I have no idea of whether it's fantastic. I can see a list of times when I've run ./tarsnap.sh, but I have no idea if it's really encrypting the backup, and I have no idea if it's making a backup in the first place. I mean, I haven't had any hard drive failures and I haven't inspected the client source code. (As far as I can tell, the product is great.)

And I can't remember where offsite I've put my keyfile, notwithstanding for the microprinted uuencoding I have stored in my ear.

> My one requirement is that I be the only one that is able to decrypt my files.

Tarsnap lets you download, inspect, and compile the source code yourself, and nothing unencrypted goes off your machine, so it's sufficient if you value paranoia. But I have not comparison-shopped.

Unless you look at source code, you'll never know if a backup service is encrypting your backups or not. At least with tarsnap you have the option of reading the source code to verify that tarsnap does what I say it does. :-)

... and I have no idea if it's making a backup in the first place.

tarsnap --list-archives, tarsnap -t, and tarsnap -x are your friends. The ultimate test of whether a backup was created -- for any backup system -- is "can I get my data back".

You could reverse engineer the protocol that other products use. :_) And I'd rather just assume that somebody else has reviewed the source code.

I don't know what all tarsnap users are doing, but I've heard the following options on several occasions: 1. Give it to a friend. 2. Put it on a USB key. 3. Store it on a different computer. 4. Print it out (recent versions of tarsnap have printable key files).