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

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

#31

Post by jpeterson »

bmelton wrote: post #25
quesera wrote: post #11

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?

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.

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.

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

#32

Post by epochwolf »

jpeterson wrote: post #31
bmelton wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

I think Dropbox uploads diffs instead of the entire file based on the speed of synchronization of my yojimbo database.

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

#33

Post by pacomerh »

quesera wrote: post #11

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?

I love this kind of services that just work, no need for flashy menus. Plus the pricing model is convenient.

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

#35

Post by arn »

xeno42 wrote: post #9

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 vers…

crashplan looks great. but is anyone else skeptical about the unconditional "unlimited" offerings?

I have a Mac Pro with 5+TB of storage. Lots of HD home videos and photos.

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

#36

Post by sabj »

justinludwig wrote: post #29

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).

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!

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

#37

Post by sabj »

quesera wrote: post #11

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?

Anything I was uploading to the interwebs for serious storage would already be lovingly encrypted in a TrueCrypt container... usually.

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

#38

Post by sabj »

coverband wrote: post #14

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…

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!

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

#39

Post by sabj »

pacemkr wrote: post #23
xeno42 wrote: post #9

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 vers…

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 backu…

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