Does anyone have experience comparing/contrasting zstd and S2 for compression of backups? My shop has been using zstd routinely for a long time, but are not married to it if there’s a better candidate, and S2 might be promising for this case. We’ve been really impressed with Kopia overall, and are planning to use KopiaUI for this situation.
Background: I’m working on a system backup design to have 5 Wi-Fi-connected Windows machines backup important data (not OS/applications binaries) to each other to minimize the chance of data loss in an environment where computers sometimes just die.
Because of that uncertainty, I’ve settled on a round-robin scheme where each machine’s important data is backed up to two other machines on the network, with backup operations staggered over time across the day. Each repo will be pointed to a shared (SMB) folder on a “remote” machine.
The equipment: They’re so-so in the horsepower department, with latest-gen i7s, 32GB RAM, and fast NVME storage. Backups will be across Wi-Fi (6), not Ethernet.
My take is that zstd yields better compression, while S2 uses less CPU and RAM, and is less likely to cause noticeable slowdowns during backup operations.
The ask: If you’ve been through this kind of trade study – or even just have an informed opinion – and have any useful information to share, I’d love to hear it.