Kopia – Fast, Secure, and Script-Friendly Backup Engine
What is Kopia
Kopia isn’t built for legacy systems or flashy dashboards — it’s for people who want their backups to be encrypted, deduplicated, and quietly handled in the background. It runs cross-platform, supports local disks and remote storage (like S3, Azure, or plain SFTP), and does all the heavy lifting without asking much in return.
Whether it’s a developer backing up code directories to cloud buckets, or an admin scripting scheduled jobs to external drives, Kopia fits into workflows without forcing anything. CLI is the default, web UI is optional. The repository format is smart — it tracks changes efficiently and handles retention rules without breaking a sweat.
And yes, everything is encrypted by default. No toggles. No “enable security” checkboxes. It just assumes you care about data privacy from the start.
Real-World Features at a Glance
| Feature | Why It Matters |
| AES-256-GCM | Encrypts every file, chunk, and snapshot from day one |
| Block-level dedup | Sees through changes in large files and skips what it can |
| Zstd compression | Keeps snapshots small without burning CPU |
| Local + remote | Works with folders, mounted disks, S3, B2, SFTP, or WebDAV |
| CLI-first design | Easy to script, cron, or drop into a headless environment |
| Mountable repos | Snapshots show up as read-only trees for browsing or restore |
| Pruning + retention | Configurable policies, no manual cleanup required |
| Fast startup | Runs without services or background agents |
Setting It Up (How It Feels in Practice)
Install it like any other binary — download, unzip, place in PATH. No daemons. No services.
Want a quick repository? Just run:
kopia repository create filesystem –path=/mnt/usb/kopia-data
Kopia will ask for a password (used to encrypt everything), and that’s it — you’re ready to snapshot folders.
Typical backup:
kopia snapshot create /etc /home /srv
Restoring isn’t complicated either:
kopia snapshot restore –target /tmp/restore
Even mounting feels natural:
kopia mount snapshots /mnt/kopia
Then just cd into any snapshot like it’s a normal folder. Browse, copy, diff. Unmount when you’re done.
Scheduling? No built-in timer — and that’s the point. Use cron, systemd timers, or your own runner. Kopia doesn’t take over your machine.
Things That Make Kopia Useful
– Works the same on a Linux server, a Windows laptop, or a MacBook Pro
– Every snapshot is encrypted and deduplicated without config juggling
– You can plug in an external disk and set up an air-gapped backup in under 5 minutes
– Syncs with S3-compatible buckets without writing custom scripts
– Uses one single binary — no Python, no JVM, no weird system hooks
