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Restic doesn't implement compression and most probably never will (since compression when combined with encryption has been known to make the encryption "weaker

Restic doesn't implement compression and most probably never will (since compression when combined with encryption has been known to make the encryption "weaker"). Borg's "encryption" doesn't instill confidence in me. Restic ships as a static binary so you can shove the version you used to create the backup and will be able to restore it forever (assuming we still run x64 machines). Borg requires a server side component so cannot natively backup to cloud object stores. Restic can. Borg OTOH is very lean and doesn't take a lot of RAM compared to Restic. You cannot go wrong with either. I tried both and found Restic much easier to run and manage and the memory usage wasn't an issue for me (~4TB backups).

formerly_proven 5y ago
I don't think the reason Restic won't support compression is because of some security concerns (Restic encrypts blobs separately, and you'd compress things blob-wise as well), but because there simply wasn't any space designed into their file formats to signal compression, so it's essentially impossible to implement it without breaking compatibility. Borg's story is actually similar but the opposite. Attic only used to support zlib, other methods were added later. This was possible because the zlib header uses only a few values for the first two bytes, so there is enough room to indicate various compression formats.
jlelse 5y ago
I use restic as well, was just interested to see what's different about Borg. But I think restic was the right choice, already saved me once from data loss.
- beermonster 5y ago
  They’re both a fine choice really. And being open source there’s no harm (other than time) in trying both and seeing which suits your use case best
thde 5y ago
We found that restic (at least in its newest version) uses ~ the same amount of RAM or even less that Borg on some systems. But no big differences there.

formerly_proven 5y ago

I don't think the reason Restic won't support compression is because of some security concerns (Restic encrypts blobs separately, and you'd compress things blob-wise as well), but because there simply wasn't any space designed into their file formats to signal compression, so it's essentially impossible to implement it without breaking compatibility. Borg's story is actually similar but the opposite. Attic only used to support zlib, other methods were added later. This was possible because the zlib header uses only a few values for the first two bytes, so there is enough room to indicate various compression formats.

jlelse 5y ago

I use restic as well, was just interested to see what's different about Borg. But I think restic was the right choice, already saved me once from data loss.

beermonster 5y ago
They’re both a fine choice really. And being open source there’s no harm (other than time) in trying both and seeing which suits your use case best

thde 5y ago

We found that restic (at least in its newest version) uses ~ the same amount of RAM or even less that Borg on some systems. But no big differences there.