I've been using Backblaze B2 since it launched, and HashBackup (I'm the author) was one of the first B2 integrations.

What I like most about B2 is the transparent, no gimmick pricing. No monthly minimum, no minimum file size, no paying for storage for 90 days after you delete a file. And they give generous free allowances: 10GB/mo (forever, with no credit card required), 1GB of free egress per day, and up to 5000 free transactions per day.

I backup the HashBackup dev server to B2 every night, around 80GB with mostly VM images, and the total backup size while keeping the last 30 days + 12 monthly backups is around 50 GB and costs 25 cents/month. They bill me every few months, I guess when enough charges accumulate.

Here are the backup stats for the HashBackup dev server:

[jim@bs ~]$ hb stats -c /hbbackup HashBackup #2527 Copyright 2009-2021 HashBackup, LLC Backup directory: /hbbackup

               3,617 backups
              334 TB file bytes checked since initial backup
               80 TB file bytes saved since initial backup
                 910 total backup hours
               79 GB average file bytes checked per backup in last 5 backups
               23 GB average file bytes saved per backup in last 5 backups
              29.78% average changed data percentage per backup in last 5 backups
             13m 43s average backup time for last 5 backups
                 637 archives
               55 GB archive space
              84.11% archive space utilization 46 GB
               810:1 industry standard dedup ratio
              9.5 MB average archive space per backup for last 5 backups
              2465:1 reduction ratio of backed up files for last 5 backups
              234 MB dedup table current size
           9,442,920 dedup table entries
                 48% dedup table utilization at current size
             724,059 files
             671,701 paths
          10,550,610 blocks
         127,965,672 block references
         117,415,062 deduped blocks
              12.1:1 block dedup ratio
              5.2 KB average stored block size
              616 GB backup space saved by dedup
              49,648 average variable-block length

There is only one provider that has rclone built into the platform:

  ssh [email protected] rclone sync s3remote:bucket path/path/dir

So you can transfer directly between endpoints without using your own bandwidth.

In fact, you don't even need to install rclone yourself - just run it, over SSH, at rsync.net.

Here is a broad overview of using rclone with your rsync.net account:

https://www.rsync.net/products/rclone.html

Right now I'm using Dropbox, One Drive and iDrive, none of which are that great. I've looked at tons of others.

Your prices aren't offensive, but they're not cheap.

I have a need to store several terabytes of PDFs - mainly old magazines that are in the public domain, or where the copyright is essentially lost. Are your systems going to scan every item that gets uploaded and then erase my account and all my files if one PDF comes up as having a current copyright issue?

I ask in all seriousness because this happens regularly to those of us on

https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/

see, e.g.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Degoo/comments/iixlse/degoo_copyrig...

"Are your systems going to scan every item that gets uploaded and then erase my account and all my files if one PDF comes up as having a current copyright issue?"

This is who we are:

https://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

We were the first provider to publish a Warrant Canary and it appears we're one of the few that still update it.

So, no.

No, we do not scan accounts for any purpose whatsoever.

Please review our extremely short and simple privacy policy:

https://www.rsync.net/resources/regulatory/privacy.html

... and do be in touch about the HN readers discount.

EDIT: rsync.net has, in the past, donated a lot of resources to Jason Scott and Team Archive for archival purposes just like you are describing. I am also, personally, a sustaining donor of Internet Archive. All of this to say: I am very interested in this archival work you are doing and would like to help support it - please do be in touch ...

I've been curious - has the warrant canary idea been endorsed by anyone's legal counsel? I can't tell if it's a real legal loophole, or a letter-of-the-law thing that a judge would treat as equivalent to revealing a warrant.

Seems like it's an open question.

> In September 2014, U.S. security researcher Moxie Marlinspike wrote that "every lawyer I've spoken to has indicated that having a 'canary' you remove or choose not to update would likely have the same legal consequences as simply posting something that explicitly says you've received something."

> ..That said, case law specific to the United States would render the covert continuance of warrant canaries subject to constitutionality challenges.[citation needed] West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette and Wooley v. Maynard rule the Free Speech Clause prohibits compelling someone to speak against one's wishes; this can easily be extended to prevent someone from being compelled to lie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

Thank you for the excellent reply. Just the fact you are on HN answering queries is a reason alone to buy your services.

> https://www.rsync.net/resources/regulatory/privacy.html

It says there that you don't use cookies, but to clarify, I assume you set a cookie when a user logs in?

Is it possible to use rclone as a backup tool? With the usual features like compression, e2e e, de-duplication, incremental.

I don't think so, but HashBackup (I'm the author) has all that and has an interface to rclone if you use a storage service that isn't supported natively.

Looking for personal backup and with GUI. Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29446135

We've been telling people to use 'borg' for several years now and it appears to have become the de facto standard for just what you're describing.

It has been described as "The Holy Grail" of backups:

https://www.stavros.io/posts/holy-grail-backups/

I use borg indeed, via Vorta. Also, I am a rsync.net customer (I think you should start with a smaller min storage for pay what you use, or keep it pure pwyu).

I am looking for another backup tool that backs up to an S3 storage destination and has a decent GUI (restic doesn’t have a GUI; relica doesn’t count; and borg doesn’t support s3). Since rclone has an experimental GUI I wondered.

$100/TB/month is significantly more expensive than the standard object storage options. Backblaze is $5/TB/month, for example.

For personal file backup, you only need a fairly reliable object storage system. And Backblaze seems to be the cheapest.

Standard pricing is $25/TB/month.

We have had a "HN reader discount" for many years ... just email and ask.

If you're optimizing for price, I would suggest Backblaze.

There's "optimizing for price", and then there's you being five times more expensive than Backblaze.

Hetzner storage, which is comparable to your offerings (supporting a dozen or so methods), is 9.4 euros per month per TB.

How do you justify being so much more expensive?

They don't charge for traffic, it matters if you have >10TB, but not individuals taking backups.

Well for one they offer options on more than 1 continent.

1fichier.com trends to €1/TB/month.

The website is not reachable. Maybe that’s why it costs that much? Or it’s not .com?

The real site is https://1fichier.com , works for me and always has, check any blocking things you have? People use them for somewhat sketchy things, but they’re a legit if somewhat eccentric French company that’s been around for years (and is specifically supported by rclone: https://rclone.org/fichier/). Sure, don’t put your critical data there without a backup, but at the price, it’s a nice option to have.

There’s a .info that shows up in search results that I think is an otherwise unaffiliated reseller that they haven’t bothered to go after.

You are right. It worked on vpn. So blocked by local authorities then (it’s piss easy here for anyone with a law degree or half).

By the way they seem to offer quite some storage for free! :-o How do they sustain? and even paid prices are unreal.

Also I failed to understand whether they’re a file sharing service or file backup?

Wow, I'm not sure how I got the pricing so wrong. I remember visiting the rsync.net pricing page to check. I'd edit/delete my GP comment if I could.

To be clear, is the $25/TB/month quoted with or without the HN discount?

$25/TB/month is the headline price for "everybody".

The HN discount price is lower than that (by a fair amount).

The downsides to the discounted plans are as follows:

- you can't have subaccounts/sublogins (child accounts).

- we won't give you technical support for borg/attic/rclone integrations. We assume you are an expert. Of course you get normal run of the mill support ...

If you consider storage in isolation, Backblaze does seem to be the best deal. However, there may be bundles that include storage that are a better deal if you need the other things in the bundle.

For example if you have sufficient need for Microsoft Office programs to justify a Microsoft 365 subscription, that comes with 1 TB of OneDrive on the Personal subscription ($6.99/month, $69.99/year).

Most backup programs seem to know how to work with OneDrive directly or know how to use rclone which knows how to work with OneDrive [1].

If you need more than 1 TB, OneDrive becomes less attractive. It seems you can add another 1 TB for $9.99/month, but unless you have to all your storage be in one place, it would be cheaper to get your second TB at Backblaze. (And if you need 2 TB in one one place, buying 2 TB at Backblaze + An MS 365 Personal subscription would be the same price as an MS 365 Personal + 1 TB Extra OneDrive, and the former gives you your 2 TB in one place at BB and 1 TB at OneDrive).

The Family subscription ($9.99/month or $99.99/year) includes 6 TB of OneDrive, but it is partitioned into 6 separate 1 TB shares for 6 people on the account. A person is identified by an email address, so there is nothing stopping you from making 5 fake people, and one person can give another write access to folders on their OneDrive, so you could cobble together a scheme to use all 6 TB but there would be some hassle.

I tried doing that once, having the fake person give the real me write access to a folder. I then uploaded a bunch of files to that shared folder from my regular account. Shortly afterward the fake person got disabled for TOS violations (but could be reenabled via a simple automated process). I'm not sure what the issue was, but what I uploaded was a bunch of Springer ebooks to from the large collection that Springer made freely downloadable early during COVID so that I could read them on my iPad. It could be that triggered some sort of anti-piracy measures.

If you can find a way to make it work, though, 6 TB for $9.99/month or $99.year is a good deal even if you don't need the Office apps.

[1] https://rclone.org/onedrive/

Whatever provider you choose, make sure you encrypt your files locally to avoid the scenario where the provider blocks you because the AI decided one of your files is a virus, a copyright violation or matches some image hash.

There is no need for your backup provider to be able to look into your files so there’s only downsides to allowing them to.

I'd like to piggyback here and add a second requirement: I'm currently looking for a storage provider that supports pulling backups from the outside. Kinda surprised this is not more of a topic, as it should be a simple way to make backups more robust against compromise?

Seems rsync.net supports this (see sibling comment). Any others?

I like Backblaze because it works well on my Mac and I don't have to think about it. That's about all I want!

Backblaze B2 has free ingress and egress (w/ Cloudflare) and the cheapest pricing that I know of per GB, but it looks like CloudFlare's block storage might be a competitor soon.

B2 as a backup solution it's a compelling option as far as pricing goes.

I'd offer a warning that I have used B2 for highly available blob storage before (2-3 years ago) ... it didn't work well as traffic scaled. I'm not sure if that's the case now.

For anyone wondering about B2 encryption. I looked at B2 last year and ultimately didn't use it as they didn't have encryption at rest [1]. It seems they've now added that [2].

[1]: Client-side encryption would have needed quite a bit of engineering to make work for my use case.

[2]: https://www.backblaze.com/b2/docs/server_side_encryption.htm...

Duplicati and a few other self-hosted backup tools provide great client-side encryption and use rclone under the hood for syncing to B2.

Depends on the amount you have.