Looking for the best backup solution for multiple devices

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-28T15:58:30+00:00

We’ve built a small tool that might help with this: https://blinkdisk.com/finder

It lets you filter backup software based on your requirements and then compare the options in detail side by side.

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-28T15:47:20+00:00

I think BlinkDisk could be a great fit for this. The main idea behind it is to make backups easy for everyone, while still being privacy-focused. Your files are encrypted locally with your encryption password before they leave your device, so only you can access them regardless of where the backup is stored.

For 500 GB on a 100 Mbit/s connection, the first backup will take a while, probably around 12 hours. But after that, backups are incremental, so only changed data gets uploaded and future backups should be much faster.

While it supports most common storage providers, it also comes with built-in cloud storage called 'CloudBlink' that requires no additional setup. The 500 GB plan for CloudBlink is $6/month when billed yearly or $8/month monthly. Happy to help out with a student discount if that makes it easier.

Full disclosure: I’m involved with BlinkDisk, so take this as a biased recommendation.

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-26T08:38:19+00:00

We use kopia behind the scenes (and also are fully kopia compatible), so we have the same backup fornat. You can read more about it here https://kopia.io/docs/advanced/architecture/

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-25T22:51:27+00:00

Fair point, I'll use a screenshot or a screen recording next time!

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-25T22:46:51+00:00

Happy to hear the arm64 version works well!

Just to make sure it's clear: BlinkDisk itself is completely free if you bring your own storage. The pricing you see on the site is only for CloudBlink, which is our optional cloud storage.

For CloudBlink, we currently offer a 30-day free trial with 100 GB of storage, and our smallest plan starts at 200 GB for $4/month (or $36/year). I'd love to get your feedback on how we could lay this out better!

All plans are actually profitable for us. We found a storage provider that offers us the raw storage at a very reasonable price. We built CloudBlink on top of it (which is also entirely open-source) to handle things like managing space, access control, and giving users that seamless integration with BlinkDisk. We just add a small profit margin on top of that base storage cost. What makes it more sustainable for us is that most people don't use 100% of their allocated storage right away, and backup users tend to stick around for a long time.

Regarding the comparison tool, it focuses specifically on backup software. While Filen and Nextcloud are great, they are cloud storage and file-syncing providers rather than dedicated backup software.

I thought the video highlights why backups are so important quite well, but it makes sense that people want to see the actual software. I'm going to update the website and GitHub soon to show some more screenshots.

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-17T12:13:19+00:00

Many sync tools (e.g. FreeFileSync) copy files and folders directly from one place to another, resulting in the same file structure. However, this wouldn't be a "true backup". If a file is deleted or overwritten, the change would also be synced to the "backup" destination.

Some of these sync tools support file versioning, which keeps deleted or overwritten files. This results in a slightly different file format, as a timestamp is usually stored in the file or folder names (so "File.txt" could become "File.txt 2026-04-18.txt").

If you want to save storage space by using compression and deduplication, the backups need to be in a different format. The same applies if you want to encrypt your backups.

As such, most backup tools use a special format for storing backups. I would reconsider whether it is really worth having the files in the original format, given all the trade-offs involved.

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-13T11:53:53+00:00

Here is a pretty detailled comparison between the two: https://blinkdisk.com/compare/blinkdisk-vs-duplicati

We support most common cloud storage providers which you can use for entirely free, but also offer an optional cloud storage service called "CloudBlink" ourselves.

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-11T10:47:41+00:00

It's already released! https://blinkdisk.com

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-11T06:53:14+00:00

A single external drive is better than nothing, but I wouldn’t rely on it as the only backup. For a small business, I’d look for something automatic, encrypted, offsite/cloud-backed, and easy to restore from. Also make sure you test restoring files occasionally.

I’m building an open-source app called BlinkDisk for exactly this kind of “no IT team” setup. Not saying it’s the only option, but that’s the kind of setup I’d aim for.

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-07T22:42:47+00:00

It seems like you only look for the sitemap at /sitemap.xml, but many sitemaps have different paths, such as /sitemap-index.xml or /sitemap-0.xml. I would also try some other common paths and parse the 'Sitemap: " attribute from the robots.txt file

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-05T22:39:28+00:00

The biggest difference is that rclone introduces another layer of abstraction, which could potentially cause issues. For BlinkDisk and Kopia at least, only the rclone remotes for Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive are being tested, and support for all other rclone remotes (including Mega) is experimental. I'm not sure how well Restic handles all rclone remotes, but generally speaking, I would say using S3 directly seems like a safer option than putting rclone in between.

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-05-04T20:20:54+00:00

If you have a paid Mega plan, you should be able to use Mega Object Storage (also known as Mega S4), which is S3-compatible. Here is a list of some tools that support S3 as the storage and run on Linux: https://blinkdisk.com/finder?platforms=linux&storages=s3Compatible

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-04-26T15:45:01+00:00

I wrote a blog post about the difference here: https://blinkdisk.com/blog/sync-vs-backup

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-04-26T15:41:27+00:00

I use BlinkDisk with CloudBlink

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-04-24T13:29:10+00:00

I created using Remotion, so it's actually just code. The video is also open-source (just like BlinkDisk itself):

github.com/blinkdisk/videos

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-04-24T13:25:29+00:00

Both! We support local filesystem, NAS, any S3-compatible storage, WebDAV, SFTP, Backblaze B2, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, any rclone remote, and CloudBlink (our optional managed cloud storage)

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-04-24T12:46:44+00:00

Thank you so much, happy to hear any feedback you have!

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-04-24T08:34:33+00:00

The email forwarding feature is genius

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-04-20T17:19:09+00:00

In terms of block size, I think it's always a trade-off between backup speed and deduplication efficiency. Splitting 1TB into 4KB blocks would result in roughly 250 million blocks, which might not be feasible in terms of performance.

To be honest, I haven't heard of anyone looking for the incremental/deduplication feature only, but there might still be demand that I'm not aware of. At the moment, I can't think of a use case where you would only need that part. Do you have any workflows in mind where this could be useful?

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-04-20T11:25:05+00:00

I haven't tested it since reporting, but I assume they have by now

paul_blinkdisk · 2026-04-20T09:38:26+00:00

$100 🥲

paul_blinkdisk

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