Backblaze allegedly stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders — and ignored .git folders

What happened?

It has been reported that Backblaze quietly stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders — along with other folders that users assumed were being protected. A long-time user writing on Rareese and threads on Reddit says they discovered the change after trying to restore a half-decade of git history and finding .git folders were missing from backups. The poster, who’s used Backblaze since 2015 and even received a mailed hard drive restore in the past, says the client now appears to exclude .git and cloud-sync folders while offering no obvious user control to re-enable them.

Customer fallout

The discovery landed like a punch. The user says they lost the project history they expected to recover and felt blindsided — “furious,” in their words. Why? Because backup is a promise: what you put in, you should be able to get back. It has been reported that the exclusion lists visible in the app didn’t mention .git, and users allege there’s no straightforward preference to change this behavior. How many other customers are unknowingly relying on a service that quietly omits whole categories of files?

Why it matters

There’s an important distinction here: sync is not backup. The post notes that services like OneDrive and Dropbox are primarily sync platforms with limited retention windows — typically about a month for deleted files unless you pay for extended history — whereas Backblaze advertises longer retention or paid unlimited retention. If a backup vendor silently treats synced folders as out-of-scope, users have a false sense of security. So check your settings, verify restores, and ask your provider for clarity. In the cloud era, assumptions can be costly — and transparency is everything.

Sources: rareese.com, Hacker News