I’ve been using Rackspace Cloud Files Sync, a little piece of software I’ve written myself, for some years now. I use it to backup my photo’s and movies I’ve shot over the last decade or so. The thing I like about it is that it syncs your local folder with a Cloud Files container. When skipping content checksums it’s fairly fast to only process the changes. Aside from backing up files it can also restore them.

Whilst it still serves my need I get in trouble if or when Rackspace changes their Cloud Files API. Way back when I wrote the software I wrote it in BlitzMax with the MaxGUI module (using the excellent LogicGUI designer) and my own htbaapub.rackspacecloudfiles module. Sure, I can update my module that wraps the REST API but I no longer have an up to date BlitzMax with all the required modules set up on a PC. When I took Maximus offline the most convenient way to install BlitzMax modules and their dependencies disappeared. In short, it’ll be a big hassle to get a working setup again capable of compiling a new version of Rackspace Cloud Files Sync.

But today I found out about a software called Duplicati! Duplicati is backup software that can create and store backups to several kind of storage solutions such as Rackspace Cloud Files, Amazon S3, Windows Live SkyDrive, FTP, SSH and more. It can also encrypt your backups.

After a short test using Duplicati with Cloud Files I’ve at least found a nice alternative for when my Rackspace Cloud Files Sync stops working. The only thing I’m missing though is doing a full backup and then sync the changes like my software does, but it appears that this is already supported in the 2.0 preview release of Duplicati. So it’s likely that if or when my software stops working I can use the 2.0 release of Duplicati.