# Borg Backup

30 Hacker News commenters recommended Borg Backup and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Deduplicating, encrypted backup tool that people recommend for space-efficient, verifiable backups. Critics note it is slow and memory-hungry, and needs fussing on some NAS systems.

## Why people recommend it

- Deduplication saves space on backups (5 comments): "borg has been sufficiently scalable to deduplicate any collection I've thrown at it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49546866)) "using RESTIC or Borg as a backup container is a good idea since they can deduplicate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765278)) "include dedpulication, incremental versioning, verification, and encryption" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47763921))
- Often named alongside restic (5 comments): "Use tools with straightforward, predictable semantics, like rclone, or synching, or restic/Borg." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47766540)) "using RESTIC or Borg as a backup container is a good idea since they can deduplicate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765278)) "If I had to start over I'd go with rustic-rs or borg backup." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46855918))
- Incremental backups store only changes (2 comments): "include dedpulication, incremental versioning, verification, and encryption" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47763921)) "it'll only need to store what's changed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48953439))
- Trusted for years of daily backups (2 comments): "I have not deleted any of my daily borg backups for many years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46151811)) "based on Borg Backup which I can also vouch for" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45873863))

## What people warn about

- Fussy setup on Synology NAS (2 comments): "it needed some fussy extra community package to work on Synology" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866440)) "to avoid fussing with Borg's community NAS package" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46272274))
- Others seen as better choices (4 comments): "The author, and most readers, would probably be better off using any of a number of actual backup programs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46054839)) "I used to use Borg, but Restic (and it's Rust clone Rustic) are better." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46853679)) "There's no reason to use borg today" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46855859))
- Reported failures and data corruption (2 comments): "This also failed at one point, but at least its five-year record remained readable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46852889)) "i resumed it per documentation and got 2gb of silently corrupted data." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49734697))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Snapper](https://hackerapproved.com/p/snapper.md): 13 recommend
- [Parachute Backup](https://hackerapproved.com/p/parachute-backup.md): 8 recommend
- [Timeshift](https://hackerapproved.com/p/timeshift.md): 6 recommend
- [Photos Backup Anywhere](https://hackerapproved.com/p/photos-backup-anywhere.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Borg Backup", https://hackerapproved.com/p/borg/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).