Restic is a modern backup program that can back up your files:
from Linux, BSD, Mac and Windows
to many different storage types, including self-hosted and online services
easily, being a single executable that you can run without a server or complex setup
effectively, only transferring the parts that actually changed in the files you back up
securely, by careful use of cryptography in every part of the process
verifiably, enabling you to make sure that your files can be restored when needed
freely - restic is entirely free to use and completely open source
Easy: Doing backups should be a frictionless process, otherwise you are tempted to skip it. Restic should be easy to configure and use, so that in the unlikely event of a data loss you can just restore it. Likewise, restoring data should not be complicated.
Fast: Backing up your data with restic should only be limited by your network or hard disk bandwidth so that you can backup your files every day. Nobody does backups if it takes too much time. Restoring backups should only transfer data that is needed for the files that are to be restored, so that this process is also fast.
Verifiable: Much more important than backup is restore, so restic enables you to easily verify that all data can be restored.
Secure: Restic uses cryptography to guarantee confidentiality and integrity of your data. The location the backup data is stored is assumed not to be a trusted environment (e.g. a shared space where others like system administrators are able to access your backups). Restic is built to secure your data against such attackers.
Comments and Reviews
Very secure backup. Works quite well and fast. I use it for local backup nothing fancy, Restic don't have GUI, only from the console, but is very easy to use. Basically you need 3 commands backup, snapshots (list backups) and forget/prune (delete) ok 4 commands, one more to restore :)
Super quick tutorial
Preparing a new repository, it create an encrypted backup folder in Restic. Here is were everything goes.
1) Backing up
2) Listing all snapshots
3) Restoring from a snapshot
4) Remove a single snapshot
Maintenance
Check the repository for errors (Run regularly) It is advisable to run restic check after pruning.
Remove old cache
Remove unneeded data from the repository
To avoid asking for the password or the repository (Optional) set the following variables:
If you set the variables, from now on, to the the backup just do:
Basic example for automatic backup
From Windows (if you have bash) you can use Task Sheduler and set the "Program" to bash.exe and the "Arguments" to the script C:\restic_backup.sh For Linux you can use Cron.
Here is the script.
Deja Dup (GNOME), available as a Flatpak or on many other Distro packages, integrated Restic in its GUI as backup client, still in "unstable" phase.
Very secure and easy to use backup client. And now supports file compression on default! (v 0.14 or newer)
Download a single executable that just works; which is available for multiple operating systems. Which does elegant stream deduplication (inserts in files are much better handled compared to regular block deduplication), and which is one of the fastest comparable. Which happens to be foss but not fuzz. Offers just a CLI. And even allows data from piped commands to be back-upped (think pg_dump) and saves almost only the differences. Using some smart setups you can even deduplicate across machines... What isn't there to love?
As advertised it is fast, efficient, verifiable. It is not obvious how to begin with, but the documentation is pretty good and once started it is very powerful. Summarizing it can do incremental encrypted backups in the cloud or local, and the backups can be mounted.
I will use it for my personal backups.
duply & duplicity fan here. I must admit, that the restic VERY good tool (better in my opinion then borg, and a little bit better then duplicity). It's doing really fast backups, really effective space consuming. Restoring pretty easy too.
The problem over the tool, why I set just 4 stars, that entry point very hard.
But with something like the code below, you can minimize headache.
Script: (bash): https://paste.ee/p/etJXh
Just add your own parameters, and own paths, and the script will work fine for you.
Please include the code into your review, for it to be really helpful to users of AlternativeTo.net
Thank you.
Reply written Aug 2, 2020
Restic has no GUI yet . No plans to implement it either . So it remains confined to hard core developers .
This comment is too old (2018), just for clarification, is not for "hard core developers" you don't either need to be an developers to use Restic.
Reply written Oct 22, 2020
I agree that it is not for "hard core developers", but given that it needs to be configured and ran on the command line, it is likely that people who successfully use it also have some development or admin skills.
Reply written Sep 18, 2023