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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?

#51

Post by eli »

quadhome wrote: post #50
martey wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox's website suggests that they store files using some sort of AES-256 encryption and they cannot read them: https://www.dropbox.com/help/27 I wouldn't make the claim that they are more (or as) secure as Tarsnap (especially since there is no page as detailed as http://www.tarsnap.com/crypto.html on Dropbox's website), but this suggests that files on Dropbox are not readable by the company.

"Suggests." However, the fact that there is a web GUI tells us they can read the data.

...when they are provided with your password.

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

#52

Post by cperciva »

eli wrote: post #51
quadhome wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Suggests." However, the fact that there is a web GUI tells us they can read the data.

...when they are provided with your password.

If you forget your password, can Dropbox reset it for you? If they reset your password for you, can you still read your data? If the answer to both of these is "yes", then dropbox can read your data without you providing your password.

(Honest questions -- I don't use Dropbox, so don't know.)

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

#53

Post by cperciva »

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?

Wow. I go AFK for a few hours (orchestra concert, fundraiser for something) and when I come back online I see this thread. I click on it, all ready to type out a comment saying "I kinda like this tool I wrote for myself, called Tarsnap"... and I find that the top comment, with 3x as many points as any others, is recommending Tarsnap.

I love my users.

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

#54

Post by rarrrrrr »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #41

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…

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

(I cofounded SpiderOak in 2006.)

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

#55

Post by Dobbs »

sandGorgon wrote: post #28
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?

love tarsnap, but seriously... someone please make a web-gui (you can paste your ssh keys in a webpage a la github) or atleast a java gui. It does get to be too painful sometimes.

Wouldn't you have to upload at least a read-only subkey of your tarsnap key not your ssh key. Github works because sshd only requires a copy of the public key to be stored to log in with the private key.

This would destroy the secure model of tarsnap. If you truly want this then don't use tarsnap use dropbox.

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

#56

Post by rarrrrrr »

timthorn wrote: post #19
bartman wrote: post #13

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 w…

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.

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)

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

#57

Post by z92 »

cperciva wrote: post #53
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?

Wow. I go AFK for a few hours (orchestra concert, fundraiser for something) and when I come back online I see this thread. I click on it, all ready to type out a comment saying "I kinda like this tool I wrote for myself, called Tarsnap"... and I find that the top comment, with 3x as many points as any others, is recommending Tarsnap. I love my users.

Seriously, consider writing a client for Windows and your business should increase 10 folds.

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

#58

Post by ammmir »

kurtsiegfried wrote: post #46

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.

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.

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

#59

Post by pyre »

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.

Isn't this insecure? IIRC, the best way to backup data on a secure partition is to create another secure partition (with a different key/password) and sync files between them.

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

#60

Post by 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.

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