Wow. I go AFK for a few hours (orchestra concert, fundraiser for something) and when I come back online I see this thread. I click on it, all ready to type out a comment saying "I kinda like this tool I wrote for myself, called Tarsnap"... and I find that the top comment, with 3x as many points as any others, is recommending Tarsnap.

I love my users.

Seriously, consider writing a client for Windows and your business should increase 10 folds.

Tarsnap will support windows eventually. But seriously, if Tarsnap usage increases tenfold overnight, the service will collapse under the load the following morning. Making sure that the service keeps running smoothly takes priority over attracting new users.

I like you, and I like your service. I especially like that your service is clearly designed to be a successful operating business rather than a 'sell it to google' startup. I wish you much success.

It's pure selfishness, really. I use Tarsnap, and lots of my friends do too. If I sold Tarsnap and ran, I wouldn't have good backups any more, and I would have a lot of ex-friends upset with me for not taking better care of their backups. :-)

love tarsnap, but seriously... someone please make a web-gui (you can paste your ssh keys in a webpage a la github) or atleast a java gui.

It does get to be too painful sometimes.

Wouldn't you have to upload at least a read-only subkey of your tarsnap key not your ssh key. Github works because sshd only requires a copy of the public key to be stored to log in with the private key.

This would destroy the secure model of tarsnap. If you truly want this then don't use tarsnap use dropbox.

I was not trying to propose a "better" way - my understanding of tarsnap's security is deeply limited. Yet, I love how it is exposed as a scriptable command.

In my (very) limited knowledge - I am able to do retrieve backups on my machine using my key, which I supply to the command line. I was thinking of how it would work in a web based environment. Perhaps I could copy paste my key into a textbox, and I could retrieve my backups from a webpage. This would only last for the session (tarsnap would not store the key).

I know that you can think of a million ways that this can be exploited, but that is MY cross to bear. If I am prepared to do this, because I need immediate access to my backups from another machine - then please let me do this (basically, give me a way to access and create my backups in less than two steps).

I personally do believe that this would be a killer feature.

I love tarsnap. I have some custom scripts to manage backups easily. I've been thinking of cleaning them up and turning them into a rsnapshot style system.

Tarsnap is great. Some things that would have been nice: * Automatic archive naming. I would love to just type tarsnap-backup stuff/ or something, and it would pick a name based on the folder name and a timestamp. * It seems a little too easy to delete archives. Perhaps a way to lock an archive so it cannot be deleted or modified without unlocking first. * If you backup a symlink to a folder, tarsnap will only backup the symlink itself. Perhaps this is the best way to do it, but it means you may think you have backed up something, but actually haven't. A warning message perhaps?

Dropbox's website suggests that they store files using some sort of AES-256 encryption and they cannot read them: https://www.dropbox.com/help/27 I wouldn't make the claim that they are more (or as) secure as Tarsnap (especially since there is no page as detailed as http://www.tarsnap.com/crypto.html on Dropbox's website), but this suggests that files on Dropbox are not readable by the company.

"Suggests." However, the fact that there is a web GUI tells us they can read the data.

...when they are provided with your password.

If you forget your password, can Dropbox reset it for you? If they reset your password for you, can you still read your data? If the answer to both of these is "yes", then dropbox can read your data without you providing your password.

(Honest questions -- I don't use Dropbox, so don't know.)

This comment is cryptographically correct.

+1, https://www.dropbox.com/forgot is a password reset link.

Besides, there is much more to cryptography and building a secured system than just using that crypto suit or another (e.g. AES256-HMAC-SHA256 etc.)

Another + for tarsnap, although I only use it for server backups (git repos and databases). I should probably start using it to backup my laptop.

Tarsnap - for home and work. Fantastic service.

I love this kind of services that just work, no need for flashy menus. Plus the pricing model is convenient.

tarsnap is great. The problem is you are relying on a single brilliant person (cperciva). If he gets hit by a bus, etc you're screwed.

Anything I was uploading to the interwebs for serious storage would already be lovingly encrypted in a TrueCrypt container... usually.

Tarsnap is great

My dropbox partition is completely enveloped in a TrueCrypt partition.

I don't particularly have many concerns with the security of Dropbox, but I do keep some personally sensitive information on there, and TrueCrypt is how I sleep at night.

Doesn't this make your syncs terribly slow? It will basically have to send up your entire partition every time you make a change in any file there.

AFAIR : Truecrypt is designed so that changed plain blocks map to changed secure blocks : i.e. the whole secure image doesn't change if one plain file does. (Makes sense from a speed perspective too).

I think Dropbox uploads diffs instead of the entire file based on the speed of synchronization of my yojimbo database.

Isn't this insecure? IIRC, the best way to backup data on a secure partition is to create another secure partition (with a different key/password) and sync files between them.