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Comment by nanch | Hacker News Reader

tarsnap looks nice. somebody else had mentioned that service too, I figured I'd go over some of the differences.

tarbackup is free, tarsnap is $0.30/GB/mo; tarbackup doesn't require a separate client download; tarbackup was made just for fun, tarsnap is commercial; tarbackup uses a private server, tarsnap uses S3

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How are you going to keep it free? What guarantee do you give that after trusting my data to you, you won't decide that your bandwidth and storage costs are getting out of hand and discontinue the service?

Not trying to be a sour grape here and talk you down, but these questions matter if you see this as more than a hobby thing and are serious about it. If you plan to take this further: find a way to make it sustainable. If not: why not release the code?

I'll keep it free by not requiring payment! :) I've already put $2.5K+ into the box just for fun. I don't expect to recover any costs; I'm just providing a service for people. Even if nobody actually needs to restore their data, at least they could if they wanted to.

There are no guarantees, but I have a 20Mb/5Mb internet connection that's just waiting to get some more use. The system is set up with 7+ TB of storage that'd I'd love for you to fill up, and I can afford putting more hard drives in when it gets to that point. http://www.piqd.com/tarbackup_server.png

This really is just a hobby thing for now. :) The code is already posted. https://github.com/nanch/tarbackup

I think you must be quite surprised at the responses you're getting to your offer of a free gift. But some things are serious enough that them being free is a serious red flag.

In other words, I've you had presented this as a commercial offering in stead of as a hobby and just for fun you would have given a better first impression, one that proved that you had thought through the problem before embarking on solving it.

HN has been a pretty strong critic of the way tarsnap is being run (specifically from a marketing point of view), the collective view is not that it is too expensive but rather that it is not yet expensive enough and that it needs to appeal more to non-techies.

You've solved none of the problems that tarsnap already solved and then on top of that you have added a whole pile of new ones. So I think that even though I applaud your generosity and your general approach that this is not going to go very far. Using 'tar' means you're targeting developers, most other people will have never even heard of tar other than that black sticky stuff. Developers know the value of their data better than anybody else does (or at least, they should) and they will evaluate a backup service based on that value.

> HN has been a pretty strong critic of the way tarsnap is being run (specifically from a marketing point of view), the collective view is not that it is too expensive but rather that it is not yet expensive enough and that it needs to appeal more to non-techies.

If that's the collective view, then I strongly disagree with the first half. Tarsnap isn't cheap for an organization with data of any appreciable size.

Most 'X' as a service concepts have a point where doing it yourself is the more cost efficient option. Backup is no exception to that rule. A service like this works best when you have a manageable amount of very precious data. If you have mountains of low grade data then likely you're better off rolling your own.

After all, since tarsnap is a very nice layer on top of S3 there is always at least one competitor cheaper for bulk back-up (amazon) and even they charge a substantial amount of money for storage and bandwidth.

Costs vs benefits. It's never been different and it never will be.

Wow, that's some serious hardware you got there. I think it's good that you are clear about this being a hobby thing: this helps people put a value on it (e.g. it's an extra backup, but not a replacement for a backup, as your house might burn down or something, just to name something crazy – this actually happened to me once).

Also did not see you posted the code already: cool!

if you like hardware pics, I've got some more :)

front: http://www.piqd.com/skunk_front.png

lower chassis top: http://www.piqd.com/skunk_lower_top.png

upper chassis top: http://www.piqd.com/skunk_upper_top.png

Tarsnap is secure, made by someone who understands security. Backups are synonymous with reliability and security. Trusting an unknown entity with free backups on a service made 'for fun' makes me wonder:

- how long it will be around

- how you plan to stay alive in the long run

I really wonder if you've thought this one through. Backups are rarely if ever for fun, when you need them you need them badly.

Agreed, I am more confident with Amazon S3 as opposed to an undisclosed private server.

I like that the instructions guided you through creating a secured tar file.

I like the idea of Tar backups, but no offense to you, I just don't trust the reliability. You can't offer a resilient backup service entirely free, it just doesn't work. Storage costs money, and developers know that better than anyone else.

That being said, the actual code looks pretty simple.

Think you're on the right track here. Don't think I would pay for the service though.

You make some great points here, thanks for the feedback. The code for the server scripts is posted on git if you have any suggestions on the security end. http://www.github.com/nanch/tarbackup/

- how long will it be around: for the foreseeable future

- how I plan to stay alive in the long run: I don't see why the service would need to be shut down.

"tarbackup was made just for fun, tarbackup uses a private server" excelent selling points for a backup service.

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