

Ask HN: What's your favorite online-backup tool? - sabj

Hey HN -<p>It's almost 2011, and my backup solution still calls for semi-regular huddles between my laptop and a few external drives, which I randomly scatter between home and school for redundancy. This is pretty low-tech, all things considered, and I'd like to enter the future. Right now at best I have a hodgepodge of things that I will try to upload to Google Docs or suchlike. Not so pretty!<p>Where to start? I could set up from cron scripts and buy Amazon S3 space, but that really doesn't seem to be the most elegant solution (perhaps for some software projects, but not for a personal basis).<p>Options I'm familiar with are, most prominently, Mozy (mozy.com) and Carbonite (carbonite.com). I guess using something like Dropbox could fulfill this need to some extent as well.<p>Would love to hear feedback about these services for automated backups and any other alternatives I should consider.<p>Thanks!
======
quesera
Tarsnap. Simple, cheap, efficient, honestly secure.

I can't imagine storing personal files and photos somewhere "out there",
managed by someone else, in readable form.

Seriously, how do you Dropbox (etc) fans sleep at night?

~~~
bmelton
My dropbox partition is completely enveloped in a TrueCrypt partition.

I don't particularly have many concerns with the security of Dropbox, but I do
keep some personally sensitive information on there, and TrueCrypt is how I
sleep at night.

~~~
jpeterson
Doesn't this make your syncs terribly slow? It will basically have to send up
your entire partition every time you make a change in any file there.

~~~
mdda
AFAIR : Truecrypt is designed so that changed plain blocks map to changed
secure blocks : i.e. the whole secure image doesn't change if one plain file
does. (Makes sense from a speed perspective too).

------
CRASCH
It depends on the platform and what type of backup you are looking for.

It used to be that a backup was a full or image backup. It is a bit funny how
I used to say I have a backup and it meant a backup of my entire computer. If
I didn't, I'd say I had a backup of the database, or a backup of home. Now if
someone says I have a backup I assume it is just of some of their files.

There are really now three types of backups.

Image or full backups - These are far more useful. You can actually fix your
computer without reinstalling and reconfiguring everything.

Partial backups - Files and Folders, unfortunately letting the software try to
select the "Important Files" is fatally flawed on windows. They generally
select based on file name and location. If you use any software slightly off
mainstream you will want to make sure those data files are backed up.

Sync - Sync software maintains a copy online which is good for most files and
is essentially an extra copy or backup. But some files or directory structures
are troublesome like build directories, databases (especially email databases
like outlook pst files). Make sure they support multiple versions...

Begin shameless plug...

Hybir Backup recently won "Software Product of the year" from the DaVinci
Institute.

I wrote Hybir Backup <https://www.hybir.com> It is windows only for now. Hybir
Backup performs full online backups and full local backups (simultaneously).
Bare metal restores can be done from the windows PE 3.0 recovery environment.

The interesting part to the technology is the data identification and global
data de-duplication technology. Essentially only data unique to your PC needs
to be uploaded. First backups on relatively clean machines are pretty quick.
If you have a bunch of unique user data, you will have to upload it just like
the other services. The advantage is all of those other files are backed up
too.

During a full restore only files that are truly different need to be restored
to fix the computer greatly speeding the restore process when a computer won't
boot, but the disk is still functional hardware wise.

Another cool feature is that if you backup online only, and need to do a bare
metal restore, you don't have to download the full image. You can simply
backup another PC to a USB drive. You probably need another PC to burn the
recovery CD you didn't burn before the problem anyway. Any data that is common
and identical on the USB drive will be copied from the USB drive. The unique
bits will be downloaded at the same time. You have a fairly good chance of not
having to download the OS, MS Office, etc.

The software is free to use for local image backup and supports network
drives. It works great for a small office environment and includes the data
identification technology. This makes it really efficient storage wise. It is
probably the only free local backup solution that has global data de-
duplication.

------
xeno42
I've been pretty happy with Crashplan ( <http://crashplan.com/> )so far. The
free version will allow you to backup to one or more remote machines which you
can seed via a hard drive if you want to avoid uploading hundreds of Gb for
the initial backup. They have options to backup to their data center too for a
competitive rate (unlimited storage).

Transfers are encrypted, de-duplicated and compressed, supports file
versioning and it all works very well.

The only downside I've had is that their Java client uses a lot of memory both
on my OS X and Linux boxes (haven't tried Windows) - It's using nearly 600Mb
of resident memory right now.

~~~
pacemkr
I'd like to second and stress that CrashPlan supports client side encryption
using a private key. This means that _nobody_ can ever get to your files
without the key (not even you), no matter how much access is granted to the
CrashPlan servers. From what I remember from my research, they were one of the
few online backup providers that offers this option.

I also love the fact that you get email alerts about the backup status for
every destination (in one email) local or to remote.

I've been extremely happy with the service. It keeps multiple versions of
files and backs them up continuously if you have CrashPlan+. This has already
saved my bacon more than once.

The icing on the cake is that you can designate some storage as a backup well
of sorts and have your family (or other computers) back up to this
destination. This is very easy to setup and has worked flawlessly for me, no
networking or "what is my ip" voodoo.

~~~
sabj
I like this, but... how is it free?

~~~
pacemkr
I didn't say it was free... Neither did the OP ask for a free solution. So...

~~~
sabj
Ah, I understand: my grammar was unclear. I just saw the first page, where it
said "free," and I was confused about what the economics of the plan were. I
don't care if it is free, and in fact that free factor was a concern, since I
was wondering how it stayed in business. Clicking through and seeing the
pricing, I understand now. The question was more "how does it stay in
business," not, "in what way is it free." : )

~~~
pacemkr
I didn't realize that you were the original poster, sorry.

I admit their product offering is a bit confusing. It does make sense though:

You can install CrashPlan (the regular, free version) on any number of
computers and set them up to back to each other/external drives/ftp/etc. This
works wonders for family computers, for example. At this point its all free.

If thats not enough for you you can buy the "Plus" version of the software
that offers continuous backup, stronger encryption, etc. This is where it
stops being free; you're down something like $60 for the software.

Regardless of which version of the software you use, however, you can pay for
CrashPlan Central, which is effectively another backup destination that
happens to be on their servers, this is the "online" portion of their
offering. The cost is more or less on part with the Mozys out there.

So technically if you are OK with backing up just between your existing
machines and you don't need up to the minute backups, their free offering will
work just fine for you and it works well.

------
jkahn
I use JungleDisk (<https://www.jungledisk.com/>) - it's good because it can be
used for backups, syncing, and previous versions of synced folders. It also
does multiple users and multiple operating systems (Mac/Windows - probably
does Linux too but I haven't checked).

It's also quite cheap.

I previously used Mozy, which was excellent, but only does backup. Mozy was
much more efficient over the wire, better at notifications and better about
resuming very large backup sets. But unfortunately doesn't do synced folders
and the rest.

~~~
limmeau
Do you use the old just-pay-the-S3 client or the new $2/month service?

~~~
jkahn
Workgroup edition - which is $4 per month per account. It includes the first
10GB of storage on rackspace's cloud for each account, which seems to pool.

------
scraplab
I'm surprised Duplicity hasn't had a mention. It supports full and
incremental, zipped encrypted backups (using GPG) to S3/SCP/FTP/local/etc.
Under the hood it uses librsync for fast binary diffs.

Duplicity + S3 is somewhat similar to tarsnap. It's not quite as friendly -
you have to put a bit more effort in - it doesn't provide easy key generation,
and it doesn't support snapshots, but you have no reliance on any third party
service other than S3.

If the Duplicity software disappeared off the planet you could still recover
your files - it's just split gzipped encrypted files.

Oh, and you can install it on OSX using homebrew: `brew install duplicity`

<http://duplicity.nongnu.org/> (unfortunately the site seems to be down for me
right now - here's the cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2s6jQju...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2s6jQjuVOyoJ:duplicity.nongnu.org/+duplicity)
)

~~~
St-Clock
+1 for duplicity. With the command line tool, you can also:

1- Easily go back in history (if you erased a file and want it again, it's
here, in a previous incremental backup).

2- Ask to automatically make a full backup every X months.

3- Ask to automatically remove incremental and full backups older than X
months

4- Select the granularity of the backup buckets (very useful to avoid having
hundreds of files or if your connection is unreliable).

5- Upload a backup bucket while preparing the next one in parallel.

6- Use S3 reduced redundancy storage if you want (cheaper...)

Duplicity is written in Python and the API is easy to use if you want to rely
on a Python script instead of a shell script.

The fact that you can use S3 was a deciding factor: it is a really cheap
solution with a big ecosystem of tools and it should still be there in 10
years...

------
coverband
Assuming you want Windows, try the fast & free application called Duplicati:

<http://code.google.com/p/duplicati/>

Their 1.0 release is out and works excellently with S3. It can't be set up as
a Windows service yet, but that functionality is on its way.

For Linux, my favorite is another free utility called Amanda Network Backup:

<http://amanda.org/>

Supports S3 and MySQL backups. Really easy to set up and has commercial
support if you need it.

~~~
sabj
I like it! I used to use some various commercial products to this end, but
found them rather unpleasant. I like the aesthetic here and might put this to
use even for some side projects. Thanks!

------
trampsymphony
My personal favorite (Mac only) is Arq: <http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq>

It uses Amazon S3 for storage, has versioned backups, very lightweight and
fast, and leaves all Mac metadata/permissions intact. I've had 0 crashes or
problems in a year of constant use.

They also supply an opensource tool you can use to restore your backups, in
the event that you don't have access to your licensed copy of Arq (like if
your laptop gets stolen)

------
jobenjo
I've been happy with Backblaze. Good cpu usage, and I restored files easily
with a nice web interface.

I switched from Mozy because the client was much more efficient. If you're
looking at Mozy and Carbonite, definitely check out Backblaze.

(Also, I met the CEO a few years back--seemed like a smart guy).

~~~
rdoherty
I love Backblaze too. They also have a great blog and have posted about their
custom hardware a while back <http://blog.backblaze.com/>

------
bartman
I won a Spideroak ( <http://www.spideroak.com> ) plan and have been using it
for about a month now. It works, uploads are fast, I can't comment on how easy
a restore would be. The only thing that's really annoying is that a search for
updated files uses 100% CPU.

Other than that I can warmly recommend JungleDisk (
<https://www.jungledisk.com/> ), been using it do backup my source code and
documents for about a year now without any major problems. I don't even notice
it runs anymore. I'm using it with the S3 backend.

~~~
timthorn
Do a trial run of a restore. I've seen too many backups fail/be incomplete to
trust that backup works without validation; test that you can get back what
you need to.

~~~
rarrrrrr
The most comically tragic "failure to effectively test restore" story I'm
aware of is from one of our customers, who previously had their own home grown
backup system with encrypted archive shipping offsite, monthly test restores,
and so on.

It was only after a total failure that they realized the gpg keys to decrypt
the backup were only contained _in_ the backup. Their test restores before
were happily using keys from the user's home directory.

This is one of the many reasons it makes sense to have a company that
specializes in backups help you with backups. :)

(I cofounded SpiderOak)

------
Mithrandir
I use ADrive. ( <https://www.adrive.com/login> ) They give you 50GB free. No
SSL support for free-users, so you might want to encrypt sensitive files. (Use
the link above to log in with SSL for free.)

But to be really honest with you, I'm considering leaving ADrive for my own
external HD only. That's the safest, not always easiest, solution.

------
brianwillis
Don't be too quick to overlook Dropbox. I use it for almost everything.

~~~
slantyyz
I use Dropbox in combination with Crashplan. Dropbox for "live" files, and
Crashplan for "archive" files.

------
joanou
I love AltDrive.com. But I'm partial since I created it...and took 5 years
doing so. I think tarsnap is good but it seems more for hackers and IT types.
Reading their blogs, they do seem to well understand security and encryption.

AltDrive has a free two month trial for either home or business users. You can
control your own encryption key too. It is highly secure and uses AES-256 EAX
mode encryption. It works in Windows, OSX, Linux. Plus other OSs for business
users. It is easy to use and is full featured. There is also a white label
offering for the business service.

Check it out. <http://altdrive.com> I'm always looking for feedback of any
kind that would help improve it.

------
sbierwagen
rsync.net

Not cheap, ($.80gb/month) but bulletproof, and about as hacker-friendly as it
gets. As you may be entirely unsurprised to hear, you can use rsync with it,
as well as sftp, webdav, etc, etc, etc.

~~~
sabj
I had heard about this before, and I think it is really great - for small
amounts. For backing up my laptop hard drive (~250 GB) and everything I
normally would keep backed up (another... 1 TB?) or even some fraction
thereof, this would get SUPER expensive. :(

What I really _need_ backed up: \- Documents (~5GB) \- Photos (~20GB)

What I would _like_ backed up includes everything to do a full drive recovery,
but beyond that, music [40 GB] and other harder-to-replace things.

If I can't backup all my backups, that's fine, but I think under even the
bare-bones situation, rsync would be outside my budget :)

~~~
sbierwagen
I use rsync to back up compressed text, .rc files, etc. The critically
important stuff, that in meatspace would go in a safe. Photos, music, and
movies (the kind of stuff that would be on bookshelves) get backed up to
terabyte hard drives in USB external boxes.

The difference here is that the important stuff is _also_ on those drives.
"Importance" here means how many times it's replicated, and how far apart the
backups are.

------
Goosey
Dropbox and external HDs for now. Trying out AeroFS as a possible migration
path; I have outgrown the reasonable price point of cloud storage.

------
petercooper
Dropbox for me. The seamless multi-machine syncing just adds another dimension
thay makes it a must have for me.

------
dnwalters
Tried Carbonite and CrashPlan, but have settled on Mozy to cloud backup my 2TB
RAID network drive. $5/mo or $55/yr, unlimited storage for one 'machine'. Good
client tool for the Mac with bandwidth throttling and intuitive file picker.
And fast indexing.

------
bound008
Has no-one on here hit problems with backblaze's number of file limitations
and xml data structures?

see: [http://harijan.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/the-real-
backblaze-b...](http://harijan.wordpress.com/2009/04/27/the-real-backblaze-
backup-speed/)

what the author does not make clear is the statement: "the bzfileids.dat is
causing my computer to stop."

this is how i found the article originally, the bzfileids.dat on my computer
was too large and at that point the only solution is to reinstall the
software. which invalidates your old backups and they are purged after 30
days.

------
hippich
Backup-manager - <http://www.backup-manager.org>.

I posted a blog post about using it on server -
[http://www.yepcorp.com/blogs/pavel-karoukin/simple-backup-
so...](http://www.yepcorp.com/blogs/pavel-karoukin/simple-backup-solution-
backup-manager-and-amazon-s3.html)

I am using it to backup both my dedicated server and laptop.

Basically, this is bash script with config file and some dependencies to Perl
libraries to upload files to S3. Since it's bash script - it's very
customizable.

------
thaumaturgy
We used to recommend Backblaze to our clients (and set a few up with it), but
when they announced a while back that they had entertained a purchase offer, I
pulled the plug on that. I can't in good conscience recommend an online backup
service that's not in it for the long haul.

We now try to get people set up with Carbonite, mostly because of its pricing,
ease-of-use, and compatibility with most platforms.

I'd love to find something with a good white-label reseller program, but no
luck so far.

~~~
rarrrrrr
You may like SpiderOak's white label program:
<https://spideroak.com/partners/>

(I cofounded SpiderOak in 2006.)

~~~
thaumaturgy
IIRC, SpiderOak was a close contender but it didn't meet one of our
requirements.

We were looking for an offer where we would handle support and invoicing of
our clients, with compatibility for Windows and Mac, while being able to keep
costs under $10/month/client. We're happy to tell our clients about the
service we're using.

Pretty much everything seemed to break on one of those points; either the
service wanted to do the invoicing, or it was prohibitively expensive.

------
greattypo
No one has mentioned my current favorite, iDrive. I didn't want to spend more
than $5-10/month on online backups, and found that Tarsnap, Dropbox,
JungleDisk, etc all got expensive too quickly to back up 100GB+.

I wanted to like Mozy but the mac client crashed on me and the uploads were
slow.

iDrive gives you 150gb for $5/month. Plus the mac client is reliable, the
uploads are quick, and they let multiple computers share space if you want.

------
tomasr
I used Mozy for a while. It was OK, but the desktop/server distinction doesn't
always make sense. Never did have to try it in a substantial restore, though.

Nowadays, I keep most of my stuff backed up locally on external hard-drives,
but also started using dropbox recently for smallish set of files (sharing,
mostly, but serves as a backup of sorts as well).

------
sahillavingia
For quick file uploads (to share or when I'm hopping around campus), I'm
surely going to plug my new project, Crate [1] (though I have it better than
most, with access to the sexy Crate for Mac app).

[1] <http://letscrate.com/register?inv=hn>

------
ljordan
I sought around for one for awhile to little avail; Dropbox works for me. I
have relatively modest needs.

------
bobds
One interesting open-source solution is Areca: <http://www.areca-backup.org/>

Multi-platform, encrypts, compresses, incremental/differential backups to FTP,
network drives, local drives, usb sticks and it has a GUI.

------
justinludwig
What's wrong with s3? It's cheap and simple. If you use linux, try
<http://live.gnome.org/DejaDup> \-- it provides a dead-easy gui to automate
backups (to s3, or to other kinds of storage).

~~~
sabj
It seemed like it would be relatively more complex to set up / run, and more
expensive to store large bunches of files. Good middle-range option. I like to
dual-boot sometimes, which might mean hairier fixes, but more than that I
don't want to have to do any tech support for my backup solution if anything
goes wrong. Experiments, software, I'm fine dealing with the consequences, but
with my data, I don't want too many DIY fixes since the results can be really
unpleasant!

------
whatevers2009
Dropbox and Amazon S3. Carbonite and Evernote in lesser use.

------
anarchitect
Backblaze, a ReadyNAS as a Time Machine server and JungleDisk. I know I could
drop Backblaze or Jungledisk, but I never got around to deciding between them.

------
kurtsiegfried
I'd place another vote for SpiderOak. The fact that you can pool storage
between computers on a consumer plan is great, and their DIY API looks
promising.

~~~
ammmir
<http://macsoftwarespotlight.com/> is offering 35% off SpiderOak pricing (less
than an hour left). their DIY API seems simple enough and hacker-friendly,
although i hope they standardize their API so it's easier to migrate from, say
S3.

------
32ftpersecond
Ubuntu One is free for a certain amount (relatively large) and larger plans
are really reasonable. But, not sure if you're running any Linux boxes.

------
krung
Consider - <http://www.phpmybackuppro.net/> nice tool and its free

------
dstefanov
I'm satisfied with BackBlaze (<http://backblaze.com)-> $5/mo

------
swankpot
Sugar Sync

I've never compared; I just use the first one someone invited me to use. 5GB
free.

------
foobarbazetc
Desktop: CrashPlan Server: tarsnap

------
maheshs
dropbox

~~~
bwanaaa
no one mentioned sugarsync?

can some people chime in with a multimachine option that also allowsaccess by
smartphone?

