This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/datahoarder by /u/ozone6587 on 2024-11-16 19:24:10+00:00.

A lot of people believe that having more options is better. Personally, I think that at some point, having too many options becomes overwhelming. To help simplify things, I’ve researched multiple backup solutions and compiled this list, which I hope will help those just starting out. This is not an exhaustive list but should include all the major options.

Keep in mind this is just my opinion. Feel free to correct me if I’ve gotten any technical details wrong.

Requirements to Be on This List:

• Open source (or source-available).
• Deduplication. This means sync solutions are excluded, even if they have versioning (e.g., rclone, Syncthing).
• Encryption.
• A free CLI version (though a GUI is a plus).
• At least available on Windows, Linux and macOS.

I will refer to the ability to deduplicate across devices as “cross-device deduplication”, which is distinct from traditional deduplication (like Borg).

For example, with Borg, two devices must back up to separate repositories, while cross-device deduplication takes advantage of shared data between devices. Cross-device deduplication is a standout feature, as it saves money: 20 devices with similar data don’t require 20x the storage, as they would with solutions billed per GB (e.g., Backblaze B2).

Good Software

Duplicacy

My current solution. It seems to be the best in terms of features and robustness, but it has some drawbacks—mostly related to its CLI interface, which complicates the learning curve.

Pros:

• Lock-free deduplication: Multiple backups can run simultaneously to the same storage destination without issues (as opposed to unstable locks causing crashes and halting backups).
• Cross-device deduplication.
• Built-in Windows and Mac snapshot support (the latter is especially rare).
• Erasure coding: Adds resiliency to backups (at the cost of storage) by allowing recovery from corruption. This is useful for single external drives or non-NAS devices.
• A GUI option. It’s paid with subscriptions, but they offer a lifetime option every Black Friday so setup a calendar notification and wait a few weeks if interested.

Cons:

• Not fully open source: The source code is available, but it doesn’t offer the freedoms of open source software.
• Horrible documentation: Key information is scattered across forum posts, often incomplete or missing (e.g., erasure coding). Some commands, like duplicacy info, aren’t even documented.
• Confusing terminology: “Repositories” refer to the files to be backed up instead of the storage location with multiple backups (like any other backup solution). “Snapshot ID” refers to an ID for a specific device instead of the sensible definition which would be an ID for a specific backup job (i.e. a snapshot of your files). “Storage Name” also is not simply the name of a storage destination (it’s more like a name you give to a backup job). These are just a few examples of the terrible nomenclature with the cli interface.
• Poor restore experience: No way to mount backups as a file system. Restoring requires initializing the target folder, adding to the complexity.

Restic

Seems to be most popular fully open source option. The cli interface is great with lots of helpful options to browse backups and restore.

Pros

• Cross-device deduplication.
• Fully open source.
• Intuitive CLI interface.
• Supports mounting snapshots.
• Can use rclone as a backend to support different remotes. This gives it an advantage over something like Duplicacy where the devs have to reinvent the wheel.

Cons

• Not lock-free: Simultaneous backups to the same storage destination can lead to conflicts, increasing the risk of stuck backups.
• No official GUI; third-party options are experimental.
• No native macOS snapshot support.

Kopia

An ideal alternative to Duplicacy, fully open source. However, I wouldn’t rely on it alone yet — it needs more maturity.

Pros

• cross-device deduplication
• Free GUI.
• Lock-free deduplication.

Cons

• It seems to not natively support multiple remotes at the same time. For example, with Duplicacy, I can backup to Backblaze, OneDrive and my local NAS easily. For Kopia, the setup is more involved. This is a strange limitation.
• Relatively new compared to alternatives.
• No built-in VSS (Windows snapshot) support without scripting.
• Known issues:
  • Non-UTF-8 paths aren’t stored correctly (source).
  • xattrs aren’t preserved (source).

Borg

Works great but it’s not good for backing up to remote locations which is a big downside and dealbreaker for me. rclone mount is not a recommended workaround for this according to complaints on the rclone forum. Also, you shouldn’t have to use workarounds.

Pros

• Borg has been around for a long time and it is very mature.
• It just works.

Cons

• No clientless remote storage support except for SSHFS - dealbreaker.
• Windows is not supported and WSL support is experimental - dealbreaker.
• No cross-device deduplication.

Other Software (No Detailed Pros/Cons)

UrBackup

Not as popular and doesn’t seem to do anything that the other solutions couldn’t do better when it comes to file based backups. However, I think this is the only viable solution for an open source and image based backup system.

Bad Software

Duplicati

Known for being fragile and prone to backup corruption. Relies on fragile databases and requires frequent workarounds — unacceptable for a backup solution. I wouldn’t trust it for anything critical. Perpetually in beta.

Relevant. Also, I can find horror stories for Duplicati in any major forum. Presumably, the rate of people that are willing to comment online when they have issues is the same for all these alternatives but Duplicati is always the backup software with the most complaints.

Duplicity

Backups are a fragile chain of changes which make restores take forever unless you do frequent non-incremental full backups. Also, it’s just not as popular as the other options and I think that makes a difference in terms of support.