

Ask HN: What service do you use for personal file backup? - agotterer

My Mozy subscription is about to end. I thought the overall service was good, but sometimes unreliable or slow. I'm trying to decide if I should renew or go elsewhere. What other backup services do you recommend?
======
redmage
I use tarsnap[1] and not-so-regular backups to my home fileserver.

[1] <http://tarsnap.com>

------
KB
I prefer my Apple Time Capsule. Wireless backup, runs in the background
whenever my MBP is up, fixed up front cost, and all my data stays on my own
network.

------
mrinterweb
Time Machine on mac, Back in Time on Linux. Both are great. I backup to a
network drive. If you are using a mac, and you want to use time machine, don't
waste your money on their time capsule product. To find out how to use time
machine with a non-apple backup resource, look into sparse bundles.

------
dryicerx
Amazon S3.

    
    
      cron job -> tar gz -> s3cmd -> s3
    

Their cheap, very reliable, and fast. What else can I ask for.

~~~
cperciva
_What else can I ask for?_

How about faster, cheaper, and more flexible? If you back up the same or
overlapping sets of files, tarsnap's snapshotting functionality will probably
result in it using less bandwidth (and thus end up being cheaper) than a raw
tar | gzip | s3 approach.

~~~
dryicerx
The --newer switch does the trick

~~~
cperciva
Incremental archives via 'tar --newer' are better than just storing complete
archives each time, but they fail compared to tarsnap in two important ways:
1. If you modify a file and then perform a backup, you'll store the _entire_
new file rather than only the parts of the file which changed; and 2. If you
modify a file and then perform a backup, you now have two copies of that file
stored, and you have to continue paying to store both copies even if you only
care about the most recent version of the file.

~~~
dryicerx
Point taken. Of course you are comparing a full personal backup solution meant
specifically for this task to a one liner :)

But for my purposes as personal data backup, I just wouldn't see a speed or
price difference of that type of efficiency.

------
edb
Jungledisk! It allows you to store all yor data on your s3 account

~~~
agotterer
This comes out to slightly higher then my Mozy account would cost per month.
Does Jungledisk do any encryption or protection for you? I know Mozy encrypts
everything.

~~~
rgrove
Be careful with Mozy. If you haven't done a test restore, I strongly recommend
you try one now. The Mozy restore process is extremely broken and has been for
years.

You can read about my horrible experience with Mozy (and the horrible
experiences of hundreds of commenters) here:
[http://wonko.com/post/it_turns_out_mozy_isnt_so_hot_after_al...](http://wonko.com/post/it_turns_out_mozy_isnt_so_hot_after_all)

------
mustpax
I make bootable clones of my laptop hdd with SuperDuper. I use 2 drives and an
external SCSI drive enclosure for this. This way, I have a weekly copy and a
daily copy. And when my laptop hdd fails I can switch over to a good copy with
no downtime.

I also use Dropbox for a certain subset of my documents, so that adds another
layer of backups w/ partial rollback as well.

Online backups are good, but an external SCSI enclosure costs at most $40 +
the cost of an internal drive, which is cheaper, and allows faster recovery.

------
rgrove
CrashPlan. I've got it backing up all my machines to a Drobo on my LAN as well
as remotely to CrashPlan's servers, encrypted before it crosses the wire, and
it costs me $5 a month. Been using it for years and have done several very
large restores and it's worked like a charm.

------
mjh
rsync.net has been fantastic over the years, I use them and several of my
clients do as well. No first level support, straight to an engineer. Plus
discounts for open source projects, students, etc.

In addition to their own backup agent; they support rsync, scp, sftp, ftp,
rdiff-backup, Unison, duplicity, svn+ssh, WebDAV and any other combination or
concoction you can come up with.

Plus, they have a ToS agreement that can't be beat:
<http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/tos.html>

------
Elepsis
SugarSync, though I also use it to keep files in sync between PCs.

~~~
catone
I've been very happy with SugarSync. I also back up my most important files to
a couple of USB thumb drives.

------
kailoa
For just about everything non-media, I use mercurial to a colosite. Works
fantastic. Big media files (movies, iTunes Library, etc.) are backed up
locally to a big data server.

------
ballen
Jungledisk for my laptop, Duplicity -> Amazon S3 for servers.

------
aberman
I use dropbox for everything. I can't imagine a better solution.

~~~
agotterer
I also use dropbox. Its fantastic for sharing. But to me its not a real backup
solution. Everything doesnt live in the same folders or drives, seems like a
lot of work to turn dropbox into a half baked backup solution.

~~~
swolchok
You can start by moving things into Dropbox and symlinking them back to their
original locations. Can't help you if you're on Windows.

------
Vitaly
astrails-safe ([http://blog.astrails.com/2009/4/6/simple-backups-can-be-
simp...](http://blog.astrails.com/2009/4/6/simple-backups-can-be-simple)):

runs from cron, archives files and mysql databases (and more), encrypts with
gpg and uploads to amazon s3

------
vaksel
none really,

I just backup on DVDs every 3-4 months, the folders that change over that
period.

~~~
agotterer
I do that as well. But there's always that small chance or fire or theft. I
also like having incremental backups that are taken every night. Just in case
a file gets accidentally modified/deleted or corrupted. Better safe then
sorry, and for $50ish bucks a year it easily justified.

------
dazzawazza
Everything I care about goes in to an offsite SVN repository.

------
rgaidot
rdiff-backup distance (via ssh)

------
smithjchris
2x 16Gb USB sticks and TrueCrypt.

I don't keep anything immediately replacable (like media).

