Low Cost, High Performance Cloud Storage with Backblaze B2

Using Syncovery, you can now store and synchronize your data on BackBlaze B2. Syncovery is a generic file synchronization, mirroring and backup tool that provides an extremely wide range of features. It is a lightweight tool that runs on a variety of platforms and is highly optimized to run efficiently with little CPU and memory usage.

Advantages of using Backblaze B2 with Syncovery

• B2 is a high-reliability and high performance storage
• Syncovery runs on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris/Illumos (Intel only)
• Supported processors are i386, x64, ARM, as well as PPC and PPC64EL (on request)
• Syncovery can run directly on Synology, QNAP and other NAS devices (dedicated installers are available for Synology and QNAP)
• You can set up multiple jobs with extreme customizeability, including:
  • File Masks & Filters
  • Compression, Encryption, and Filename Encryption
  • Multithreaded Transfers
  • File List Cache can avoid re-scanning the B2 folders every time the profile runs
  • Manual, scheduled, or real-time operation
  • One-Way or Two-Way Syncs
  • SmartTracking for Two-Way Syncs can detect deleted files and you can use B2 as central repository for sharing files between several computers
  • File timestamps are preserved on B2
  • Detailed log files and email notifications
  • Synthetic Backup can upload only the changed blocks in larger files to save bandwidth
  • You can also use the same tool to sync local folders and other types of storage.
  • Many additional options are available
• For more details on Syncovery, please visit the main page on our web site as well as our Feature Matrix

Setting it up

Create a new profile, using either Wizard Mode or Advanced Mode. On the right-hand side, click the Internet button and change the protocol to B2 as shown in the following screenshot. Enter your Account ID and Application Key, which you can get from the Buckets page in the B2 web interface. Choose your container and folder with the Browse buttons. To create a new container, just type the name.

B2 Settings

Syncovery 8 can use Amazon S3 Inventories. On the second tab sheet of the Internet Protocol Settings dialog, please choose “Use S3 Inventories”.

To make Amazon generate these Inventories, go to the AWS S3 Management Console and refer to the screenshot below.

Inventory Name: your free choice
Filters: empty, or specify the folder you need
Destination Bucket: must be the same bucket that is listed
Destination Prefix: must be empty

Support for Google Team Drives

Syncovery 7.85 uses the new Google Drive API V3 with support for Team Drives. Any one profile can sync with your main Google Drive, or one Team Drive. There is a new Container field with Browse button on the Internet dialog, allowing you to choose your Team Drive.

Additional New Features in 7.85:
– uses much less memory when processing cloud folder listings (such as Google Drive)
– produces much smaller databases (factor 4-10 reduction)
– in many cases, existing databases can be deleted in order to get the new smaller databases. Except if you depend on Synthetic Backup / Block Level Copying or Cache Destination File List.

However, it is also possible to use different accounts for different profiles.

Each cloud account needs to be identified on the Internet Protocol Settings dialog, using the Account (opt.) field. You could enter the email addresses there or anything else. What you enter does not directly mean anything, it is just a name under which the cloud authentication tokens are saved.

Then when you click the Browse button, an Internet Browser window will appear, asking you to authenticate the user. On this screen, the previous user may appear, so you need to click “Not me” or something like that in order to log the previous user out and log the new one in.

If a profile should be associated with a different account, just change the Account ID to something else, and you will have the chance to re-authenticate it.

If you want to completely re-assign your jobs, you can use the button “Forget Cloud Access Tokens” on the Program Settings dialog, tab sheet “Cloud”.

In May 2015, the older Google Docs API was shut down by Google, and it can no longer be used. It has been completely replaced with the newer Google Drive protocol.

To handle the situation, the new versions 7.17 and 7.20 beta 15 of Syncovery have been releaed. The Google Drive protocol can now fulfill all tasks that the obsolete Google Docs protocol could.

The main feature that had been missing before these updates was the conversion of native Google documents. This is now available, so that all existing tasks can be performed with the new Google Drive API.

Previous Google Docs jobs will automatically use document conversion where chosen. New jobs, and existing Google Drive jobs, need to have document conversion enabled if desired. The checkmark is on the second tab sheet of the Internet dialog. Note that the available file types for conversion have been updated on the Google Docs tab sheet.

Once a profile is switched over to the new Google Drive protocol, you will have to authenticate Syncovery in a browser window. The prompt will appear if you run the job manually in attended mode.

If you need to use several different user accounts in different profiles, this is entirely possible! Just make sure that each profile has a different Account ID shown on the Internet dialog. When the authentication page appears, make sure you log out of the current Google account and log back in with the next account and authorize Syncovery.

If you need to re-do the authentication, you can click the button “Forget cloud access tokens” on the Program Settings dialog, tab sheet “Cloud”.

Note that your Google accounts must “Allow users to install Google Drive apps”.

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This article applies only to the Windows version of Syncovery.