume they had a kind of pool for files, and a system linking files (or should I say "blobs" to each client's directory layout. Kind of like if I have a disk with different subdirectories, I could run a tool (which do exist) to find duplicates, and delete all except one copy, and hardlink the rest to that one.

As for the cloud storage system, the files were, as mentioned, stored in an encrypted form, using a hash of the original file as key (possibly md5, possibly something else, I can't recall that at the moment). Which the cloud provider didn't know, but the client's application would know it. The encrypted file is provided to (every) client, every client can decrypt it because the clients keep the encryption keys (the original hashes, one for every file).

The details of that I don't have anymore, there used to be a document describing the whole thing. I probably got rid of all of that after they stopped the service (which I used for several years, with no issues).

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

#689

Post by wafflebot »

Backblaze-Jim wrote: post #680
qsi wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very well put, and echoes my sentiments! I had installed Backblaze on my own home machine many, many years ago, and it has saved my bacon a few times. Since then I've also installed it on any family members' machines that required backup and recommended it to friends. And I've been happy to pay for the service. The deal was that Backblaze backs things up and I don't have to worry about it. Learning that it do…

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 rest…

You should tell your support teams that, because when I asked them if local Google Drive files were excluded they affirmed, and directed me to instructions on how to dissolve my business account.

I'm not surprised that support was wrong, but I was somewhat surprised there was zero attempt at customer retention.

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

#690

Post by unsettledturtle »

senkora wrote: post #433
babypuncher wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a case of people using bidirectional file sync wrong. The point is to make the most up to date version of a file available across multiple devices, not to act as a backup or for collaboration between multiple users. It works perfectly fine as long as you keep how it works in mind, and probably most importantly don't have multiple users working directly on the same file at once. I've been using these s…

+1. It works perfectly if your mental model is: “Every file is only ever written to from a single client, and will be asynchronously made available to all other clients, and after some period of time has elapsed you can safely switch to always writing to the file from a different client”.

Yep. See e.g. steam cloud saves, which is literally just Dropbox for your video game save files. Bidi sync is a super common pattern if you look for it, I'm surprised at all the hate it's getting here.
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