It's not bloody Java, it's shit programmers - it doesn't take 1GB of RAM to copy files in any competently written software, and Java specifically has built-in support for dealing with files as streams to keep memory use down.

Rsync uses 100 bytes per file being copied, so to get it using a gig of RAM you'd need to be syncing ten million files.

Does it have to be remote?

I keep files I care about on Owncloud, so there are 5 separate devices with regularly synced copies of everything - but all on my own disk space. Movies and music are on a single drive on a home server, but I simply back this up overnight to another drive using robocopy rather than anything clever. All my family PCs back up to the same drive (The windows devices just use file history) so they're all replicated at the same time as the movies etc.

 

it's not a back up if it's not offsite.

It's not a fire/flood/nuke-proof backup if it's not offsite, but it's still considerably better than nothing at all.

I'm going to say yes, because it more easily protects against drive failure without needing more hard drives. I'm backing up around 2TB from my server.

CrashPlan also does unlimited revision backup and long lasting deleted files. Not that that is massively useful, but I do nightly full image backups of some of my important RPis, locally I store 7 days worth, but CrashPlan must have months/years of these now I could recover. An absolute waste of space, but it's unlimited so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It also means that I've not had to pull my finger out and organise my storage, which I desperately need to. I've just pointed the software at loads of folders and left it to it.

I decided against backing up TV and Movies. But definitely music.

My total backup is around 2TB as well. I suppose you should go with what suits you.

@DSMITHFX I forgot to mention that my backup drive is at my DR site.

I think I'll look at what you've said, because local backups are obviously significantly quicker to restore. Maybe for absolute essentials. I used to backup locally, but rather than having a backup drive, as such, I backed up bits across various other drives.

True. I've had to recover from many a dead hdd, no fires/floods/nukes thus far (though I can see nukes from my balcony and we get plenty o' floods, none have reached the 13th floor, thus far).

We use carbonite for most stuff for windows computers.  I still need to do something off site for linux mint ones.

I have considered renting a bank box and putting a monthly back up in there.

What is the best back up service to keep documents.