When comparing rsync vs Déjà Dup, the Slant community recommends rsync for most people. In the question“What are the best backup programs for Linux?” rsync is ranked 3rd while Déjà Dup is ranked 4th. 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
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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 Straightforward interface
The program's interface has 4 tabs - overview, storage, folders and schedule. You select where to back up in "storage", what folders to back up and ignore in "folders" and how often to back up in "schedule." Overview displays all these settings and offers a choice of backing up and restoring.
Pro Can back up to any server that Nautilus can connect to
You can connect to both physically connected devices as well as devices that are available over FTP, SSH, as long as Nautilus can connect to them.
Pro Available on Ubuntu by default
For people using Ubuntu, this is already installed.
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 Backend provider choices recently removed
As of version 42, support for backup to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Openstack Swift, Rackspace, etc has been removed entirely. Google Drive is the default and seemingly only option.
Con No way to set limitations on how much disk space the application should use
The program will use up all available disk space for backups. There's not way to set limitations.
Con No way to set a specific backup time for automatic backups
You can only set the backups to be daily, weekly or monthly without the ability to tell what time the backups should happen.