Recommendations for desktop backup application

Hi:

What are the recent recommendations for desktop backup application (with GUI)? My plan is to use it with Backblaze B2.

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I prefer to use the btrfs built in ability, but it currently is cli only. So I would suggest trying Borg Backup with Vorta for the GUI. Both are available in the Fedora repo’s.

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I’m using both BRTBK and Vorta too, with LuckBackUp/Grsync. These last two are different GUI’s for the very same Rsync.

The reasons why I have these apps to back up are:

  1. BTRBK is for btrfs snapshots of both / and /home.
  2. Vorta is to be able to go back in time with my files, and I’ve three profiles: Hourly/Daily to an internal disk (direct access), Weekly to a 640GB external drive, and Monthly to a 4TB external drive
  3. LuckyBackUp/Grsync is to be able to have direct access to all my files on a different computer. Why both, Lucky has a better GUI, but Grsync is up to date.

Thus to say it alternative, BRTBK is for snapshots of my system, Vorta for backups, and LuckyBackUp/GRsync are for to be save(d) ;).

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I use restic with BackBlaze B2.
https://restic.net/

I then set it up as a service in systemd in the userspace, and I setup a systemd timer to run it every day. Then, I use http://healthchecks.io to get notifications when it fails.

cat ~/.restic/backup.sh
#!/bin/bash -e

source /home/user/.restic/env
restic backup /home/user/Documents
cat ~/.restic/env 
export B2_ACCOUNT_ID="REDACTED"
export B2_ACCOUNT_KEY="REDACTED"
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="b2:whatever-backup"
export RESTIC_PASSWORD_FILE=/home/user/.restic/password
cat ~/.restic/backup-with-healthchecks.io.sh 
#!/bin/bash -e
/home/user/.restic/backup.sh && curl -fsS -m 10 --retry 5 -o /dev/null https://hc-ping.com/REDACTED
cat ~/.config/systemd/user/schedule-backup.service 
[Unit]
Description=Documents backup

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/home/user/.restic/backup-with-healthchecks.io.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
cat ~/.config/systemd/user/schedule-backup.timer
[Unit]
Description=Schedule Documents backup
RefuseManualStart=no
RefuseManualStop=no

[Timer]
#Execute job if it missed a run due to machine being off
Persistent=true
Unit=schedule-backup.service
OnCalendar=*-*-* 13:00:00

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

Then, just enable it in systemd:

systemctl --user enable schedule-backup.service
systemctl --user enable schedule-backup.timer
systemctl --user start schedule-backup.timer

You can trigger it manually like this:

systemctl --user start schedule-backup.service

… and see the logs:

systemctl --user status schedule-backup.service
# or
journalctl --user -u schedule-backup.service 
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I made a recommendation with details of how to set it up with restic and backblaze but my post was flagged for review, probably because of the details. I hope it comes up soon.

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This would be my recommendation also. I don’t know if there’s a GUI frontend for restic, but it’s a fairly straightforward cli. I don’t have much tolerance for fussy setup, and it’s worked well for me.

Now I do wonder what this all is. Always up for learning.

My post just came up. I have been using this setting for a while now, and it is fantastic.

I use BackInTIme 1.3.2 : more than happy. SImple yet powerful.

Oh, CLI ways to back up, which I do not prefer. Thanks either way…

Does this also handle btrfs snapshots? I’ll read into it though.
Edit: I will stick to btrbk, as BackInTime doesnt work (yet) with btrfs, because rsync has troubles with it (at least TimeShift does so). From BackInTIme:

Back In Time is a simple backup solution for Linux Desktops. It is based on rsync and uses hard-links to reduce space used for unchanged files. It comes with a Qt5 GUI which will run on both Gnome and KDE based Desktops.
From: Welcome to Back In Time’s documentation! — Back In Time 1.1.12 documentation

Duplicati is the easiest in my opinion.

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If you want a GUI you could consider Vorta for local backups and then replicating them to backblaze with the rclone GUI. This would give you rock solid reliability.

Alternatively, kopia is the new kid on the block in this space. For backups I tend to stick the established but people are reporting positive results so far.

duplicati is easy but they never seem to be able to solve the problem with remote repos becoming corrupt over time.

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I used duplicati for the longest time, and I even had to restore a backup once. However, I had that same issue you are describing at some point. I switched to restic as it appears a more stable, and it is not always in “beta” version as Duplicati is.

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Is this something Duplicati show when it backs up or you will discover only when you need to restore?

It will eventually start failing to backup. At that point, your only recourse is to delete all your backups and start over.

have you tried pika backup it is cute little gtk4 style backup took with easy backup solutions
flatpak install flathub org.gnome.World.PikaBackup
another good option
flatpak install flathub org.gnome.DejaDup

1 Like