When comparing Tarsnap vs Back In Time, the Slant community recommends Back In Time for most people. In the question“What are the best backup programs for Linux?” Back In Time is ranked 1st while Tarsnap is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Back In Time is:
Almost all functionality of the program can be customized. It's possible to set when snapshot get removed based on age, available disk space, quantity in a set time period, you can include and exclude files, folders and filetypes, you can defer backups when on battery power, you can ignore errors, you can preserve ACL, extended attributes and so on.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Focus on encryption and deduplication
Encryption allows the use to access their files with only their own keys and the deduplication saves on costs of storage as any duplicate file will be removed automatically. So not only is the platform safety minded but cost is taken into account for the user as well.
Pro No need to worry about versioning
Pro Highly configurable
Almost all functionality of the program can be customized. It's possible to set when snapshot get removed based on age, available disk space, quantity in a set time period, you can include and exclude files, folders and filetypes, you can defer backups when on battery power, you can ignore errors, you can preserve ACL, extended attributes and so on.
Pro Easy to use
Although highly customizable, Back in Time is also suited for people who want an easy tool to use that will back up their data. You can use BiT simply by configuring where to save snapshots, what folders to backup and when to do it.
Cons
Con No automatic deletion of old backups
Users will have to manually delete their old backups as there is no way to set a threshold of when older backups should be removed.
Con Awkward setup of encryption keys
Con Interface could be more intuitive
The program uses non-labeled, non-intuitive icons and the purpose and functionality of the file browser is not clear at first glance.