I’ve used Backblaze Personal Backup for the past 5 years or more, backing up all the attached drives containing my work and important files. Moving to Unraid meant I had to cheat the system a bit to keep this going; by utilising a Windows VM running the Backblaze client, and mounting folders (bind) to the Windows VM with VirtioFS.

The downside to all this faffing is that a) it required me to run a Windows VM purely for backups, and b) it required VirtioFS to fudge folder binds of what I wanted backed up into the VM. And the VirtioFS service didn’t always load on Windows boot, meaning I had to login and check it on every reboot.

It all felt very hacky, and I didn’t like it.

During 2025 as I’ve stepped away from US data centres (and de-Googled my life), I’ve looked for EU alternatives, and the one that get lots of mentions for archival of files is Hetzner’s Storage Boxes. €10/month for 5TB sounded just the ticket for me, all I had to do was figure out how to effectively store my files on there (utilising Docker on Unraid).

BorgBackup was something I tried, but I didn’t like the CLI way it ran, not because I don’t like terminal commands, but that I like to be able to ‘see’ my backups, and if away from my homelab I wanted an easy way to just dip into my backups in case I needed to access a particular file for a client (which is part of why I loved Backblaze; for it’s webUI access panel).

Duplicati got mentioned, but when I looked at it, users were complaining about bugs and odd issues, however some users were showing a lot of love instead for Duplicacy…

Duplicacy is a free-to-use CLI backup system, but for a small fee ($20) you can use their webUI, perfect!

Comparing Backblaze to Duplicacy, I would say I very much prefer the controlled granular backups of Duplicacy; I control what gets backed up and how often, rather than Backblaze’s stance of ‘everything’.

As I’ve still got a running 2yr subscription to Backblaze, I have shifted that to my main MacBook, and have Unraid and all my important work data and photos backed up into a Hetzner storage box.

So there’s a lot to like about Duplicacy, some of which I don’t recall in full detail, however it stores data in chunks, only updating those chunks that have changes. It is also stored with an encryption key, so even if the Hetzner Storage Box is compromised, the data is safe.

To recall the backup on another machine, you download the portable app from Duplicacy, which runs in a webpage, then enter your Storage Box info to access the backups, and then select which snapshot/file you wish to restore.