[qsi]

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]

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

[sam345]

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

[Backblaze-Jim]

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.

[qsi]

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.

[wafflebot]

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.

[betadeltic]

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..

[NR-backblaze]

Natasha from Backblaze here. Fair criticism. This should have been communicated more directly.

For context, this was driven by changes on the Dropbox side in how synced files are handled, which affects how reliably they can be backed up. But even with that, it should have been surfaced much more clearly.