Completely confused about Backup versus Sync: Can I do both?

Hey Launce, thanks for reaching out to us.

Syncing your files and backing up your files with Dropbox backup are indeed a bit different.

With syncing, you need to manually add files to your Dropbox folder to sync them to your account.

With Backup, you can select your desktop folders to get backed up automatically without manually moving them to the Dropbox folder.

You can read more about the feature here.

Backup also offers version history for your backed up files, just like syncing, but you don't need both for the same files.

Protection is the same, no matter how you choose to add your files to Dropbox.

Let me know if you have any other questions.