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Show HN: Minimalist App for Backups to Any Storage

92 points| bimbashrestha | 5 years ago |blobbackup.com | reply

64 comments

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[+] conqrr|5 years ago|reply
The one thing that finally works for me for backup is restic (https://restic.net/). I use linux and set my home dir to a different partition, Run a daily script that uses restic to backup to backblaze. Smooth as butter and hopefully I don't need to use it. Curious what this uses under the hood, wouldn't be surprised if it was restic.
[+] dddw|5 years ago|reply
Restic is great indeed. Takes some time to get started, I appreciate that encryption comes first.
[+] rsync|5 years ago|reply
We (rsync.net) will test this out immediately - we're always happy to see tools like this that support plain old SFTP.

If, for any reason, you'd like a free test account, just email [email protected].

Thank you for building this!

[+] mekster|5 years ago|reply
Do you have any recommendations on backup tools?

I figured borg is stable and does the job but others, including restic have problems like memory usage concerns and I'm just a single person shop and don't have any huge assets to backup and already seeing restic/duplicacy choke consuming GBs of memory.

What are the tools that are performant and stable?

I'd like to at least use another implementation besides borg in case a bug corrupts the data.

Encryption, retention policies, incremental backup without periodical full backup and acceptable performance (that people don't fill GitHub issues with performance problems) are requirements and deduplication is a plus.

[+] seized|5 years ago|reply
You may also be interested in Duplicacy (not to be confused with Duplicity etc). Can also backup to SFTP, great dedupe features, RSA encryption, etc.

https://duplicacy.com/home.html

[+] aptmiguk|5 years ago|reply
Your pricing link appears to be down:

"The requested URL /resources/regulatory/pricing.html was not found on this server."

[+] bimbashrestha|5 years ago|reply
Just sent you an email for a test account:) Thanks!
[+] eps|5 years ago|reply
Aesthetics-wise this looks very heavily "inspired" by https://bvckup2.com.

The UI is basically a 1-to-1 copy of an older version:

https://blobbackup.com/images/logs.png

http://bvckup.com/img/shot-6.png

"Good artists create, great artists copy", but that's a bit too close for comfort.

[+] SahAssar|5 years ago|reply
IMO that UI is simple and generic enough that it wouldn't be impossible for them to have come to it independently.
[+] bimbashrestha|5 years ago|reply
Yeah full disclaimer. I started working on it before I saw bvckup2 and then at some point came across it and then could not unsee it design wise so you're right. Some things are very heavily inspired off their awesome design.

Outside of the main window though, lots of other things are quite different and completely independently arrived at. Bvckup2 doesn't have third party storage support so everything else requires a fundamentally different UI to work in BlobBackup. Look at the settings windows and the menus for example.

[+] TacoSteemers|5 years ago|reply
I see that they are almost the same, but my version would probably end up looking the same if I were to independently write a GUI for backups.

Similar to how desktop word processors and browsers all look the same; some patterns just make sense for a specific type of software.

[+] leppr|5 years ago|reply
What are the advantages compared to say, Rclone which is open-source and supports a wide variety of storage backends[1] and E2E encryption[2] as well?

[1]: https://rclone.org/overview/, [2]: https://rclone.org/crypt/

[+] bimbashrestha|5 years ago|reply
Hey! Thanks for asking. On mobile right now so this isn't comprehensive but a few advantages jump to mind.

1. Compression/deduplication. Your data will (generally speaking) take up about half the space it did before even including the multiple file versions.

2. Automation. You won't have to manually do anything after you configure a schedule once.

3. Management of multiple backups.

4. A really nice native GUI

5. All the advantages that backup with file versioning has over sync (which is what it looks like you have). Safe from ransomware (you'll have an older version always even if your infected ones get synced accidentally), projection from human error by being able to revert to older versions, etc

[+] ajvs|5 years ago|reply
Duplicacy would have been a better comparison since it and blobbackup are backup tools, whilst Rclone is built for sync and has supporting tech like mounting for that usecase.
[+] bithavoc|5 years ago|reply
It's minimalistic, I went to check Rclone but couldn’t find schedules backups or a GUI so I can already see how this app could be appealing to some.
[+] brailsafe|5 years ago|reply
I'd be more curious what the advantages are compared to Arq.
[+] me_bx|5 years ago|reply
The solution looks interesting, good work.

Website does not inspire trust as there is no mention at all about who the seller is.

Terms of use, privacy policy are also relevant, especially in this context where software gets access to all of customer's data...

[+] bimbashrestha|5 years ago|reply
Yeah more info would be great.

First time software seller here so I'm a little slow on some things but rest assured, I'm gonna have a privacy policy soon. The EULA is there when you download the software.

BlobBackup doesn't store any user data anywhere other than the user's computer and their backup storage though (and this is encrypted).

[+] prirun|5 years ago|reply
Would you include HashBackup (author here) in your next round of benchmarks? Thanks!
[+] greatjack613|5 years ago|reply
I am blown away by this. Very simple and elegant. Nice Job.

What tech stack is this application built in?

[+] bimbashrestha|5 years ago|reply
Thanks!

Its built in a combination of C and python. Using zstandard for compression and openssl for crypto. Qt for the GUI.

[+] rkagerer|5 years ago|reply
On Windows does it use VSS to snapshot the volume and backup open (locked) files?
[+] bimbashrestha|5 years ago|reply
That's a heavily requested feature that's in the works. I was focusing on platform independent features in the beginning but this will come eventually.
[+] mdotshell|5 years ago|reply
Have you thought about adding CLI support to the roadmap? If you were to add that it would be an instant buy for me, as well as many other admins, I'm sure.

Great product though! Always happy to see projects like this

[+] bimbashrestha|5 years ago|reply
Yes! CLI will be included in the next release. Have gotten this request a few times now:)
[+] undebuggable|5 years ago|reply
How are you dealing with low storage scenarios? e.g. HDD 256 GB, 50GB of free space available, total backup data for compressing and encrypting 100GB.
[+] bimbashrestha|5 years ago|reply
Well generally speaking, backups will use about 37-40% of the original size. BlobBackup uses variable length and fixed length block level dedupe and zstandard compression. So you can optimize by adjusting block sizes, changing compressing levels, etc to get things to fit on smaller storage.
[+] jfdi|5 years ago|reply
Nice work! If one were to buy this and want to back everything up from local device(s) and cloud accounts back down to a local NAS - supported use case?
[+] bimbashrestha|5 years ago|reply
Ah this isn't supported right now. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to add but it's just never been brought up by users till now.

What is your use case for this?

[+] vijaybritto|5 years ago|reply
39.99? Hmm. I would have said no if it was just electron. But the native UI is compelling.
[+] bimbashrestha|5 years ago|reply
Pricing is pretty competitive with some alternatives with similar performance/features imo. Arq, duplicacy, qbackup...