Bit of a strange request here but here's the story:
Have a client device backed with MBS to Backblaze with full encryption (file and file name). The device died and there is no way to pull anything off of the storage on it. I restored a bunch of the data onto a new device but didn't restore everything due to bandwidth constraints. Went back to restore the remaining data a few weeks later but it appears to be gone with the wind. Suspect MBS marked those files as "deleted" and then removed them.
Here's the thing though, the storage size for that device never decreased. In fact, it's only increased. So I have a suspicion the files/data is still there, I just can't see it through MBS any longer. So my question is this: is there any way to manually decrypt the files if I download them directly from Backblaze? These are kinda important files so if it takes time or tools I don't really care. I just need to be able to see if these files are actually there or not.
, thanks for reaching out.
This is how it works:
1. Backup job (plan) checks the backup source for new or updated data compared with the meta database (we call it the repository).
2. The backup agent backs up the files.
3. Files in their older versions that reside in the backup storage will be deleted according to the retention policy configured.
4. Notifications being sent.
In other words, if you don’t have the machine, nothing backs to new data and nothing deletes existing data.
I think that you can’t see the data because the default backup prefix is the computer name and the new computer has the name that is different from the original computer. Changing the prefix should help.
If not, please open a case with our support team.
I may have to do that then (open a ticket) as the computer names are different but I made sure to use the same backup prefix (otherwise I wouldn't have seen any data to restore even partially).
I'm wondering if what happened is that the data entries were removed from the repository but data/files themselves weren't actually, physically deleted from Backblaze. I've tried synchronizing it on the new system several times but nothing really changes.That said, the amount of storage used in the Backblaze bucket has only increased in the meantime. This should definitely not be the case as the total size of the backup is only ~20GB and files in question would've taken up probably 2-4 GB on their own (and the user doesn't add that much in data between months).
, I have an idea. Can you please check that file history (oftentimes it's called Versioning) is enabled for your account.
If it is so, then the data might be marked as deleted, thus the backup agent can't find it but could still be there in the bucket. If my assumption is correct, then restoring it (undoing delete) with Backblaze can help here.
Thanks
Sorry for taking so long to get back on this. I just checked the bucket and I believe versioning/file history is called "Lifecycle" and it is enabled. Currently trying to find out how it works and if the files are still restore-able. Might be a bit difficult since the file names are encrypted so I can't tell what's what.
In general, we don't recommend enabling any kind of versioning or lifecycle policies on cloud containers outside of our software, due to the problems similar to yours, since the software may not be aware of some of the files being deleted in the cloud.