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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

• ibizaman 6mo ago
  Why not just use backblaze as cold storage and use restic or another tool with a GUI to backup to it?
  • julianozen 6mo ago
    Well this wasn’t the promise backblaze made a decade ago when we started using their products. Now I need a new solution that will work for my parents
    • ibizaman 6mo ago
      Of course, I wouldn’t use their client anymore. Actually, I would have never used it from the start as it’s not open source. I think for backups there’s no better guarantee than that. I don’t mean because you could look at the source code, I mean because in my experience open source products tend to care more about their users than not. At least for such foundational tools.
  • reddalo 6mo ago
    Backblaze Computer Backup != B2 Cloud Storage You can't connect to their Computer Backup service through third-party software.
  • cortesoft 6mo ago
    That is a lot more expensive if you have more than a small amount of data.
  • jsw97 6mo ago
    When an org quietly degrades one of their products, you should expect this behavior to occur again.
• julianozen 6mo ago
  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
  • jamie_ca 6mo ago
    I've been extremely happy with Arq https://www.arqbackup.com/ 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 exclusions are all very reasonable.
    • theshrike79 6mo ago
      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.
  • physicles 6mo ago
    Installed Carbonite on my parents’ computer something like 15 years ago, and it still works (every now and then my dad tells me he used it to recover from a bug or a mistake). But I have no idea where the company currently sits on the spectrum from good actor to fully enshittified.
  • web007 6mo ago
    `rclone` with AWS credentials. Go make a bucket and a key that can read/write to it. Set up your config to exclude common non-file dirs, or say "only `/Applications` and `Home` and that's about it. If it's a file then it's a file, and it will be synced up.
  • noja 6mo ago
    I like https://www.borgbase.com 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 https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest and the Restic backend.
• wafflebot 6mo ago
  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. Backblaze had it captured, thankfully. But if they are going to exclude iCloud Drive synced folders, and sounds like that is their intention, Backblaze is useless to me.
  • moffkalast 6mo ago
    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.
    • lazide 6mo ago
      Throw some clock skew into the mix and it’s even more hilarious!
    • Gud 6mo ago
      Why is this downvoted?
      • adamsb6 6mo ago
        The insult to tictacs.
    • babypuncher 6mo ago
      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 systems for over a decade at this point and never had a problem. And if I ever do have one, my real backup solution has me covered.
• petercooper 6mo ago
  I'm going to join the exodus, though for a different reason. Switched to Orbstack and ever since Backblaze refuses to back up saying "disk full" as Orbstack uses a 8TB sparse disk image. You can exclude it, but if they won't (very easily) fix a known issue by measuring file sizes properly I don't feel confident about the product.
  • KingMob 6mo ago
    I've also been bitten by the Backblaze/Orbstack combo, and was one of the early communicators with the OrbStack team about it. While I agree Backblaze is overdue to exclude the sparse image, in fairness to them, no other online backup solution (other than Time Machine itself) handled it correctly either, at the time I was investigating this last year. (I'm not even sure Apple itself handles it correctly in all cases. I had to migrate to a new macbook recently, and Migration Assistant hung while transferring my files. I deleted the sparse image, tried again, and then it worked. Possibly a coincidence, I admit, but Migration Assistant reliably disappoints me every few years.)
• sieabahlpark 6mo ago
  [dead]
• varenc 6mo ago
  Dropbox itself should already keep version history of files for 30 days with the free plan, or more if you pay.
  • eek2121 6mo ago
    You fail to understand the problem, I suspect. Just because files are in bespoke folders, does NOT mean they are being backed up. Example: I'm 1,016% over my OneDrive limit because I canceled my Microsoft 365 account due to their price hike to cover for AI costs. My laptop still pushes files there upon save thanks to Microsoft defaults (my desktop was moved to CachyOS long ago). If I had been using Backblaze for backup, those files would not have been backed up. Luckily, I'm a nerd and I'm way ahead of this (I moved away from OneDrive long ago and never deleted the files). Most folks aren't. Backblaze should be alerting users when stuff isn't backed up. I've strongly considered their B2 offering for a big project. The fact that they changed this without proper notification has made me decide NOT to move forward.
    • varenc 6mo ago
      I thought you said Dropbox overwrote a file, meaning that file was also being synced by Dropbox, and that Dropbox sync was working. So likely the older file version would also have been synced by Dropbox, which it then overwrote. Dropbox itself keeps old versions of files for 30 days. I think you're saying in this situation Dropbox wasn't syncing though? My comment was pretty orthogonal to all the Backblaze stuff, which I realize now was confusing.
      • lazide 6mo ago
        I think they’re saying that Dropbox didn’t have the original (old) copy of the file retained, even though the change was just 2 days ago, because the old version was ‘more than 30 days ago’. Which is bonkers.
        • varenc 6mo ago
          I don't think that's how the 30 day timer works. Once a file is replaced by a new one, the old copy should persist for 30 days. So if it was overwrote 2 days ago, should have 28 days to recover it. But don't know about this situation
• thescriptkiddie 6mo ago
  my parents also lost data that was supposed to be backed up on backblaze because they didn't use that computer for a month and when they turned it back on the hard drive was dead. apparently backblaze silently deletes backups more than 30 days old even if they are the newest backup and then happily keeps billing you for not storing your data.
• qsi 6mo ago
  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 does not back things up is a punch to the gut. I am familiar with the exclusions and I have a look at that list to make I'm not missing anything from my backups. I had always thought the exclusions list was exhaustive. Excluding other files and folders without telling me about it breaks the deal. Dropbox is important to several of the users I installed it for. Ignoring .git folders is another one that affects me and I had not known about. Ouch. I will now have to look for alternatives. It has to be easy to install, run seamlessly on non-technical users' machines and be reliable. I find it hard to be think of a worse breach of trust for a backup service than not to back up files!
  • julianozen 6mo ago
    Most people have recommended Arq to me. I will try it next time I visit my parents https://www.arqbackup.com/ https://www.arqbackup.com/
    • sam345 6mo ago
      Shsh... It's an excellent reliable no frills service. People might flood it.
  • Backblaze-Jim 6mo ago
    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 https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/requests/new We are here to help.
• qingcharles 6mo ago
  This is the same reason I always had Backblaze -- stick it on all my computer-illiterate relatives' PCs and then I know there is a fool-proof backup when something invariably goes wrong.
• Backblaze-Jim 6mo ago
  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 https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/requests/new We are here to help.
  • julianozen 6mo ago
    Hey Jim, Appreciate the thoughtful response. I recognize the challenge that cloud-synced folders introduce into the file storage ecosystem and the challenges with online/offline files + storage loopholes that could take a cause an engineering challenge. That being said, we’ve been nearly 6+ years backblaze users and we probably can’t rely on backblaze if it can’t support these tools that are now pretty standard services to have installed. As I mentioned above, the promise for us was “pay for backblazd and never worry about whether our files are backed up”. We’ll be looking for an announcement if you can bring back Dropbox support. Julian
• NR-backblaze 6mo ago
  Natasha from Backblaze here. This is a situation people rely on backups for, and I can understand how frustrating it is to run into this when you need a restore. I also want to be clear, this wasn’t about saving on storage. It came from cases where backing up cloud-synced folders (like Dropbox) was leading to unreliable or incomplete restores because of how those files are managed under the hood. When Dropbox began using reparse points for synced files, those files no longer behaved like standard local files. Because of that, Backblaze Computer Backup can’t reliably back them up or restore them. The current behavior is focused on ensuring we only back up data we can reliably restore, and we are actively exploring ways to better support Dropbox and data touched by other sync services.
  • julianozen 6mo ago
    If I can make a product suggestion, Backboard has a part of the interface that shows excluded folders. This should explicitly call out the Dropbox folder as being excluded. The software update that removed support for this should’ve included a pop-up that said “Dropbox is no longer being backed up” (though candidly if this pop-up existed on my dad’s machine and he didn’t see it, my mistake). My frustration stems from paying hundreds of dollars over several years to pay for backup and then silently learning Dropbox was no longer supported when we went to look for it in our backup. We could’ve made other choices about how to store/bavkup our own files with better communication.
• jaredklewis 6mo ago
  What are you going to use instead?