Posted by rrreese 5 days ago
I still like backblaze, they've been nice for the days where I was running windows. Their desktop app is probably one of the best in the scene.
You all skipped the most important part: 3, 2, 1 backup rule.
Basically, you all were using Backblaze as a centered backup system, what do you think it was going to happen???
You do not backup data and call it a day, you must have a process in place to go there and check random files and folders for corruption. This process would have warned you that the sync was not 1:1
The thing to empathize here is those who purchased these retail Backblaze plans fell into two buckets:
1. The technically savvy who were following the industry standard 3, 2, 1 backup rule, arbitraging the "unlimited" plan, waiting for the game to be over.
2. The technically unsavvy who believed in the "unlimited" plan
My bet is that 2 is screwed and that's majority of the users of this specific Backblaze plan.
This is likely to have rippling effects on Backblaze including their unrelated, object store plans. When there are choices available, people don't appreciate being ripped off and right now, there are a lot of choices in object stores.
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.
So I think you're setting up new customers with the same expectations I had after 14 years of service.
Support just told me 'Backblaze not backing up files stored by OneDrive is not a change in policy. It is the enforcement of policy that has existed since the inception of the Computer Backup service.'
It may be right, but it makes me feel like I have been buying a different product from you than I thought over the last 14 years & disintegrated trust in milliseconds...
It almost seems like they’re taking it personally as some kind of intentionally slight against them.
Most users would not want Backblaze to back up other cloud synced directories. This default is sensible.
Any addition to the exclusions list that wasn't added by explicit user action is a hidden change and a data loss bug.
I’ve witnessed my parents’ Time Machine backups (the simplest backup system of all time) sitting stale because they unplugged the hard drive. They are ultimately responsible for paying attention to the little icon that tells them that the system is overdue for a backup.
I agree that there might be a bug if the exclusion list was modified without user intervention, though I don’t think this blog post convinces me that that’s guaranteed to be what happened. For all we know the author just didn’t notice this exclusion before.
And, again, I think excluding OneDrive and Dropbox is sensible. Most users are not intending to duplicate those backups.