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I've got something I like better than Dropbox. It's called rdiff. It does one thing only: deduplication. All the other stuff needed for remote, incremental b
by jingo 12y ago
I've got something I like better than Dropbox. It's called rdiff.
It does one thing only: deduplication.
All the other stuff needed for remote, incremental backups, e.g., moving files back and forth over a network, can be done with other open source tools. I think I have a pretty good command of moving files around with open source software... I do not need a third party to help me via an obfuscated blob of Python and who knows what else.
I like having control over my backups versus trusting it all to some closed-source, third party, "all-in-one" application.
In my mind having control and transparency will always be more powerful than handing over my data deduplication and backup to a third party, such as "Dropbox".
But I imagine there are few others who would agree. Forgive me for not loving Dropbox. Maybe some day I will see the light.
- ayrx 12y agoDon't think of Dropbox as backup. Think of Dropbox as a convenient way of syncing files across multiple platforms, both traditional and mobile. I'm a big fan of open source when it works but there is nothing as seamless as Dropbox when it comes to syncing.
- SandB0x 12y agoWhat do you mean by better? My grandparents manage to use Dropbox. I think that's pretty amazing.
- mikeash 12y agoHow do I set up these tools to automatically sync a set of files between multiple computers and make them accessible from my smartphone and tablet?
- ewzimm 12y agoIt's been mentioned in a few other comments, but ownCloud does all that. https://owncloud.org/ https://owncloud.org/ You don't even need to set it up yourself: https://owncloud.org/providers/ https://owncloud.org/providers/
- mikeash 12y agoThanks for the pointer. I'd heard about that before but never really checked it out. Looks pretty straightforward.
- thmorton 12y agoIf you don't mind hosting yourself, Seafile is also open source and has really nice Mac/Windows/Linux/Android/iOS client apps. It also does delta syncs, which I don't believe ownCloud supports yet: http://seafile.com/en/download/ http://seafile.com/en/download/ http://manual.seafile.com/ http://manual.seafile.com/
- mikeash 12y agoThanks, that sounds even better. What's with the lack of delta syncs in all these systems? As far as I know, neither Google Drive nor OneDrive do it. Now you're saying ownCloud doesn't do it either. I didn't even think to look at it for oneCloud because obviously they'd support it. I consider it to be an essential feature, to the point that I won't bother with something that doesn't support it. I guess I'm unusual in that respect.
- jingo 12y agoI suspected I would get downvoted for not loving Dropbox. And I was right. Interesting. FYI rdiff is the reference implementation or first example of a utility written with librsync, which is the library that Dropbox used to build their "business". Usage: rdiff [OPTIONS] signature [BASIS [SIGNATURE]] [OPTIONS] delta SIGNATURE [NEWFILE [DELTA]] [OPTIONS] patch BASIS [DELTA [NEWFILE]] Options: -v, --verbose Trace internal processing -V, --version Show program version -?, --help Show this help message -s, --statistics Show performance statistics Delta-encoding options: -b, --block-size=BYTES Signature block size -S, --sum-size=BYTES Set signature strength --paranoia Verify all rolling checksums IO options: -I, --input-size=BYTES Input buffer size -O, --output-size=BYTES Output buffer size -z, --gzip[=LEVEL] gzip-compress deltas -i, --bzip2[=LEVEL] bzip2-compress deltas