time machine - backing up dropbox/googledrive

As long as your dropbox folder is synced to the internet. Time Machine will automatically backup all the files for you. Same as google drive.

You can exclude dropbox/google drive from Time Machine and if you don't automatically exclude it, then it will be included.

If you use TM and then do a restore, those directories may be out of sync or old. I'm not sure what dropbox may do, such as push them to your computers as new.

There's really no reason to back them up, because they're already synchronized on other computers and/or servers.

maflynn said:

because they're already synchronized on other computers and/or servers.

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I think this is the reason why we need a time machine backup, all dropbox files are synced! If I delete (or even worse, replace) a file in my Mac, the same copy on the server (and other devices which connected to the internet) will be removed (or replaced) as well. They are just synced, not really a backup of each other.

The dropbox server copy can protect you from something like HDD failure, but not human error. And time machine can cover that part. Dropbox is mainly for cloud sync, not really a backup service.

h9826790 said:

I think this is the reason why we need a time machine backup, all dropbox files are synced! If I delete (or even worse, replace) a file in my Mac, the same copy on the server (and other devices which connected to the internet) will be removed (or replaced) as well. They are just synced, not really a backup of each other.

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True but I believe Dropbox provides versions, so you can get back to prior version but I see your point and tbh, I've used TM to do that very thing.

maflynn said:

I've used TM to do that very thing.

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Same here

Time Machine backing up

Time machine is a great tool. But you have to be careful when using with Dropbox. After initial (first ) Time machine backup, every backup was 20 -30 GB size. There was no way that I was changing that mach data every hour.
Then I realized that Dropbox is screwing up file indexing, times etc, causing Time machine to think all the time there was that much activities / changes in the files.
That forced me to investigate more in to it. I need a Dropbox and I have to have Time machine.

After realizing that Dropbox (Pro account) have it's own incremental recovery system for 30 days (that's what I want), I disabled Dropbox from my Time machine.
Guess what >> It works great !!!!
So, in order to have TM working the way it should, you should exclude Dropbox from TM.

MREDM said:

After initial (first ) Time machine backup, every backup was 20 -30 GB size.

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That 20-30GB size may not be the "real" size. You may see that TM backup 30GB of data. However, after the backup finish, your TM HDD still have more or less the same free space. I guess that TM is not that stupid now, it knows that the file was "changed", but effectively still the same file. So it count that file in the total backup size, but not necessary has real data movement.