Ask HN: Constant backup tool for Mac/Win/Linux? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Constant backup tool for Mac/Win/Linux?

7 pointsx005410 comments

I have been looking for a self managed, preferably open source, backup tool that could mirror the contents of my MacBook hard drive to a local NAS running Linux. My current solution involves BTSync 1.4, but I do not like this solution because it's no longer supported, and BTSync 2 is a mass, as far as I am concerned, and I do not like the direction it's going in. Basically I want to pick some directories on my laptop and have them constantly sync to a location on my NAS, when ever the NAS is accessible. One way sync would be just fine, as it's for backup only, and no versioning is necessary, as I can implement that on the NAS separately.

Rsync is a fine solution, but I would prefer something with file tree monitoring, so changes could be propagated immediately. Any ideas? I looked into crashplan, but again, it's a closed source solution that requires creating an account, and I would prefer my backup solution to be "Zombi Apocalypse" ready :)

Mac and Linux only solution would be fine, but something that supports windows would be nice too.

The Apple solution is to buy a time machine ;) If you can get Syncthing https://syncthing.net/ running on NAS you even have two way sync (it's like btsync but open source). rsync can be triggered by a good file monitoring tool like Watchmen https://facebook.github.io/watchman/ which you should run in background as service. But running rsync on every little file change is maybe CPU and IO overkill (but you can set a trigger like an environment variable which runs rsync on a scheduled time interval). So it's all possible with a little Shell or Python magic, you can also check if the NAS is available within that script. So this is my DIY approach... would be also interesting for me if there are finished solution for that available.

I use Arq[1] for backing up my Mac. It's also available on Windows, but not Linux. However, it does allow you to back up to Linux, via SFTP. It also supports S3 and a few other cloud services.

It does cost. You can either pay for a subscription to use their servers, similar to Backblaze, etc, or you can pay $40 (this is what I did) for the stand-alone app. Personally I back my Macbook up to S3 - it costs me less than $5/month. I've been using it for a couple of years now and it gets regular updates and has saved the day for me more than a few times.

[1] https://www.arqbackup.com/

That sounds like a good possible solution. Online backups are not an option for me, due to internet limitations, but paid app with open source restore tool is an acceptable solution. At least that way I am not going to be stuck with no way to retrieve my files in case the company ever goes out of business or something like that. I wish there was a way to make it run in powernap, like Time Machine does. I was even considering using TM with a network drive. It's not terribly difficult to setup, you just need to setup AFS I believe , and set a few flags. I have done this before. But TM is annoyingly not configurable and insists on "backing" things up locally until it can offload the backup to the server.

I've read recently that Amazon Cloud Drive offers unlimited storage for 60 USD in USA. https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/pricing?ref_=cd_home_navpr... Never used it myself.

Unfortunately due to our internet connection currently (satellite, very limited), internet options are impractical.

This might be useful, although is Linux centered most options would probably work on Mac and some of them maybe you can make them work on Windows too!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9210505

Unison https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

Backblaze covers Mac and Windows.

+1 for Backblaze.

Using online backup services is way better, it's accesible from anywhere as far as you have internet. Your data is also being saved redundantly on the data center.

Unfortunately due to our internet connection currently (satellite, very limited), internet options are impractical. We are super limited on data, 15GB/mo :(

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