The verdict
We hope you’re convinced to use a backup tool, if you haven’t already. As we’ve seen in this Roundup a good backup utility brings together a collection of powerful open source tools to efficiently and securely make regular copies of your data for storage either on the local machine or on a remote network share. But which tool should you trust your data with?
If you’d like to encrypt your data, you can rule out LuckyBackup and Back In Time as they both lack that capability. Furthermore, although it remains popular, LuckyBackup’s development is virtually frozen, and while the project is still supported there’s little chance of it gaining new feature anytime soon. Besides the lack of encryption and compression support, Back In Time loses out because its user interface isn’t the most intuitive of the lot.
Gadmin-Rsync does a little better and can encrypt remote backups. However, its user interface isn’t very intuitive for the average desktop user, although it won’t pose any difficulties for someone familiar with rsync. Gadmin-Rsync also ignores convenient features like pattern matching for homing in on files to include and exclude and support for such things as compression and local encryption.
DéjàDup is one of the easiest to use tools with the caveat that it can’t create multiple backup sets. However, if that’s something you don’t need, DéjàDup provides all the essential backup features in an easy to use interface. We also particularly like its tight integration in Ubuntu and its ability to restore missing files from inside a backup folder.
That said, our winner is Areca Backup. If you aren’t averse to Java applications, you’ll love that it’s brimming full of features and offers ample ways to familiarise yourself with them. The tool’s ability to do delta backups and its transaction mechanism are truly impressive. It’s certainly more verbose, however, but it offers more options and requires more involvement than DéjàDup, but it’s future proof and caters for all types of desktop user.
“Areca’s ability to do delta backups and its transaction mechanism are truly impressive.”