Backing up your files, ideally in multiple locations, is essential if you don't want to lose any data. Your documents, images, and videos can disappear if anything happens to your computer. It's also a good idea for at least one of your backups to be off-site—if a fire destroys your house it will probably also destroy your backup drive.
Most of us know this. The problem is that paying for a dedicated backup service feels silly if you're already paying for cloud storage. Most cloud providers, after all, offer more space than the average user knows what to do with. Microsoft 365’s family plan comes with 6 terabytes of storage, for example, while Google One’s premium plan offers 2 TB. If you don't need all that room for your documents and photos, why not put some of it to work for backups of your whole computer?
Duplicati is a free and open source application that lets you back up any computer to cloud services like Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive. It supports over 20 storage options, so there's a good chance you've already got a good backup destination. Even better: Duplicati encrypts your files before backing them up, meaning the cloud service provider you're using has no ability whatsoever to access your data.
In our article about how to back up your digital life we briefly mentioned Duplicati as an alternative to commercial backup services, but we didn't really dig into how to use it.
Getting Started With Duplicati
Duplicati is available for free. The homepage will ask you to sign up for an account, but you don't need to do that. You can just download the application from the website or from Github. Installation is straightforward on both Windows and macOS.
After installation, you will notice a new icon in the Windows system tray or the Mac menu bar.
The icon will be green while a backup is running, red if there's an error, and no color at all the rest of the time. You can click the icon to see the application's configuration, which opens in your default web browser.
The first time you launch the application you'll be asked whether you want to set a passphrase for remote access. Ignore this unless you know what you're doing and want to configure your backups while away from your computer. Let's instead set up your first backup: Click Add backup to get started.
This will open the five-step tool for creating a backup. First you'll have to pick a name and description for your backup. After that you will have to choose an encryption key, either by typing it yourself or using the built-in generation tool. Make sure you save this key, whether in your password manager or on a piece of paper. You won’t be able to access your backup without this key.
Next you'll need to decide on a destination—that is, where you want your backup to live. A drop-down menu includes all of the supported services, including local drives.
Choose a service, adding a name for a folder in the Path on server field. (Duplicati will offer to create a folder if it doesn't already exist). Next click Test connection to see if everything is working.
In the next step, you will need to choose how much of your data you want to back up. Simply check the folders you want to include. I, for example, wanted to back up my Documents folder.
You can drill down further by adding folders or by not including certain subfolders. When you're happy with your selections, you can proceed to the schedule. By default your files are backed up every day at 1 pm, but you can configure the backup schedule however you’d like. The last step, volume size, determines the size of the archive files your backup will be spread across—I recommend leaving this as it is unless you know what you're doing. Consider changing how long old files remain, however—otherwise your backups could grow in size quite a bit over time.
When everything is configured properly, your backup will begin.
You can add as many backups as you’d like by repeating the process. Duplicati allows you to do things like back up the same files to multiple cloud services or back up some files more frequently than others. It's entirely customizable.
Restore Files From a Duplicati Backup
You will need to use Duplicati later to restore your files. In the web interface, click Menu followed by Restore. You will see the option to restore your configured backups, if that's what you want, or you can point the application toward previously created backups to get your files back
Choose which dates you want to restore your files from—typically the most recent version—and which files you want. After that you will be asked where you'd like your restored files to end up: the original location or somewhere else.
Duplicati takes a little getting used to, but it's worth taking the time to figure it out. The tool is flexible enough to back up your files to any cloud service and secure enough that no unauthorized parties—including your cloud provider—will have access to your uploaded data. It’s also customizable enough that you can configure it to do exactly what you need. On top of all that, it's free. It may not be for everyone, but it might be right for you.