[HN Gopher] Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Backblaze
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Show HN: I made a privacy-first minimalist Backblaze
Creator here. I was looking for something as simple as Backblaze
Personal [1] but privacy focused and open source. This is my
attempt to build that. Uses PyQt6 [2] for the GUI and Pyinstaller
[3] for creating the platform specific binaries. The backup engine
under the hood is Restic [4]. The server code is written in Laravel
[5]. All the code is on GitHub [6]. I actually really like
Backblaze (even use B2 for this offering behind the scenes) so this
isn't meant to throw shade their way. Just wanted a private open
source alternative. Something like Bitwarden but for backups. [1]
https://backblaze.com [2] https://pypi.org/project/PyQt6 [3]
https://pyinstaller.readthedocs.io/en/stable [4]
https://github.com/restic [5] https://laravel.com [6]
https://github.com/blobbackup/blobbackup
Author : bimbashrestha
Score : 124 points
Date : 2022-03-06 13:58 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blobbackup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blobbackup.com)
| oceankid wrote:
| Nicely done. Any plans for allowing to pick a US/EU/Asia data
| center?
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| I'm planning on adding an Amsterdam storage location in a month
| or so!
| jfkimmes wrote:
| Interesting. I had not heard of restic, yet. My default backup
| choice has been borg[1] for a long time, so borgbase.com was a
| natural choice for off-site backups for me. They make Vorta a
| decent GUI client for borg - that's how I found out about them.
|
| Can someone here give a comparison of borg and restic by any
| chance?
|
| [1]: https://www.borgbackup.org/
| [deleted]
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| Borg supports local and SFTP backups while Restic supports more
| (a lot more). S3, Google Cloud, B2, etc. In fact, they
| integrate with rclone so anything you can access using rclone,
| you can backup to using Restic.
|
| Borg uses compression while Restic does not. Restic just uses
| deduplication so your backups with Restic will likely be larger
| in size.
|
| Anyway, that's what jumps to mind. They're both pretty great
| honestly (in terms of community support and reliability). There
| are a lot of other options too btw. The Restic repo has a
| pretty good list [1]
|
| [1] https://github.com/restic/others
| philjohn wrote:
| The rclone backend is a killer feature of Restic - using it
| in my home setup which is:
|
| 6 computers backing up using UrBackup client to a 6 drive 2U
| NAS running Raid Z2 and UrBackup server (which is nice as it
| stores incremental backups as ZFS child datasets).
|
| I then have a post backup script which creates a snapshot of
| the latest backup, mounts it, backs up using Restic using the
| JottaCloud rclone backend.
| leetrout wrote:
| My goto tool for secure backups is tarsnap. He only supports S3
| as far as I know so using B2 could be a good differentiator.
|
| Wonder if either of you will add support for cloudflares R2?
|
| https://www.tarsnap.com/
| xupybd wrote:
| The lack of direct support for Windows prevented me from using
| tarsnap. Restic allows me to use shadow volumes.
| mattl wrote:
| What operating systems does this support?
| dividuum wrote:
| Right on the landing page it says Mac & Windows.
| mattl wrote:
| It's very small, pale grey text.
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| It's just Mac and Windows right now. Technically, it isn't that
| hard to get things working on Linux (since the desktop app is
| Qt) but I need to get around to it. There is a github issue for
| it btw: https://github.com/Blobbackup/Blobbackup/issues/92
| [deleted]
| lobochrome wrote:
| I like Arq https://www.arqbackup.com/
|
| They were only an app back in the day, which backed up to any
| object store you chose.
|
| Although now they are trying the saas way of things too.
| sreitshamer wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by "trying the saas way of things". We
| still sell Arq 7 as a standalone app. It comes with a year of
| updates. You can choose to renew, or not and keep using the app
| you bought forever. Similar licensing to Panic's Nova app
| https://www.arqbackup.com/documentation/arq7/English.lproj/a...
| [deleted]
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Is there a Google Drive clone with encrypted backups?
|
| I love the usability of Google Drive (being able to access / make
| files offline whenever I want), but the Mac update started to
| force me to upload all my files, which I don't want to do, as the
| files are not encrypted.
| tonymet wrote:
| i love seeing more innovation with backups . can you talk about
| the agent ? many of them drain the battery and overload cpu .
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| It uses restic (github.com/blobbackup) to create backups every
| hour by default. After the initial backup, the load on battery
| and cpu should be pretty minimal since the agent is idle most
| of the time (because incremental backups are fairly quick).
| mendelmaleh wrote:
| > I actually really like Backblaze (even use B2 for this offering
| behind the scenes)
|
| B2 is $5/tb, you are charging $9 for 5tb? How does that work? Do
| the old versions count towards the quota?
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| It's $9/computer so if you have another computer, you can't use
| the same 5 TB quota. I'm banking on most people having less
| than 5 tb per computer to backup. It's kind of like what
| Backblaze Personal does for their unlimited plan but slightly
| lower tier I suppose (since there is no way I could do
| unlimited).
| wormer wrote:
| Speaking of this, does anyone know about any local backups for
| Linux with a nice GUI? I turned into a GNOMie and don't want to
| spend time with commandline options to figure it out. I tried
| APTIK but it flat out didn't work.
| dosenbrot wrote:
| I've been using BackInTime
| (https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Back_In_Time/) since 6 years and
| happy with it. - it's using rsync and hardlinks, the files on
| the backupdrive are just normal files - it got "smart delete"
| of old backups (e.g. keep 1 backup per year older 1 year, 1 per
| month older 1 month and 1 per week older 1 week) - starts an
| backup automatic in background if you attach the external drive
| (with udev, if you want it) - has a nice simple ui (i like it)
| deanc wrote:
| Crash plan pro is still around. About ten bucks a month for
| unlimited backup per machine.
| MikusR wrote:
| https://kopia.io/
| phaer wrote:
| [Pika
| Backup](https://apps.gnome.org/app/org.gnome.World.PikaBackup/)
| is a simple and well-designed GTK frontend for borg IMO
| doublepg23 wrote:
| I've been using Deja Dupe for 4 years now for a local backup on
| my NAS. It's extremely slow though, and I'd prefer fs level
| like ZFS or even btrfs at this point.
| frenkel wrote:
| deja-dup. I even believe this is installed by default on
| distros.
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| I've always liked the vorta project
| (https://github.com/borgbase/vorta)
| [deleted]
| infinityio wrote:
| It probably isn't quite what you are looking for, but have you
| ever tried Syncthing? It doesn't have enough features to be an
| actual backup solution, but it is nice if you just want another
| copy of your files somewhere else
| yewenjie wrote:
| Off topic but what is the cheapest object storage service for
| less than 1 TB of data?
| sreitshamer wrote:
| Google Cloud's Archive tier is cheapest to store at about
| $1.23/TB per month, but downloading is very expensive.
| bityard wrote:
| Minio on a raspberry pi at a friends house.
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| Probably B2 (https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html).
| Half a penny per GB.
| TheIronYuppie wrote:
| Is there an option for IPFS instead of B2?
| jrwr wrote:
| IPFS is not for long term data storage, and once you get about
| the 100k file mark your tables are so damn slow you can't add
| anything new
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| Not right now. I'd like to allow the self-hosted version to
| support other storage backends eventually (will probably start
| with generic S3 and SFTP first though).
| [deleted]
| gingerlime wrote:
| looks great! I have a question about backing up my mac. Let's say
| my mac is stolen/dropped from a bridge. Can I actually restore
| everything on a new mac, or still need to install and configure
| from scratch and "just" have a backup of documents, images etc?
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| It's a file level backup (as opposed to an image or disk
| backup). So anything related to the operating system is not
| backed up but all your "data" (documents, photos, music,
| movies, etc) is. Here is a support page that explains what is
| backed up by default (which you can ofc change) [1].
|
| [1] https://blobbackup.com/support/what-is-being-backed-up/
| thesimon wrote:
| Was looking quite long for the company behind this and expected a
| B2B offering to be located at "Company", not an about us.
|
| Stating your company name and an address would greatly increase
| my trust.
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| Ah good point. I've made a github issue for it (you'll find the
| company name and address there btw) [1].
|
| We are actually working on a B2B offering right now (see the
| banner on the top of the home page for more info) [2][3].
|
| [1] https://github.com/Blobbackup/Blobbackup/issues/93 [2]
| https://blobbackup.com [3] https://forms.gle/euPCbhZaf1CMN8LbA
| busymom0 wrote:
| Could this be used for something like S3 for uploading images and
| serving them in an app or website? Like are there options for
| signed url uploads?
| clement12 wrote:
| bethecloud wrote:
| Would be cool to back this to decentralized cloud storage (should
| be pretty easy to do via Storj S3 integration):
| https://docs.storj.io/dcs/getting-started/quickstart-aws-sdk...
|
| Or even Restic directly: https://docs.storj.io/dcs/how-
| tos/backup-with-restic/
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| I think decentralized storage + Blobbackup could make for an
| interesting pairing. I'll make time to look into it.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| My problem: I just want to back up 5 terabytes.
|
| It's on an external SSD, used for photos. Backblaze has forgotten
| how to count terabytes at all, preferring to play games about how
| I need to have it attached and for how long, so people don't play
| games with their "unlimited" offering. "Did you plug in the
| external drive to a computer, and leave the computer on for 24
| hours without it going to sleep, and reattach the drive regularly
| every 30 days? I'm sorry, it looks like we'll be erasing your
| backup. You can make another one and it will take several days to
| upload despite your very fast connection."
|
| I don't want to play these games either way, I just want to back
| up 5 terabytes. I don't even necessarily need an agent. You offer
| a similar pricing scheme to Backblaze ($N/mo/computer). Does your
| service support my use case, or should I keep looking?
| hickimsedenolan wrote:
| >We charge you $9 / month per computer. Each computer is
| allowed to backup up to 5 TB of data.
|
| Seems to be exactly how much you want to backup.
| mceachen wrote:
| First and foremost: don't use an SSD for cold storage:
| depending on the chips in your external drive, the bits can
| decay in as little as 6 months:
| https://photostructure.com/faq/how-do-i-safely-store-files/#...
|
| Lots of copies keeps stuff safe.
|
| If you don't mind the hassle, you can buy a couple HDDs (maybe
| a 2.5" and a 3.5" from different manufacturers), rsync to both
| of them, and hand one to a friend or family member that lives
| an hour or two away from you.
|
| You may want to encrypt the drive, depending on contents and
| trust if the remote storage location.
|
| Repeat quarterly/annually depending on your data change
| velocity/appetite for data loss/willingness to muck with it.
|
| This should cost under $200, and the HDDs should last at least
| 5 years, so that amortizes to $40/year of 2 remote backups. No
| cloud offering can get close to that.
| philjohn wrote:
| Jottacloud offers unlimited (in reality after 5TB they start
| slowing your upload speed to them) with a cli, or rclone +
| restic support.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's worth noting that for most uses the throttling doesn't
| matter up to about 16TB, where you hit a harsh inflection
| point.
| philjohn wrote:
| And really, at that point, don't be a cheapskate, it's
| already super cheap (and reliable), so buy another account
| (or two, or three).
| teddyh wrote:
| "5 terabytes is so little that I've forgotten how to count that
| low."
|
| -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6L-FlfeaI
| pieterhg wrote:
| You can make a snapshot of a Backblaze Personal and then store
| it in Backblaze B2. Works fine.
| DenseComet wrote:
| Backblaze also supports that pricing model with B2, which is a
| fixed cost per gigabyte stored per month. B2 also has an S3
| compatible API, which lets you use any backup software you
| want.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| This. I use B2 to backup my NAS and it costs me a couple
| dollars a month. 5TB will cost you $25/month.
|
| The only way I know to go cheaper is Glacier "deep archive"
| storage which is roughly $1/TB, but a pain to manage, access
| time is measured in hours and it might cost 100x more in
| egress fees to download it all.
| freedomben wrote:
| This matches my price research exactly, and my conclusions.
| Stay away from Glacier because the gotchas are not worth
| it. The moment you need any of your data your cost will
| skyrocket. Plus dealing with AWS unpredictable pricing is
| totally not worth it.
|
| I b2 everything nowadays.
| sreitshamer wrote:
| Not sure when you last looked into Glacier, but they did
| away with the "peak hourly request" fee which could be
| insane if you restored data too quickly. Pricing is much
| more reasonable now. You still have to wait hours to
| download your data, but Glacier deep archive is about
| $.001/GB per month for storage and about $0.29/GB to
| download (plus some transaction fees that aren't usually
| significant).
| ydant wrote:
| Depending on your access patterns, Wasabi
| (https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/) could be
| cheaper, since they charge more $5.99/TB, but don't charge
| for egress ($0.01/GB at B2) or API calls ("GetObject" at
| $0.004 per 10,000 at B2).
| breakingcups wrote:
| Note that you can only egress as much as you have stored
| in total per month with Wasabi. So if you've stored 10GB
| on Wasabi, you're only allowed to egress 10GB each month.
| So yes, really depends on your access patterns.
| [deleted]
| sandgiant wrote:
| This looks really great! I love restic but miss a simple UI to
| keep track of my backups. Will definitely keep an eye on this.
| agucova wrote:
| If this would allow me to check my files in a simple web UI (no
| need for collaboration or anything), and create share links for
| low-volume downloads I could just leave Google Drive permanently.
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| Ah sadly that probably won't happen soon. All the data is
| encrypted with your master password (password manager style)
| and that master password isn't transfered to the server. So
| you'd have to use the desktop client to access your files.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| You could create a sharing mechanism, though; let the desktop
| client encrypt a copy of the file with a randomly generated
| key and share that key in the download URL like Mega does it.
|
| Requires extra data transfers and extra storage, but for
| small files that seems doable without invalidating the master
| password setup. You do end with two separate encryption
| systems, though.
|
| A more scalable solution would be to encrypt every file with
| a different key and encrypt the key store with the master
| password (but that would obviously require a relatively
| extensive rewrite). You'd be able to get more fine-grained
| file access without sacrificing the single master password
| setup.
|
| That way, you can simply share the file key when you want to
| generate a share link.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Consider using https://wetransfer.com for one off transfers.
| adenner wrote:
| I have had great luck using https://www.wesendit.com/ for
| this use case.
| xupybd wrote:
| Is that related to the Chinese WeChat?
|
| I'm a little paranoid about avoiding SAAS out of China.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It is not.
|
| https://about.wetransfer.com/
|
| https://opencorporates.com/companies/nl/34381002
|
| https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/wetransfer-owner-werock-
| nv-t...
| jstummbillig wrote:
| You could, but would you, really.
| slyall wrote:
| Need some proofreading:
|
| "We only offer montly biling at this time"
| lpellis wrote:
| A few more minor ones ('juristiction'):
| https://app.pagewatch.dev/5ebf46bce58c44dd7cf0dafdb78fbb48df...
| bimbashrestha wrote:
| That's embarrassing... Thanks, I'll fix it:)
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