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Add to SafariWhen comparing rsync vs BackupPC, the Slant community recommends rsync for most people. In the question“What are the best backup programs for Linux?” rsync is ranked 3rd while BackupPC is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose rsync is:
Only the changed parts of files are synced. For instance, if a long log file increases by just a few lines of text, a small diff will be sent to and saved in the archive. Rsync also compresses data in transit.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Fast and bandwidth efficient
Only the changed parts of files are synced. For instance, if a long log file increases by just a few lines of text, a small diff will be sent to and saved in the archive. Rsync also compresses data in transit.
Pro Works over SSH
SSH support allows sending files securely over the network by encrypting all communcation.
Pro Pre-installed on OSX and most Linux distributions
Many *nix systems bundle rsync so there's nothing to install. All you need to do is open up the terminal and start using rsync.
Pro Free and open source
Licensed under GNU.
Pro No need to install anything more on the backed-up PC
Pro Able to handle large amount of servers and data
The disk IO can be a bootleneck but the system itself handles even multi terabyte servers easily.
Pro Supports various platforms
Backup method is highly configurable, using local copy, ssh, rsync, SMB or custom transfer, so able to backup almost any OS supporting these.
Pro Open Source
Pro Efficient disk format
The disk format automatically deduplicates files, and optionally compress files or assist recovery with redundancy information (par2); storage disk usage is very efficient.
Pro Combining full and incremental backups into "filled" view
Backups are always viewed as a whole, regardless of the count or data content of past incrementals.
Pro Rich command line tools
Apart from the Web UI there are command line tools for doing all tasks related to the backup system.
Cons
Con No official GUI
To use rsync, you have to know your way around the command line.
Con Complicated, and you can accidentally overwrite the wrong files
Con Version 3 on-disk format is impossible to "file-copy"
V3 format uses hard-links which is almost impossble to "file-copy" (using filesystem level tools like cp or rsync) on a large system, since the hardlink management eats up vast amounts of memory (the only way to copy a backup server is to copy using a whole-disk copying method). This has been fixed in version 4 format which uses pointer files instead of hardlinks.
Con Web UI timeouts on large amount of data to be displayed
The Web UI needs large amount of time to walk a directory with thousands of entries and it may cause the webserver or client to timeout. Large directories may require the admin to use the command line tools to list or restore files or directories.
