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I use Rclone to synchronize the backup repositories from the Borg host to S3-compatible storage on Wasabi. It offers deduplication and compression, and works great on PC, Mac, and Linux. Borg fits all my criteria and has a pretty healthy community of users and contributors. Ultimately, I landed on a combination of BorgBackup, Rclone, and Wasabi cloud storage, and I couldn't be happier with my decision. I think what I worked out came pretty close to meeting my goals. I had hopes of finding something that would do a better job of deduplicating backup data though, because I knew there were going to be some things (like music libraries and photos) that were stored on multiple computers. In fact, I've been using rdiff-backup for at least 10 years, usually for saving snapshots of remote filesystems locally. I knew there were lots of good options for backing up files on Linux systems. That meant I had to figure out a way to replicate what CrashPlan delivered for me and my family. None of the other options I looked at matched everything I was looking for. BackupPC was a strong contender, but I had already started testing my solution before I remembered it. Backblaze offers unlimited backups at a good price (US$ 5/month), but its backup client doesn't support Linux. Carbonite is similar to CrashPlan but would be expensive, because I have multiple machines to back up. One was really happy with Arq, but no Linux support meant it was no good for me. I searched around and asked my friends about services similar to CrashPlan. Encryption in case the backup files fall into the wrong hands.Replicated data store for backup sets, so data exists in more than one place (i.e., not just backing up to a local USB drive).Point-in-time recovery (or something close) so if you accidentally delete a file but don't notice until later, it's still recoverable.Automation (so there's no need to remember to click "backup").Cross-platform support for Linux and Mac.
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I decided that the features I would need in a suitable replacement included: It makes sense, I suppose, as it wasn't making a lot of money off folks like me, and our family plan was using a whole lot of storage on its system. Recently CrashPlan announced that it was dropping its consumer subscriptions to focus on its enterprise customers. Because I'm generally the IT person for the family, I loved that the user interface was so easy to use that family members could recover their data without my help. Additionally, the ability to do point-in-time restores came in handy on several occasions. The fact that CrashPlan was essentially "always on" and doing frequent backups without ever having to think about it was fantastic. Welcome to the communityįor several years, I used CrashPlan to back up my family's computers, including machines belonging to my wife and siblings.
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