
Ask HN: What are you using for backups? - brtkdotse
My new computer is arriving soon and I’d like to have backups running on it from day 1. Right now I have a manual process where I dump stuff on S3, but I’d much rather pay someone trustworthy so I don’t have to think about it.<p>Backblaze and Crashplan are two options that have come up, anything else? I’m ruling out Dropbox&#x2F;OneDrive&#x2F;iCloud since I want one-way sync (lots of heavy audio files that I work on extensively)
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dangus
I don’t personally like “whole system” backup services like Backblaze Backup
and Crashplan. They end up backing up too much system cruft that I don’t care
about. And it’s not like they create a beautiful bootable image or anything,
right? Also watch for the “unlimited” plans. If historical deletions are
important to you, these aren’t a fit. Files you delete on your system
eventually get deleted in backups, too.

I find that most data is better kept elsewhere (bookmarks in browser sync
tools, email and contacts with email provider, personal documents in cloud
providers, multimedia - yes, copied to multiple external drives or a NAS, S3 -
maybe write a script and schedule it).

I used Arq Backup for about a year and while I liked the idea, the UI is
absolutely awful and the restores were painfully slow. It’s way too hard to
control the backup behavior to do what you want. I didn’t feel like I could
trust that the data was going to be reliably restored.

For system migrations, I just use target disk mode to go from old Mac to new
with the migration assistant, which is also stupidly fast between Thunderbolt
3 SSD Macs if you’re using a proper cable (300MB/second for me). Very nice for
when you want to satisfy your new computer excitement.

I feel that time machine has the same utility, or to provide backups to non-
technical users who either refuse the cloud or don’t know how to work a file
manager (or both).

This could be a pain but depending on your needs: an often forgotten option to
look into is Blu-ray Discs. They could be a nice option especially for
redundant long term storage and the price per gigabyte is very low.

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CyberFonic
I dislike the idea of backing up my data on other people's computers and disk
drives. And paying for all that internet bandwidth is another negative.

So I have several USB3 external hard drives which I backup to in rotation,
more or less the same sequence as we used to do with LTO tapes. On Apple Macs
I use TimeMachine and on the Linux servers some custom scripts which basically
achieve the same result.

Of course, the backup scripts exclude temporary and other non-essential files.
The other key factor is to monitor drive errors and being aware of the MTBF of
disk drives and replace them before they become unreliable.

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tastroder
I'm personally happy with rsync.net for offsite backup storage of my personal
stuff, they're active on HN and decently priced imho. My use case consists of
random rsync/sftp selective backups and bare git repositories. Not sure how
great the experience is with large media assets but if it's in the price range
you're willing to put up, they seem quite dedicated to the backup use case and
support is supposedly good if you ever run into problems. I've never had to
contact them though, it was pretty much setup and forget.

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zzo38computer
I use DVDs for backups. All of my files (when compressed in tape archives) fit
on three DVDs (one for /home, one for /var, and one for all other files; this
includes all system files too).

However, you might have more files than I have, so DVDs might not be suitable
for you. See how many files you have so that you can see how many DVDs you
would need, and then you can see if it is suitable for you or not.

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thegeekbin
I’m using restic and b2 to backup anything important I care about. All system
junk I don’t bother to backup. All in all, I’m paying around $8/month to
backup my important documents, photos etc. Restic lets me encrypt them as
well, so bonus points definitely.

~~~
mceachen
TIL: rustic supports Windows:
[https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/stable/020_installation.htm...](https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/stable/020_installation.html#windows)

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Risse
I have a storage box on Hetzner ( [https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-
box](https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box) ), and I use rclone every
day to one-way sync the backup folders.

I have also used Backblaze before, works the same way with rclone.

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jackkinsella
I use arq for automatic daily backups to s3 as well as Time Machine once a
month to an external HD for an extra layer of redundancy. But more importantly
than that, I have a checklist for testing that my backups actually work and
that I won't somehow end up locked out of a server etc.

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brtkdotse
Great feedback, thanks everyone! One thing I forgot to mention is that I’m on
Windows, is there a good rsync clone I could use?

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boring_twenties
ZFS makes this almost too easy. I just create zfs snapshots and 'zfs send'
them to a backup drive.

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pepper_sauce
tarsnap?

