Last night I did some testing on BackBlaze with backup-bouncer v0.2.0 to see how well it was preserving the extra meta-data HFS+ is capable of storing. The results were rather shocking:
./bbouncer verify -d /Volumes/Src ~volz/Downloads/Src
Verifying: basic-permissions ... FAIL (Critical)
Verifying: timestamps ... FAIL (Critical)
Verifying: symlinks ...
stat: ./symlink1: stat: No such file or directory
FAIL (Critical)
Verifying: symlink-ownership ... FAIL
Verifying: hardlinks ... FAIL (Important)
Verifying: resource-forks ...
Sub-test: on files ... ok (Critical)
Sub-test: on hardlinked files ... FAIL (Important)
Verifying: finder-flags ... FAIL (Critical)
Verifying: finder-locks ... FAIL
Verifying: creation-date ... FAIL
Verifying: bsd-flags ...
stat: ./dir-with-flags: stat: No such file or directory
FAIL
Verifying: extended-attrs ...
Sub-test: on files ... FAIL (Important)
Sub-test: on directories ... FAIL (Important)
Sub-test: on symlinks ... FAIL
Verifying: access-control-lists ...
Sub-test: on files ... FAIL (Important)
ls: ./acl-test-dir: No such file or directory
Sub-test: on dirs ... FAIL (Important)
Test dir '/Users/volz/Downloads/Src/90-fifo' does not exist
Test dir '/Users/volz/Downloads/Src/95-devices' does not exist
Verifying: combo-tests ...
Sub-test: xattrs + rsrc forks ... FAIL
Sub-test: lots of metadata ... FAIL
No basic permissions? No timestamps? And no extended attributes? Wow, this means restores from BackBlaze will only get your data back and that you loose all of the hidden data on your files… What does this mean? Well, for example if you have a file that is locked and you restore it, the new file won’t be locked. Examples of other things that get lost: whether or not a file extension is hidden, creation dates, modify dates, symlinks, if a downloaded file hasn’t been opened yet (quarantined), finder comments and where you downloaded an item from. What is the logic here? Is it really that much effort to back this up? Too much space used if you back this up? I wonder how Mozy fares in this test.