{"slug": "restic", "name": "restic", "category": "files", "category_name": "Files, sync and backup", "description": "Open-source command-line backup program that makes encrypted, deduplicated snapshots to many storage backends.", "recommenders": 17, "commenters": 25, "warners": 0, "score": 17.869, "rising": 5.05, "first": "2025-11-19", "latest": "2026-10-18", "why": "Liked for encrypted offsite snapshots to a wide choice of storage backends like Hetzner Storage Boxes, B2, R2 and S3-compatible buckets, with easy scripting and integrity checks.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 17, "neutral": 7, "compare": 1, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 6, 0, 0, 1, 1, 5, 2], "listed": true, "loved": ["Storage backends", "Encryption"], "caveat": "No error correction", "short_quote": "Then switched to Restic - so much better - highly recommend this.", "icon": true, "domain": "restic.net", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://restic.net/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["restic", "Restic"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked for encrypted offsite snapshots", "cites": [{"id": 801794672, "item_id": 50112167, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112167", "by": "Gigachad", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use restic to create encrypted snapshots on external cloud storage for the data I care about.", "excerpt": "I use restic to create encrypted snapshots on external cloud storage for the data I care about. My media is stored on a nas which covers me for drive failures. If I accidentally delete everything or my house catches fire I can download my personal data again and just redownload the terabytes of media.", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "encrypted backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 780432449, "item_id": 48777028, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777028", "by": "wookmaster", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use restic to manage backups with my own key offsite.", "excerpt": "I've been self hosting immich for the past 6 months. It's pretty awesome. The App has some performance issues but the web is flawless. I cut down on my iCloud plan since I deleted most of my videos from it. I use restic to manage backups with my own key offsite.", "context": "", "use_case": "offsite backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 749170961, "item_id": 46823185, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46823185", "by": "palata", "date": "2026-01-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Restic is a program I have on my computer (that I can even compile from sources), and not a website that gets loaded everytime", "excerpt": "Sounds pretty bad... I am a user a pCloud, but fortunately I use it as a backend for Restic, so I send encrypted stuff there :-). I believe it is better anyway. I have been a happy user of Mega for years, and I like the end-to-end encryption, but the fact remains that I need to trust Mega entirely because the encryption/decryption is made on their website/app. Similar to e.g. ProtonMail: they PGP-encrypt the email on", "context": "pCloud and Mega user", "use_case": "encrypted backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Another user's pCloud setup is visible in my pcloud drive"}]}, {"text": " to a wide choice of storage backends like Hetzner Storage Boxes, B2, R2 and S3-compatible buckets,", "cites": [{"id": 800156512, "item_id": 50009782, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009782", "by": "zhoorta", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "daily backups using restic to a Hetzner Storage Box and weekly, makes a test restoring to a temporary folder and comparing checksums.", "excerpt": "I use an automated script, scheduled with cron, for daily backups using restic to a Hetzner Storage Box and weekly, makes a test restoring to a temporary folder and comparing checksums. If something goes wrong it emails me if the comparison fails or if the backup failed.", "context": "", "use_case": "automated daily backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Is Your Personal Backup Methods"}, {"id": 761915552, "item_id": 47619722, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619722", "by": "sam_lowry_", "date": "2026-04-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hetzner backup servers make for a great restic backend.", "excerpt": "Hetzner backup servers make for a great restic backend. Scaleway Glacier... not so much.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: European Tech Alternatives?"}, {"id": 764296944, "item_id": 47768559, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768559", "by": "mk12", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have complete control over the exclusions and retention.", "excerpt": "Glad I switched from their personal computer backup to using restic + B2 a while ago. Every night my laptop and homelab both back up to each other and to B2. It takes less than a minute and I have complete control over the exclusions and retention. And I can easily switch off B2 to something else if I want.", "context": "has a homelab", "use_case": "nightly laptop and homelab backups", "switched_from": "Backblaze", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 764228753, "item_id": 47764297, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764297", "by": "noisy_boy", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Just switched from Backblaze to Cloudflare R2 (using restic).", "excerpt": "Just switched from Backblaze to Cloudflare R2 (using restic). Now it makes me think if I should check for such issues with R2 as well.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "Backblaze", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 788306081, "item_id": 49269130, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49269130", "by": "kelvinjps10", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "actually I use restic and a s3 compatible bucket.", "excerpt": "syncthing replaced dropbox for me. and for cloud the existing solutions are better google drive,icloud, onedrive but actually I use restic and a s3 compatible bucket.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups to S3-compatible bucket", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dropbox, loved by the masses, a shareholder dead end"}, {"id": 795747872, "item_id": 49734242, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734242", "by": "PunchyHamster", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Software like  https://restic.net/ does a good job.", "excerpt": "So is apparently making readable site. Software like https://restic.net/ does a good job. Few choices of backend Accepts stuff from pipe too so you can just pipe mysqldump or pg_dumpall without intermediate files Very decent options for checking repo integrity, personally (well, at work too, we use it on few hundred user machines and servers) I also added \"roll a dice for backup and try to restore it\" test script to ", "context": "uses it on a few hundred user machines and servers at work", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}]}, {"text": " with easy scripting and integrity checks.", "cites": [{"id": 800156512, "item_id": 50009782, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009782", "by": "zhoorta", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "daily backups using restic to a Hetzner Storage Box and weekly, makes a test restoring to a temporary folder and comparing checksums.", "excerpt": "I use an automated script, scheduled with cron, for daily backups using restic to a Hetzner Storage Box and weekly, makes a test restoring to a temporary folder and comparing checksums. If something goes wrong it emails me if the comparison fails or if the backup failed.", "context": "", "use_case": "automated daily backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Is Your Personal Backup Methods"}, {"id": 795747872, "item_id": 49734242, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734242", "by": "PunchyHamster", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Software like  https://restic.net/ does a good job.", "excerpt": "So is apparently making readable site. Software like https://restic.net/ does a good job. Few choices of backend Accepts stuff from pipe too so you can just pipe mysqldump or pg_dumpall without intermediate files Very decent options for checking repo integrity, personally (well, at work too, we use it on few hundred user machines and servers) I also added \"roll a dice for backup and try to restore it\" test script to ", "context": "uses it on a few hundred user machines and servers at work", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 764372576, "item_id": 47773286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47773286", "by": "hephaes7us", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use restic as well.", "excerpt": "I use restic as well. My script: https://forge.taf.codes/taf/snippets/src/branch/main/backups/restic__remote_only__headless", "context": "", "use_case": "remote backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}]}, {"text": " The main caveat raised is that it has no built-in redundancy to correct errors, so the repository server must provide it.", "cites": [{"id": 793304433, "item_id": 49581527, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49581527", "by": "aborsy", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Restic has also been working great.", "excerpt": "The best backup solution that I found is ZFS send (even if it\u2019s not strictly a back up tool). ZFS send raw encrypted stream from laptop to a server automatically. Encrypted compressed incremental. No need to verify: if snapshot exists at destination, there is no error. If a problem is encountered, restore from redundancy. Errors can be detected and corrected. Restic has also been working great. The problem is that, i", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating backup storage sucks"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Storage backends", "summary": "Commenters back up to Hetzner, B2, Cloudflare R2, S3-compatible buckets, pCloud and rsync.net, and can switch providers easily.", "quotes": [{"id": 761915552, "item_id": 47619722, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619722", "by": "sam_lowry_", "date": "2026-04-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hetzner backup servers make for a great restic backend.", "excerpt": "Hetzner backup servers make for a great restic backend. Scaleway Glacier... not so much.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: European Tech Alternatives?"}, {"id": 764296944, "item_id": 47768559, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768559", "by": "mk12", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have complete control over the exclusions and retention.", "excerpt": "Glad I switched from their personal computer backup to using restic + B2 a while ago. Every night my laptop and homelab both back up to each other and to B2. It takes less than a minute and I have complete control over the exclusions and retention. And I can easily switch off B2 to something else if I want.", "context": "has a homelab", "use_case": "nightly laptop and homelab backups", "switched_from": "Backblaze", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 795747872, "item_id": 49734242, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734242", "by": "PunchyHamster", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Software like  https://restic.net/ does a good job.", "excerpt": "So is apparently making readable site. Software like https://restic.net/ does a good job. Few choices of backend Accepts stuff from pipe too so you can just pipe mysqldump or pg_dumpall without intermediate files Very decent options for checking repo integrity, personally (well, at work too, we use it on few hundred user machines and servers) I also added \"roll a dice for backup and try to restore it\" test script to ", "context": "uses it on a few hundred user machines and servers at work", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}]}, {"label": "Encryption", "summary": "Users like keeping their own key and sending only encrypted data to cloud storage.", "quotes": [{"id": 780432449, "item_id": 48777028, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777028", "by": "wookmaster", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use restic to manage backups with my own key offsite.", "excerpt": "I've been self hosting immich for the past 6 months. It's pretty awesome. The App has some performance issues but the web is flawless. I cut down on my iCloud plan since I deleted most of my videos from it. I use restic to manage backups with my own key offsite.", "context": "", "use_case": "offsite backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 749170961, "item_id": 46823185, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46823185", "by": "palata", "date": "2026-01-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Restic is a program I have on my computer (that I can even compile from sources), and not a website that gets loaded everytime", "excerpt": "Sounds pretty bad... I am a user a pCloud, but fortunately I use it as a backend for Restic, so I send encrypted stuff there :-). I believe it is better anyway. I have been a happy user of Mega for years, and I like the end-to-end encryption, but the fact remains that I need to trust Mega entirely because the encryption/decryption is made on their website/app. Similar to e.g. ProtonMail: they PGP-encrypt the email on", "context": "pCloud and Mega user", "use_case": "encrypted backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Another user's pCloud setup is visible in my pcloud drive"}, {"id": 801794672, "item_id": 50112167, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112167", "by": "Gigachad", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use restic to create encrypted snapshots on external cloud storage for the data I care about.", "excerpt": "I use restic to create encrypted snapshots on external cloud storage for the data I care about. My media is stored on a nas which covers me for drive failures. If I accidentally delete everything or my house catches fire I can download my personal data again and just redownload the terabytes of media.", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "encrypted backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}]}, {"label": "Scriptable", "summary": "Commenters drive it from cron jobs and shell scripts, and it accepts piped input such as database dumps.", "quotes": [{"id": 800156512, "item_id": 50009782, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009782", "by": "zhoorta", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "daily backups using restic to a Hetzner Storage Box and weekly, makes a test restoring to a temporary folder and comparing checksums.", "excerpt": "I use an automated script, scheduled with cron, for daily backups using restic to a Hetzner Storage Box and weekly, makes a test restoring to a temporary folder and comparing checksums. If something goes wrong it emails me if the comparison fails or if the backup failed.", "context": "", "use_case": "automated daily backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Is Your Personal Backup Methods"}, {"id": 764372576, "item_id": 47773286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47773286", "by": "hephaes7us", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use restic as well.", "excerpt": "I use restic as well. My script: https://forge.taf.codes/taf/snippets/src/branch/main/backups/restic__remote_only__headless", "context": "", "use_case": "remote backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 795747872, "item_id": 49734242, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734242", "by": "PunchyHamster", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Software like  https://restic.net/ does a good job.", "excerpt": "So is apparently making readable site. Software like https://restic.net/ does a good job. Few choices of backend Accepts stuff from pipe too so you can just pipe mysqldump or pg_dumpall without intermediate files Very decent options for checking repo integrity, personally (well, at work too, we use it on few hundred user machines and servers) I also added \"roll a dice for backup and try to restore it\" test script to ", "context": "uses it on a few hundred user machines and servers at work", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}]}, {"label": "Deduplication", "summary": "Deduplication makes long snapshot retention practical, and one user found it much better than duplicity.", "quotes": [{"id": 795747872, "item_id": 49734242, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734242", "by": "PunchyHamster", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Software like  https://restic.net/ does a good job.", "excerpt": "So is apparently making readable site. Software like https://restic.net/ does a good job. Few choices of backend Accepts stuff from pipe too so you can just pipe mysqldump or pg_dumpall without intermediate files Very decent options for checking repo integrity, personally (well, at work too, we use it on few hundred user machines and servers) I also added \"roll a dice for backup and try to restore it\" test script to ", "context": "uses it on a few hundred user machines and servers at work", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795799424, "item_id": 49737464, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737464", "by": "mattbillenstein", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Then switched to Restic - so much better - highly recommend this.", "excerpt": "Ran duplicity - it's really a blunt hammer, lots of duplication, rotation, etc. Then switched to Restic - so much better - highly recommend this.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "duplicity", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 764296944, "item_id": 47768559, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768559", "by": "mk12", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have complete control over the exclusions and retention.", "excerpt": "Glad I switched from their personal computer backup to using restic + B2 a while ago. Every night my laptop and homelab both back up to each other and to B2. It takes less than a minute and I have complete control over the exclusions and retention. And I can easily switch off B2 to something else if I want.", "context": "has a homelab", "use_case": "nightly laptop and homelab backups", "switched_from": "Backblaze", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}]}, {"label": "Integrity checks", "summary": "Repo checks and scripted test restores help users confirm their backups actually work.", "quotes": [{"id": 795747872, "item_id": 49734242, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734242", "by": "PunchyHamster", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Software like  https://restic.net/ does a good job.", "excerpt": "So is apparently making readable site. Software like https://restic.net/ does a good job. Few choices of backend Accepts stuff from pipe too so you can just pipe mysqldump or pg_dumpall without intermediate files Very decent options for checking repo integrity, personally (well, at work too, we use it on few hundred user machines and servers) I also added \"roll a dice for backup and try to restore it\" test script to ", "context": "uses it on a few hundred user machines and servers at work", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 800156512, "item_id": 50009782, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009782", "by": "zhoorta", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "daily backups using restic to a Hetzner Storage Box and weekly, makes a test restoring to a temporary folder and comparing checksums.", "excerpt": "I use an automated script, scheduled with cron, for daily backups using restic to a Hetzner Storage Box and weekly, makes a test restoring to a temporary folder and comparing checksums. If something goes wrong it emails me if the comparison fails or if the backup failed.", "context": "", "use_case": "automated daily backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Is Your Personal Backup Methods"}]}, {"label": "Backrest web UI", "summary": "Backrest gives restic a web UI for scheduling, pruning and checking repos.", "quotes": [{"id": 792743585, "item_id": 49546474, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546474", "by": "TranquilMarmot", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "as a web UI around restic", "excerpt": "I have a server in a closet with a few hard drives attached to it. All of my devices connect to it via Tailscale. I use the wonderful https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest as a web UI around restic. Every night, I back the data up to a Hetzner storage box https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/ which is only ~$3.50/mo USD for 1TB of data. I have three \"tiers\" of data for myself: 1. Important things I care abo", "context": "runs a home server", "use_case": "nightly backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating backup storage sucks"}, {"id": 795761104, "item_id": 49735069, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49735069", "by": "ebrahimh", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "definitely leaning towards Restic + Backrest.", "excerpt": "I\u2019m setting up 3-2-1-ish backups for my infra of 3 hosts, and definitely leaning towards Restic + Backrest. All my hosts run the same CoreOS setup (https://github.com/ebrahim37/infra-template), where container volumes are placed in one central volumes/ folder and that is the only thing I have to backup. I plan to implement it like this: vps1: - restic container with custom sh entrypoint that will backup volumes/ to h", "context": "runs infra of 3 hosts", "use_case": "3-2-1 backups for hosts", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "No error correction", "summary": "Restic has no redundancy to correct errors, so it relies on the storage server for that.", "quotes": [{"id": 793304433, "item_id": 49581527, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49581527", "by": "aborsy", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Restic has also been working great.", "excerpt": "The best backup solution that I found is ZFS send (even if it\u2019s not strictly a back up tool). ZFS send raw encrypted stream from laptop to a server automatically. Encrypted compressed incremental. No need to verify: if snapshot exists at destination, there is no error. If a problem is encountered, restore from redundancy. Errors can be detected and corrected. Restic has also been working great. The problem is that, i", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating backup storage sucks"}]}, {"label": "Google Drive backend", "summary": "Pairing it with Google Drive via rclone for about 5TB was described as rather clunky.", "quotes": [{"id": 735716914, "item_id": 45982307, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45982307", "by": "monerozcash", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "compare", "quote": "google drive+rclone+borg/restic/whatever", "excerpt": "This needs more information. 5TB is far from \"BIG\" when it comes to cloud backups. You can probably get away with google drive+rclone+borg/restic/whatever, but it will be rather clunky. Backblaze might be a nicer backend to use. I use rsync.net with borg, but not sure about your budget. Their 1TB lifetime plan is very competitive though.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What is the current state of the art in BIG (>5TB) cloud backups?"}]}], "who": [{"by": "Gigachad", "context": "self-hoster", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112167", "date": "2026-10-16"}, {"by": "ebrahimh", "context": "runs infra of 3 hosts", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49735069", "date": "2026-09-17"}, {"by": "PunchyHamster", "context": "uses it on a few hundred user machines and servers at work", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734242", "date": "2026-09-16"}, {"by": "TranquilMarmot", "context": "runs a home server", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546474", "date": "2026-09-03"}, {"by": "mk12", "context": "has a homelab", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768559", "date": "2026-04-14"}, {"by": "philjohn", "context": "Backs up NAS, about 3.5TB", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765541", "date": "2026-04-14"}, {"by": "palata", "context": "pCloud and Mega user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46823185", "date": "2026-01-30"}], "tags": ["for self-hosters", "for homelabs", "for servers at work", "scriptable", "pairs with Backrest"], "use_cases": ["backups", "backup", "encrypted backups", "cloud backups", "automated daily backups", "home pc backups"], "compared": [{"slug": "backblaze", "name": "Backblaze", "co": 4, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "borgbackup", "name": "BorgBackup", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "immich", "name": "Immich", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "syncthing", "name": "Syncthing", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "rclone", "name": "rclone", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "nixos", "name": "NixOS", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "sops-nix", "name": "sops-nix", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762864", "title": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49732513", "title": "Backups Aren't Simple", "mentions": 4}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109715", "title": "What I self-host", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49841563", "title": "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49509606", "title": "Creating backup storage sucks", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50135289", "title": "Obnam Community", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"compare": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 5}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 3}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802189458, "item_id": 50136841, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50136841", "by": "theamk", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "went to borg (and later to restic)", "excerpt": "huh, have not realized Obnam is still alive. I remember Obnam being retired in 2017[0]. I was evaluating backup systems back then, and went to borg (and later to restic). But turns out, it came back 2020. I like the motivation [1]: > Borg and Restic are both fine backup programs. I've been using Borg for a while. The point here for me is that I find implementing backup systems to be a fascinating hobby. Thus, I want ", "context": "", "use_case": "backup", "switched_from": "Borg", "story": "Obnam Community"}, {"id": 801821840, "item_id": 50113865, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50113865", "by": "viceconsole", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use both Restic and Syncthing.", "excerpt": "I use both Restic and Syncthing. I have considered putting encrypted backups on a cloud blob storage, but my preference would be to set up an offsite backup at a relative's house.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801794672, "item_id": 50112167, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112167", "by": "Gigachad", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use restic to create encrypted snapshots on external cloud storage for the data I care about.", "excerpt": "I use restic to create encrypted snapshots on external cloud storage for the data I care about. My media is stored on a nas which covers me for drive failures. If I accidentally delete everything or my house catches fire I can download my personal data again and just redownload the terabytes of media.", "context": "self-hoster", "use_case": "encrypted backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 800282678, "item_id": 50017667, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50017667", "by": "wraptile", "date": "2026-10-09", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "languagetool, nextcloud, hister, syncthing, restic backups, vaultwarden, windmill", "excerpt": "These VPS no longer make much sense for self-hosting imo. I have two refurbished 32gb ram Lenovo k14 laptops (250$ each) that I use for self-hosting over tailscale and cloudflare tunnels. This is a lot of compute and very little power use. One for personal self-hosted projects: languagetool, nextcloud, hister, syncthing, restic backups, vaultwarden, windmill. Another for public facing web apps I host through cloudfla", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 800156512, "item_id": 50009782, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50009782", "by": "zhoorta", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "daily backups using restic to a Hetzner Storage Box and weekly, makes a test restoring to a temporary folder and comparing checksums.", "excerpt": "I use an automated script, scheduled with cron, for daily backups using restic to a Hetzner Storage Box and weekly, makes a test restoring to a temporary folder and comparing checksums. If something goes wrong it emails me if the comparison fails or if the backup failed.", "context": "", "use_case": "automated daily backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Is Your Personal Backup Methods"}, {"id": 797611412, "item_id": 49850713, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49850713", "by": "Sugimot0", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "restic for cloud backups", "excerpt": "I used to wonder this same question and weighed guix and nix quite a bit before moving to the nix camp. Guix on paper really sounds ideal, it feels like a more compelling design, more first principles, it's all scheme, really exciting ideas under the hood. But design intent is not a substitute for the actual user experience. IRL it's too much hassle: weak package coverage, weak ecosystem, a steep learning curve, most", "context": "", "use_case": "cloud backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS"}, {"id": 797611332, "item_id": 49850708, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49850708", "by": "Sugimot0", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "restic for cloud backups", "excerpt": "I used to wonder this same question and weighed guix and nix quite a bit before moving to the nix camp. Guix on paper really sounds ideal, it feels like a more compelling design, more first principles, it's all scheme, really exciting ideas under the hood. But design intent is not a substitute for the actual user experience. IRL it's too much hassle: weak package coverage, weak ecosystem, a steep learning curve, most", "context": "", "use_case": "cloud backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS"}, {"id": 795799424, "item_id": 49737464, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737464", "by": "mattbillenstein", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Then switched to Restic - so much better - highly recommend this.", "excerpt": "Ran duplicity - it's really a blunt hammer, lots of duplication, rotation, etc. Then switched to Restic - so much better - highly recommend this.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "duplicity", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795770400, "item_id": 49735650, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49735650", "by": "smallerfish", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "On my home PC I use restic, and (shockingly) I run it manually (via a script).", "excerpt": "On my home PC I use restic, and (shockingly) I run it manually (via a script). I have a terminal banner that nags me when backup hasn't run in 24 hours, or displays spanish verb tables when it has (so I will notice if the banner doesn't show). I've been burned in the past losing a backup cron, and dead man's snitch seemed overkill for my needs here. And I've also forgotten what backup system was in place on a prior i", "context": "", "use_case": "home PC backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795761104, "item_id": 49735069, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49735069", "by": "ebrahimh", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "definitely leaning towards Restic + Backrest.", "excerpt": "I\u2019m setting up 3-2-1-ish backups for my infra of 3 hosts, and definitely leaning towards Restic + Backrest. All my hosts run the same CoreOS setup (https://github.com/ebrahim37/infra-template), where container volumes are placed in one central volumes/ folder and that is the only thing I have to backup. I plan to implement it like this: vps1: - restic container with custom sh entrypoint that will backup volumes/ to h", "context": "runs infra of 3 hosts", "use_case": "3-2-1 backups for hosts", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 795747872, "item_id": 49734242, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734242", "by": "PunchyHamster", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Software like  https://restic.net/ does a good job.", "excerpt": "So is apparently making readable site. Software like https://restic.net/ does a good job. Few choices of backend Accepts stuff from pipe too so you can just pipe mysqldump or pg_dumpall without intermediate files Very decent options for checking repo integrity, personally (well, at work too, we use it on few hundred user machines and servers) I also added \"roll a dice for backup and try to restore it\" test script to ", "context": "uses it on a few hundred user machines and servers at work", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backups Aren't Simple"}, {"id": 793304433, "item_id": 49581527, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49581527", "by": "aborsy", "date": "2026-09-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Restic has also been working great.", "excerpt": "The best backup solution that I found is ZFS send (even if it\u2019s not strictly a back up tool). ZFS send raw encrypted stream from laptop to a server automatically. Encrypted compressed incremental. No need to verify: if snapshot exists at destination, there is no error. If a problem is encountered, restore from redundancy. Errors can be detected and corrected. Restic has also been working great. The problem is that, i", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating backup storage sucks"}, {"id": 792743585, "item_id": 49546474, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546474", "by": "TranquilMarmot", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "as a web UI around restic", "excerpt": "I have a server in a closet with a few hard drives attached to it. All of my devices connect to it via Tailscale. I use the wonderful https://github.com/garethgeorge/backrest as a web UI around restic. Every night, I back the data up to a Hetzner storage box https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box/ which is only ~$3.50/mo USD for 1TB of data. I have three \"tiers\" of data for myself: 1. Important things I care abo", "context": "runs a home server", "use_case": "nightly backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Creating backup storage sucks"}, {"id": 792729442, "item_id": 49545590, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49545590", "by": "hakcermani", "date": "2026-09-03", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "backed up to rsync.net via restic", "excerpt": "Had gazillion copies of folders and iphoto libraries in various backups, but since i moved to linux as daily driver was on the hunt for a good photo archiver. Just recently started using Immich. Tried Photoprism too which would have also fit my need well, but somehow Immich won the coin toss ! (After many years was able to pull that one pic my wife was after from my archive !). My all those duplicates have been now b", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 788306081, "item_id": 49269130, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49269130", "by": "kelvinjps10", "date": "2026-08-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "actually I use restic and a s3 compatible bucket.", "excerpt": "syncthing replaced dropbox for me. and for cloud the existing solutions are better google drive,icloud, onedrive but actually I use restic and a s3 compatible bucket.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups to S3-compatible bucket", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dropbox, loved by the masses, a shareholder dead end"}, {"id": 780432449, "item_id": 48777028, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777028", "by": "wookmaster", "date": "2026-07-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use restic to manage backups with my own key offsite.", "excerpt": "I've been self hosting immich for the past 6 months. It's pretty awesome. The App has some performance issues but the web is flawless. I cut down on my iCloud plan since I deleted most of my videos from it. I use restic to manage backups with my own key offsite.", "context": "", "use_case": "offsite backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 764372576, "item_id": 47773286, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47773286", "by": "hephaes7us", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use restic as well.", "excerpt": "I use restic as well. My script: https://forge.taf.codes/taf/snippets/src/branch/main/backups/restic__remote_only__headless", "context": "", "use_case": "remote backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 764296944, "item_id": 47768559, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768559", "by": "mk12", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have complete control over the exclusions and retention.", "excerpt": "Glad I switched from their personal computer backup to using restic + B2 a while ago. Every night my laptop and homelab both back up to each other and to B2. It takes less than a minute and I have complete control over the exclusions and retention. And I can easily switch off B2 to something else if I want.", "context": "has a homelab", "use_case": "nightly laptop and homelab backups", "switched_from": "Backblaze", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 764248658, "item_id": 47765541, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765541", "by": "philjohn", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can layer restic on top for a complete backup solution", "excerpt": "For those looking for something at a decent price for up to 5TB, take a look at JottaCloud, which is supported by rclone, and then you can layer restic on top for a complete backup solution. JottaCloud is \"unlimited\" for $11.99 a month (your upload speed is throttled after 5TB). I've been using them for a few years for backing up important files from my NAS (timemachine backups, Immich library, digitised VHS's, Proxm", "context": "Backs up NAS, about 3.5TB", "use_case": "backup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 764228753, "item_id": 47764297, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764297", "by": "noisy_boy", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Just switched from Backblaze to Cloudflare R2 (using restic).", "excerpt": "Just switched from Backblaze to Cloudflare R2 (using restic). Now it makes me think if I should check for such issues with R2 as well.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "Backblaze", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 764228704, "item_id": 47764294, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764294", "by": "corndoge", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I like backblaze for backups, but I use restic and b2.", "excerpt": "I like backblaze for backups, but I use restic and b2. You get what you pay for. Really lame behavior from backblaze as I always recommended their native backup solution to others and now need to reconsider.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Backblaze has stopped backing up your data"}, {"id": 762534068, "item_id": 47658379, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47658379", "by": "Imustaskforhelp", "date": "2026-04-06", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I am looking at using something like auto-restic with 1 minute frequency to do backups", "excerpt": "I had once lost my LUKS encryption key to StackOverflow effectively making me lose all the data that I had within that disk. It was only when I had scrolled down the article AFTER running the command, that I saw warning: your data will be unrecoverable and I panicked (I then used chatgpt but to no avail, and I feel like it might've made things worse even) Anyhow, I think a larger lesson is to have a full context on w", "context": "", "use_case": "frequent project backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "A Tale of AI Betrayal and Snapshotting Victory"}, {"id": 761915552, "item_id": 47619722, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619722", "by": "sam_lowry_", "date": "2026-04-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Hetzner backup servers make for a great restic backend.", "excerpt": "Hetzner backup servers make for a great restic backend. Scaleway Glacier... not so much.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: European Tech Alternatives?"}, {"id": 752719760, "item_id": 47044985, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47044985", "by": "alexcheese", "date": "2026-02-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Restic and Borg are good options to look into.", "excerpt": "> ...I\u2019m looking forward to using up all that available memory and disk space. Ideas? Highly recommend hosting a backup system for your other devices. Restic and Borg are good options to look into.", "context": "", "use_case": "backup system", "switched_from": "", "story": "Site Runs on 30GB of RAM"}, {"id": 749170961, "item_id": 46823185, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46823185", "by": "palata", "date": "2026-01-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Restic is a program I have on my computer (that I can even compile from sources), and not a website that gets loaded everytime", "excerpt": "Sounds pretty bad... I am a user a pCloud, but fortunately I use it as a backend for Restic, so I send encrypted stuff there :-). I believe it is better anyway. I have been a happy user of Mega for years, and I like the end-to-end encryption, but the fact remains that I need to trust Mega entirely because the encryption/decryption is made on their website/app. Similar to e.g. ProtonMail: they PGP-encrypt the email on", "context": "pCloud and Mega user", "use_case": "encrypted backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Another user's pCloud setup is visible in my pcloud drive"}, {"id": 735716914, "item_id": 45982307, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45982307", "by": "monerozcash", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "compare", "quote": "google drive+rclone+borg/restic/whatever", "excerpt": "This needs more information. 5TB is far from \"BIG\" when it comes to cloud backups. You can probably get away with google drive+rclone+borg/restic/whatever, but it will be rather clunky. Backblaze might be a nicer backend to use. I use rsync.net with borg, but not sure about your budget. Their 1TB lifetime plan is very competitive though.", "context": "", "use_case": "backups", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What is the current state of the art in BIG (>5TB) cloud backups?"}]}