There’s a been a lot of (justified) concern and consternation over the last year regarding Backblaze — an online backup service whose simple pitch is that it backs up your entire entire computer, both the startup drive and external drives — and online file storage services like iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive. Backblaze stopped including the contents of such services in its backups. Michael Tsai (as usual) collected a long list of links regarding this.
The whole thing is complicated and confusing. The basic gist, I think, is that Backblaze has stopped trying to back up the contents from these services because sometimes the files aren’t really there on your local file system, but they sorta kinda look like they’re there. That’s what I meant in my post earlier today about Maestral regarding Apple’s modern File Provider APIs. You know how sometimes in iCloud Drive — or Dropbox or OneDrive or anything else that might use these APIs — you can see a file or folder in the Finder, but there’s a “cloud” icon next to it, and you have to click the cloud icon to actually download it? That.
With Maestral none of that comes into play. Maestral just keeps a folder on your local computer in sync with the contents of your Dropbox account. Just like the original Dropbox first-party app back in the day. So if you use Maestral, Backblaze does backup your Dropbox folder, because your Dropbox folder is just a regular folder (albeit, probably, a big one). It’s not a magic folder. Just a regular folder. And the Maestral software keeps its contents in sync. With software that uses Apple’s File Provider APIs — which effectively includes iCloud Drive — what you see as a user are magic folders, and the magic is undocumented.
Now, it turns out that Dropbox’s own first-party Mac client still has an available mode that that doesn’t use the File Provider APIs. Some people who use that old-school mode report that Backblaze still backs up their Dropbox folder. Some people say it doesn’t. Like I said, it’s confusing and complicated and undocumented on all sides. I would rather not worry about it. And with Maestral, I haven’t had to worry about it. When Maestral stops working, I might have to start worrying about it.
The first item Tsai links to is this post from Rob Holliday to the venerable TidBITS-Talk forum.
