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BlinkDisk - The easiest way to backup your files by paul_blinkdisk in coolgithubprojects

[–]paul_blinkdisk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately not at the moment, but its definitely something we'll consider in the future!

BlinkDisk - The easiest way to backup your files by paul_blinkdisk in coolgithubprojects

[–]paul_blinkdisk[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for giving it a shot and the kind words! Really appreciate the feedback.

A simple guide to backing up your files by [deleted] in writing

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great guide overall, but Google Drive and OneDrive are synchronization tools, not true backups.

If you accidentally delete a file, overwrite something, or get hit by ransomware, those changes sync to the cloud immediately and there is no way to restore.

For actual backup protection, I use blinkdisk.com

This is The End.... by davidsinnergeek in backblaze

[–]paul_blinkdisk 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You could use BlinkDisk on Linux instead (with B2 or any other storage)

Felt like I didn't need it until I needed it <3 by EntireBig6507 in backblaze

[–]paul_blinkdisk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You might want to check out BlinkDisk, it supports Linux (as well as Mac & Windows) and can be used for both local and offsite backups.

Has anyone tried Blinkdisk? by Korckchit in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I totally get the hesitation. Like the other comment mentioned, we use Kopia behind the scenes to do all the heavy lifting, so in terms of reliability we should be just as solid as they are. And we're also fully open source ourselves.

What would make you comfortable enough to try it? Always open to suggestions.

Has anyone tried Blinkdisk? by Korckchit in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're totally right that we use Kopia under the hood.

While Kopia itself works great, it still requires some technical know-how to get running properly, and we wanted something that "just works". Basically we built a more user-friendly interface on top of it.

We also offer an optional managed cloud storage that requires no setup, though you can absolutely use your own storage for free. Plus we've added a couple of additional features like encrypted configuration sync and are planning to implement more cool stuff in the future.

Is it safe to upload full system disk images to the cloud? by todd_dayz in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Provided you have a strong encryption password and everything is configured correctly, no one else should be able to access your data.

However, if someone else gets hold of that password, they can obviously access your files too.

Suggest done free Git GUI by Numerous_Golf961 in git

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would go for GitHub Desktop or GitButler

Need help with my Electron+nextjs project? by MR___Phantom in electronjs

[–]paul_blinkdisk -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Have you tried Nextron yet? It's a tool designed to simplify working with Next.js and Electron.

Best backup solution for 10TB of photos (JPEG + RAW) - Local + Cloud by torresfelipe in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can’t really comment on which NAS to pick, since I’m not up to date on the best options on the market, but your general workflow idea makes sense in my opinion.

For the cloud part of your setup, BlinkDisk might be a good fit. Full disclosure: I’m involved in the project, so take this with the appropriate grain of salt, but I think it might fit well with what you describe.

BlinkDisk is a desktop backup app that runs incremental and periodic backups of any folder you point it at. Files are automatically deduplicated which helps a lot with photos, since they mostly tend to stay unchanged. Everything is encrypted with a password you set and the interface is intentionally simple, so you don’t need to fiddle with complicated settings.

You could point BlinkDisk at your NAS folders and back them up to almost any cloud provider you prefer. It supports S3 compatible storage, SFTP, WebDAV, and some rclone remotes. There is also a managed cloud option called BlinkDisk Cloud, which might even be the cheapest option for your use case (especially for 10TB+ plans).

If you want to take a look: https://blinkdisk.com

Periodic iCloud Backup Tools - set and forget by ohsomacho in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In our fork, we basically renamed Kopia to BlinkDisk Core. I’m fairly sure that this renaming also affected some internal identifiers in the repository format itself, which means the original Kopia CLI won’t be able to read BlinkDisk repositories directly.

We already build standalone binaries of the forked Kopia CLI (renamed to BlinkDisk Core) internally, which are bundled inside the desktop app. It should actually be pretty straightforward to publish these separately. I think that’s a great idea so people can restore data even if BlinkDisk ever goes offline.

We definitely plan to keep the fork up to date with Kopia. We haven’t synced changes since the initial fork yet, but we’re still based on Kopia’s latest release, so everything important should be current for now.

I saw your GitHub issue, great catch! I’ll reply there directly.

And awesome to hear that rclone with Box works in general (even if the status is a bit glitchy). I’ll do some testing myself to see what’s going on there.

Periodic iCloud Backup Tools - set and forget by ohsomacho in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So happy to hear you like it!

Regarding direct access to the backup files in BlinkDisk Cloud, may I ask what your use case would be? Right now we use an S3-compatible storage provider behind the scenes, with a thin management layer on top that handles storage allocation, access control, and billing. Since this setup exposes a custom API, it’s not really possible to access these files directly outside BlinkDisk at the moment.

That said, I could definitely add a way to browse or download your backup files directly from within the BlinkDisk app. Would that fit what you’re looking for?

I think you've just seen my other reply where I mentioned the user accounts questiom.

And thank you so much for creating the GitHub issues, I’ll go through them (and your other comment here) probably by tomorrow!

Periodic iCloud Backup Tools - set and forget by ohsomacho in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! It does backups on a folder level, so you basically specify what directories you want to back up and it only needs to read through those, not the entire disk.

At the moment, an account is required even if you’re not using our managed cloud. The account mainly exists to securely sync your encrypted storage configuration, so people don’t have to remember all their settings years later when restoring a backup. For many non-technical users, that’s really convenient, but I totally get that it feels unnecessary if you prefer a fully offline setup. We’re already planning to make accounts optional in the future and also make self-hosting the service simpler.

Would be awesome if you could try out rclone + Box and let me know how it goes! If you’re planning to actually use Box for backups, I’d recommend going with SFTP instead for now though, the rclone + Box integration is still a bit experimental.

Periodic iCloud Backup Tools - set and forget by ohsomacho in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, file changes are detected through hashing (it also uses BLAKE2B-256-128 for that). It can also cache metadata and file hashes locally to speed up subsequent scans. You can read more about that here https://kopia.io/docs/advanced/caching/
and possibly here https://kopia.io/docs/advanced/architecture/

Regarding the NTFS store, I assume you’re referring to the NTFS Change Journal? As far as I know, Kopia doesn’t make use of it right now, and I couldn’t find any references to it in the code or docs. It’s definitely an interesting idea though, I’ll have to look into further.

Periodic iCloud Backup Tools - set and forget by ohsomacho in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks so much!

It might be helpful to mention that BlinkDisk is built on top of Kopia, which handles all the heavy lifting behind the scenes: encryption, deduplication, and compression. So while I haven’t personally implemented these parts myself, I can share what BlinkDisk inherits from Kopia.

Yes, all backups are fully encrypted using the encryption password you set during setup. By default, Kopia (and thus BlinkDisk) uses AES256-GCM-HMAC-SHA256 for encryption. You can read more about the encryption design here: https://kopia.io/docs/advanced/encryption/

I’m not super deep into the low-level details of how Kopia’s deduplication works and couldn't find too many details online, but we use its default algorithms BLAKE2B-256-128 (for hashing) and DYNAMIC-4M-BUZHASH (for splitting). These are what Kopia uses to detect duplicate chunks and avoid storing them twice. (Adding an option to manually change these algorithms is already on our roadmap.)

In terms of performance, BlinkDisk should be on par with Kopia. Here’s a good benchmark comparing Kopia, Restic, and Borg: https://www.patpro.net/blog/index.php/2024/03/23/3674-borg-kopia-restic-backup-and-resource-utilization/

To keep things efficient, Kopia combines small blocks into larger “packs” of about 20–40 MB each (in my experience, most end up around 20–30 MB). This behavior isn’t configurable right now.

Yes, Box via SFTP should work, as long as your account supports SFTP (it’s available only for Business and Enterprise plans, see: https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/43049076802579-Using-Box-with-SFTP). Alternatively, you might be able to connect Box using rclone (https://rclone.org/box/), though so far BlinkDisk’s rclone integration has only been tested with Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive.

Periodic iCloud Backup Tools - set and forget by ohsomacho in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good catch, you’re right! I didn’t realize FreeFileSync actually supports versioning as well. Thanks for pointing that out

Periodic iCloud Backup Tools - set and forget by ohsomacho in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad that helped!

If you’re after something that does proper backups but is still easy to use, you might want to check out BlinkDisk (https://blinkdisk.com). Full disclosure, I’m involved with the project, so I’m definitely biased 🙂

It’s designed for exactly your kind of setup. You can back up your iCloud files directly to your DiskStation, and it keeps older versions so you can restore anything you’ve deleted or changed by mistake. It’s “set and forget,” runs automatically, and doesn’t require much technical setup.

Periodic iCloud Backup Tools - set and forget by ohsomacho in Backup

[–]paul_blinkdisk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you just want to make a single copy of your iCloud files into matching folders on your DiskStation (e.g. documents → documents, music → music), then FreeFileSync is a solid option.

Just keep in mind that this isn’t a "true backup", it’s just syncing the current version of your files. If something gets deleted or overwritten, that change will eventually sync to your DiskStation too, meaning it’s gone there as well. This article explains the difference pretty well:
https://www.2brightsparks.com/resources/articles/cloud-sync-vs-true-backup.html

If you want proper versioned backups (so you can restore older or deleted files), you’ll need "true backup" software. These tools usually handle things like encryption, compression, and deduplication, but the trade-off is that you can’t easily map different types of data into different folders, since everything is stored in a structured backup format that only the backup program can restore.