4 ms·

tarsnap is simple. The rest of the stuff you mention requires me to set things up and write scripts to wrap it all and sign up for AWS and monitor it and ....

tarsnap is simple. The rest of the stuff you mention requires me to set things up and write scripts to wrap it all and sign up for AWS and monitor it and .... Also your method might be much cheaper, but tarsnap is still inexpensive for most use cases. So how much actual money is saved vs. the effort level put in?

miked85 6y ago
If there is one thing that TarSnap isn't, is inexpensive.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
TimWolla 6y ago
I previously used Tarsnap, but I moved to using Borg on rsync.net. Borg can do all the stuff Tarsnap can do and comes with 'borg prune' included. In fact for Tarsnap I would have needed to write a custom script to perform regular pruning. By relying on rsync.net's automated ZFS snapshots I get the same or similar protection compared to Tarsnaps's write-only keys. For my personal use case cost wasn't an issue, though. It's less than 10 GB of data stored.
- regecks 6y ago
  After many years, I moved from tarsnap to Borg as well (hosted with borgbase.com). It wasn't about price for me either. On the few occasions I actually had to restore some files, Tarsnap was glacially slow. That made me nervous if I ever hit a situation where I had to do a full restore. Like you say, there's the quality-of-life features that I now don't have to script. Pruning, missed backup alerts, monthly reports are all things I've realized were sorely missing from my Tarsnap experience.
  - longtom 6y ago
    BorgBase does not do scheduled pruning? Not even via script?
    - regecks 6y ago
      I believe it inherits the same pruning behavior of Borg itself. I don't know the architecture of Borg storage too closely, but I assume that since it is all end-to-end encrypted, Borgbase cannot do the pruning for you. If you use append-only keys, they can't (destructively) prune, you have to use regular keys to do that.
tidepod12 6y ago
Setting up borg + rclone + B2 took me about an hour to set up and zero time since then. Something like Duplicati or Duplicacy makes it even simpler. I'll agree that tarsnap is still 'simpler' since I guess maybe it takes 15 mins to set up versus an hour, but I'm still surprised that someone would consider the 45 minutes saved to be worth possibly hundreds/thousands of extra dollars in backup costs. >Also your method might be much cheaper, but tarsnap is still very inexpensive for most use cases. So how much actual money is saved vs. the effort level put in? What are the use cases you use tarsnap for? Is tarsnap only used for small amounts of data or something? I guess I just cannot get over the hurdle that tarsnap seems obscenely priced given the cost of storage these days. You can get 2TB of storage for ~$120/yr on something like Dropbox/B2/Google Drive/etc. That same 2TB would cost six thousand dollars a year on tarsnap!!
- icedchai 6y ago
  I switched from tarsnap to Wasabi plus restic. It’s much cheaper ($.0059/gig) and I have no complaints so far.
- icelancer 6y ago
  Yeah I don't put anywhere close to that kind of storage in there, so I get it. I just have critical small files, mostly documents and code.
mekster 6y ago
Hard to agree with you. Setting up restic/duplicacy/kopia/etc is easy and you get to choose your storage from wide array of choices that's pretty much 1/10 the price. Does tarsnap even have retention rules? Just because someone behind may be famous, charging 10 times for something that's not even better is absurd and should be seen as an obsolete service when there are a dozen others with competitive pricing. I see you're happy to pay $100 for something I pay $10 because making a cron job is tough for you.
- icelancer 6y ago
  > I see you're happy to pay $100 for something I pay $10 because making a cron job is tough for you. This is against HN rules FYI. No reason for this kind of trolling/goading. My use case doesn't even come close to matching that cost anyway.
- dang 6y ago
  "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

miked85 6y ago

If there is one thing that TarSnap isn't, is inexpensive.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

TimWolla 6y ago

I previously used Tarsnap, but I moved to using Borg on rsync.net. Borg can do all the stuff Tarsnap can do and comes with 'borg prune' included. In fact for Tarsnap I would have needed to write a custom script to perform regular pruning. By relying on rsync.net's automated ZFS snapshots I get the same or similar protection compared to Tarsnaps's write-only keys. For my personal use case cost wasn't an issue, though. It's less than 10 GB of data stored.

regecks 6y ago
After many years, I moved from tarsnap to Borg as well (hosted with borgbase.com). It wasn't about price for me either. On the few occasions I actually had to restore some files, Tarsnap was glacially slow. That made me nervous if I ever hit a situation where I had to do a full restore. Like you say, there's the quality-of-life features that I now don't have to script. Pruning, missed backup alerts, monthly reports are all things I've realized were sorely missing from my Tarsnap experience.
- longtom 6y ago
  BorgBase does not do scheduled pruning? Not even via script?
  - regecks 6y ago
    I believe it inherits the same pruning behavior of Borg itself. I don't know the architecture of Borg storage too closely, but I assume that since it is all end-to-end encrypted, Borgbase cannot do the pruning for you. If you use append-only keys, they can't (destructively) prune, you have to use regular keys to do that.

tidepod12 6y ago

Setting up borg + rclone + B2 took me about an hour to set up and zero time since then. Something like Duplicati or Duplicacy makes it even simpler. I'll agree that tarsnap is still 'simpler' since I guess maybe it takes 15 mins to set up versus an hour, but I'm still surprised that someone would consider the 45 minutes saved to be worth possibly hundreds/thousands of extra dollars in backup costs. >Also your method might be much cheaper, but tarsnap is still very inexpensive for most use cases. So how much actual money is saved vs. the effort level put in? What are the use cases you use tarsnap for? Is tarsnap only used for small amounts of data or something? I guess I just cannot get over the hurdle that tarsnap seems obscenely priced given the cost of storage these days. You can get 2TB of storage for ~$120/yr on something like Dropbox/B2/Google Drive/etc. That same 2TB would cost six thousand dollars a year on tarsnap!!

icedchai 6y ago
I switched from tarsnap to Wasabi plus restic. It’s much cheaper ($.0059/gig) and I have no complaints so far.
icelancer 6y ago
Yeah I don't put anywhere close to that kind of storage in there, so I get it. I just have critical small files, mostly documents and code.

mekster 6y ago

Hard to agree with you. Setting up restic/duplicacy/kopia/etc is easy and you get to choose your storage from wide array of choices that's pretty much 1/10 the price. Does tarsnap even have retention rules? Just because someone behind may be famous, charging 10 times for something that's not even better is absurd and should be seen as an obsolete service when there are a dozen others with competitive pricing. I see you're happy to pay $100 for something I pay $10 because making a cron job is tough for you.

icelancer 6y ago
> I see you're happy to pay $100 for something I pay $10 because making a cron job is tough for you. This is against HN rules FYI. No reason for this kind of trolling/goading. My use case doesn't even come close to matching that cost anyway.
dang 6y ago
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html