Should I make multiple repositories if I want to back up multiple PCs?

Support
1

At my home I have 4 PCs - one for each person living here. I’m starting to take backups seriously and set up a Backblaze B2 account, created a Kopia repository and set up scheduled backups from my PC. So far so good.

Now I want to back up the other 3 PCs as well. They should each have their own sets of snapshots, obviously. However, since I’m going to be the one paying for it all, I’d like to keep it under the same Backblaze account and have it billed all together.

As I see it, I have 2 options:

  1. Set up a new bucket and a new repository (with a separate encryption key) for each computer
  2. Point all of the Kopia instances at the same repository.

The first one I’m fairly certain would work. The second I’m not so sure. But maybe that’s more optimal? Can option 2 work, and are there any benefits for doing so? Or should I just make a separate bucket for everyone?

2

I would use a separate bucket for each computer.

3

main benefit is deduplication. If 4 PCs have the same file - it will be stored only once in kopia repository. With your solution 1 it will be stored 4 times (once in every bucket)

main disadvantage is that you have to trust all 4 PCs as they potentially could access all stored data.

Solution would be to “hide” B2 bucket behind kopia server - if you can spare some computer for such role:

4

Trust is not an issue, but also there is unlikely to be much duplication, if any. I suppose separate buckets it is - I’m starting to feel like it will be less headache later.

5

Yeap. This is for sure the easiest approach IMO too. Without much of expected dedup I would use it too.