
A Backup Solution?  - wglb
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/backup2009
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trjordan
FWIW, Time Machine can actually be set up to do remote backups. You can even
(p)re-configure the disk image if you want to limit the size, in case you
don't want to partition your disk. I'll grant that it's a bit of a pain over
the 3-click built-in solution, but it's what I'm using these days.

Enabling network backups: [http://rajeev.name/blog/2007/11/03/time-machine-
with-smb-and...](http://rajeev.name/blog/2007/11/03/time-machine-with-smb-and-
nfs-shares/)

Limiting backup sizes:
[http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200711080201215...](http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071108020121567)

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telemachos
I just bought a TimeMachine here since my whole house is now Mac and it
finally seemed worth it. The initial set-up was a bit hairy: my wife's machine
got caught in some sort of bad loop and every time we tried to restart her
initial backup, it grew. First it was going to be 45 GB. When that failed and
died, the next try was 90GB. We killed that, messed with a few things, tried
again, and sure enough it was now going to be 135. Ugly.

Having said that, after wiping the TimeMachine and starting from scratch,
everything has been perfect. And obviously all the backups after the initial
one are very small and quite fast. So I suppose I would give it a B-.

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pclark
<http://www.tarsnap.com/>

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telemachos
The blog post specifically mentions tarsnap in a list of applications that he
then dismisses (they don't "just work").

You might disagree, but if you do, please say why.

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eli
I'd probably agree that it doesn't "just work" (in the sense that e.g. dropbox
just works), but if you're reasonably comfortable with a command line and have
used tar before, it's pretty straightforward.

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drewcrawford
The problem with these sorts of services is that they require finicky
clientside software.

The problem with real "storage" services (S3, Rackspace, etc.) is that they're
ridiculously expensive--on the order of "buy a new backup drive every few
months" expensive. Plus there's no way to ship drives to them or have them
ship drives to you in an emergency.

I'd love to colocate a Backblaze pod in a datacenter and just rsync a few TB
up to it. That way I can handle my own xattrs, my own bare metal, and not
worry about finicky client software. Problem: $8k or so is way outside my
backup budget...

Yeah, I know I could just colocate a $500 NAS, but it seems to wasteful to
have so much CPU, power, etc., just for one backup.

If only we could round up a few hundred HNers to split a Backblaze pod...

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jcapote
FYI, you can mail drives to S3: <http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/>

~~~
drewcrawford
Device Handling $80.00 per storage device handled.

Data Loading Time $2.49 per data-loading-hour. Partial data-loading-hours are
billed as full hours.

Yes, on the order of cost-of-drive.

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jhancock
For my servers (linux), I use tarsnap. For my workstations (OS X) I use
SuperDuper.app to image my hard drive.

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thaumaturgy
We've spent many hours evaluating different backup services -- we're
specifically looking for one with a partner program that's appropriate for our
business.

The good news is, most services now (claim to) offer encryption as part of
their basic package.

For Mac users, Carbonite does seem to be the best service available. For
Windows users, I'd recommend SpiderOak, who are cheaper in most cases than
other services, and they seem to offer a reasonably good client program.

For potential resellers, in our opinion there just isn't a good one available
yet. We hadn't found CrashPlan though, and so far it looks promising.

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sreitshamer
The problem IMHO is that the encryption is just that -- a "claim". You can't
access your data on their servers, so you can't verify it. You can use your
own password, but there's no way to verify it's being used. Backblaze's blog
<http://tr.im/BPfR> for instance says that "IT" has access to my data without
knowing my password.

~~~
thaumaturgy
One of the advantages (and disadvantages) to CrashPlan, for service providers,
is that it allows you to run their server software on your own infrastructure.

But yes, I agree with you otherwise. I'd much rather trust cperciva with data,
but unfortunately his system lacks some critical features for our uses.

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cperciva
_I'd much rather trust cperciva with data, but unfortunately his system lacks
some critical features for our uses._

If you haven't already done so, please send me an email listing the lacking
features which you find critical. I can't guarantee that I'll add them, but
it's always useful to know how many people need what features.

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sreitshamer
<http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/> would seem to fit his needs for all but
the bare-metal restore.

But it's unclear whether he requires an online (offsite) solution or not. For
local backup, Time Machine works fine for all but restoring hard links, fifos
and devices, which may not matter in his case. You just have to remember to
plug in your USB drive, or be near your Time Capsule pretty often.

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svrishi
I have been using <http://www.jungledisk.com> (acquired by Rackspace over a
year back). You pay only for the storage you need (I prefer that over
unlimited backup services), you can choose Amazon s3 or Rackspace cloudfiles
for storage, client software available on all three platforms works fine and
you can encrypt the data with your own passphrase.

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CRASCH
<http://www.hybir.com>

full online backup

bare metal restore

windows only for now.

Interesting performance advantages can be seen in the screen casts here:

<http://www.hybir.com/Action/HybirBackupAction.html>

(blatent self promotion)

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kylecordes
The main problem with Time Machine is how badly it "works" with File Vault...
backing up the encrypted stripes only, and only when you aren't logged in to
your Mac, which in my case is approx 0% of the time.

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shpxnvz
I wouldn't call that working badly - it seems to be about the only reasonable
way to handle the situation. I just started working a logout at the end of the
day into my schedule and never really thought about it since.

I'm curious what you would rather have it do… backup the content unencrypted,
or force a logout every hour to do the backup?

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RyanMcGreal
Back in time + sshfs + cron job is working pretty well for me.

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codemechanic
Try Tonido Backup. <http://www.tonido.com/app_backup_home.html>.

Works on Windows, Mac and Linux. It is free too.

