5 ms·

The thing that's keeping you from using Tarsnap is its costs? The deltas you're talking about look like they are under $10. It sounds like you are a programmer

by neilk 11y ago

The thing that's keeping you from using Tarsnap is its costs? The deltas you're talking about look like they are under $10. It sounds like you are a programmer. At an hourly rate, it probably cost you more just to write that comment.

recursive 11y ago
No, predictability of costs.
gjm11 11y ago
The deltas were completely made up. If I knew they were right, I'd sign right up today. (I think.) What I don't want to do is guess at the deltas, sign up for Tarsnap, start up my first backup or my first incremental thereafter, and find I'm on the hook for hugely more than I originally budgeted. I think the way it actually works, what would happen is that after my first backup completes my account would go overdrawn and I would lose access to Tarsnap. And then I could walk away and all I'd actually lose would be whatever I'd prepaid. But -- and this is surely irrational, but I bet it isn't only my brain that works this way -- I would then feel really bad because (1) I would be failing to pay for something I had bought and (2) I would have spent money and got nothing in return. Even though (1) Colin surely budgets for a certain amount of attrition and (2) the sum of money involved needn't be bigger than $5. I don't want to do something that seems like it has a substantial chance of leaving me feeling simultaneously guilty and wasteful.
- neilk 11y ago
  I did the math and I see your point. I'm also a CrashPlan user. Right now I'm paying CrashPlan about $60/year. My best guess at Tarsnap costs is about 10x that, $600/year. Normally I'm a very privacy-conscious person, but that difference does give me pause. I could probably slim down what I do with Crashplan to only personal files rather than the whole disk, but why would I want to do that? The whole point is to "fire and forget", and restore painlessly. Perhaps Tarsnap makes sense if you're Stripe, with lots of sensitive data to store, easily partitioned from your other data. But if my calculations are correct, probably not if you're an average individual.
  - gaadd33 11y ago
    Does CrashPlan dedup and compress the data? Also I have to say, tarsnap is so much more lightweight than CrashPlan. If they came out with a nice command line client I would have to reconsider them.
zippergz 11y ago
When I last tried to do a calculation, I came out at well over $100 per month which, yes, I can afford, but is way more expensive than what I'm paying Crashplan. There are many reasons I'd rather use Tarsnap than Crashplan, but it's hard to justify that price difference.

by neilk 11y ago

recursive 11y ago

No, predictability of costs.

gjm11 11y ago

The deltas were completely made up. If I knew they were right, I'd sign right up today. (I think.) What I don't want to do is guess at the deltas, sign up for Tarsnap, start up my first backup or my first incremental thereafter, and find I'm on the hook for hugely more than I originally budgeted. I think the way it actually works, what would happen is that after my first backup completes my account would go overdrawn and I would lose access to Tarsnap. And then I could walk away and all I'd actually lose would be whatever I'd prepaid. But -- and this is surely irrational, but I bet it isn't only my brain that works this way -- I would then feel really bad because (1) I would be failing to pay for something I had bought and (2) I would have spent money and got nothing in return. Even though (1) Colin surely budgets for a certain amount of attrition and (2) the sum of money involved needn't be bigger than $5. I don't want to do something that seems like it has a substantial chance of leaving me feeling simultaneously guilty and wasteful.

neilk 11y ago
I did the math and I see your point. I'm also a CrashPlan user. Right now I'm paying CrashPlan about $60/year. My best guess at Tarsnap costs is about 10x that, $600/year. Normally I'm a very privacy-conscious person, but that difference does give me pause. I could probably slim down what I do with Crashplan to only personal files rather than the whole disk, but why would I want to do that? The whole point is to "fire and forget", and restore painlessly. Perhaps Tarsnap makes sense if you're Stripe, with lots of sensitive data to store, easily partitioned from your other data. But if my calculations are correct, probably not if you're an average individual.
- gaadd33 11y ago
  Does CrashPlan dedup and compress the data? Also I have to say, tarsnap is so much more lightweight than CrashPlan. If they came out with a nice command line client I would have to reconsider them.

zippergz 11y ago

When I last tried to do a calculation, I came out at well over $100 per month which, yes, I can afford, but is way more expensive than what I'm paying Crashplan. There are many reasons I'd rather use Tarsnap than Crashplan, but it's hard to justify that price difference.