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Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

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Re: Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that Arq can back up to Amazon Cloud Drive, which offers unlimited storage for $59.99 a year. As soon as they offered that I switched from Glacier storage; Cloud Driver is faster, cheaper and less fiddly.

the pricing is great for the US... not so good for the rest of the world (for example: https://www.amazon.co.uk/clouddrive/pricing?ref_=cd_home_pla... )

For Canadians, it's $60 CAD.

Re: Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

#142

Any of you know how to get your license code for an upgrade? I have the original email from when I bought Arq 4 in 2014, and it contains a license file. This is an XML with sections like 'id' and 'licenseKey' but neither of those are working.

I don’t know, but why not just contact the author? He’s very pleasant to deal with in my experience.

Re: Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

#143

Thanks for the tip. I'm checking out Arq now! FWIW I've been a big fan of Syncovery (formerly SuperFlexible File Synchronizer) for years. It's a Swiss Army Knife of backup/recovery. https://www.syncovery.com/

Syncovery looks pretty awesome for what it does, I just installed it to take a look, - Directory Synchronizaton - but it's achilles heel for file backups (as opposed to directory/disk cloning) - is appears to be it's lack of any type of versioning. I.E. If I make changes to a file each day, and do backups each day - no way to go back to a version of the file a couple weeks ago?

It has a versioning feature IIRC but I can't vouch for how sexy it is.

Re: Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

#144
post #88

Arq doesn't get the publicity it deserves. It's a reliable, provider-independent backup solution that YOU control. Data gets encrypted locally, then sent over to storage providers. When new storage providers appear, Arq implements APIs and lets you use them. Most importantly, when restoring, you don't enter your decryption password/key into a browser window. I don't understand how online-backup companies can talk abo…

Can you compare CrashPlan and Arq performance please?

I use self-hosted CrashPlan for several years, it's great, but restores and thinning archives feel slow (like half a day for cca 1 TB of backups).

Re: Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

#145
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agree with you - I think CrashPlan/BackBlaze are acting entirely reasonably when they delete old hard drives, particularly if they give a bit of grace after sending the email that they are about to nuke them. It's that just for some of us, who like to archive something like a 100 GB Hard Drive onto Amazon Glacier, for $0.007/GB/Month. (Roughly $0.70/month + $5 upload fees for a 100 GB Hard Drive Archive) -…

Yev from Backblaze here -> Absolutely. They key difference is backup vs. archive. Backblaze was designed as a backup solution, it's intended to be a 1:1 copy of your user data, and if your data set changes we change it on our end as well, with a 30-day history for accidental deletes. We need to reclaim that space to keep costs down, and we're not intended nor designed to be an archive (keeping data forever). Backblaz…

I think your comparison is out of date [1], AWS S3 infrequent access has $0.0125 per GB now not $0.022+ that you have listed. Of course yours is still much better with $0.005 per GB.

Also, it does not look like you have any kind of consumer offering for it, as I have to contact sales to get anything at all. So there's really no point for Arq to even try adding support. I like your prices though.

[1] https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage-providers.html

Re: Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

#146
post #15

If I understand well, Arq does not backup the whole computer. I am looking for a tool that allows for recovery of single files, but also that has a backup of the whole machine, so that if the HD crashes it is possible to rebuild it verbatim. What does HN suggest for such a tool? I used Norton Ghost for years (but it has been discontinued).

What OS? Windows, OSX, Linux, or...? On Windows, my favorite by far is ShadowProtect. It's actually a sector-by-sector backup that pretends to be a file-by-file backup when you restore a file. What's great about this is when you modify a huge file, it only backs up the actual sectors you changed. (Most Windows backup programs detect changes on a file-by-file basis.) I have it set to run a full incremental backup ever…

> It is a bummer when I touch a few sectors in a huge file like a VM disk image, and the best Time Machine can do is back up the entire file again.

You could exclude those kinds of files from Time Machine, and use your VM's own backup system.

Re: Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think is crazy about it? If it's encrypted, it can't be read. If it's on "some place on the internet", it can only be as redundant or more redundant as any other offsite solution.

> "If it's encrypted, it can't be read. " Yet. It can't be read yet.

Any agent capable of ever reading AES encrypted files with 256 bit keys is also an agent capable of opening your safe deposit box, requesting your tapes from a data vault provider, or coming over to your house with a rubber hose.

Short of a vulnerability in AES (in which case we have more problems than a few copies of the Anarchists Handbook in our backup files), cracking proper encryption is simply not feasible.

Re: Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

#148

Has anyone tried both this and Crashplan? My Crashplan 10-computer subscription comes up for renewal soon so I'd be interested in people's experiences of how they compare. Generally I've found Crashplan to be pretty good. I like the way it backs up in frequent small increments and I like the backup destination options (cloud, folder, other PC, etc.). Does Arq compare well?

Arq can’t send backups directly to a hard drive, but it can use an SSH (SFTP) server as a destination.

[Edit: Apparently the release notes for Arq 5 says it can now back up to a local folder.]

I have never tried Crashplan though. The main reason I chose Arq instead is the impression that Arq has a better thought-out encryption scheme.

Re: Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

#149
Hmm, there's nothing on the announcement about how to upgrade your existing backups?

Say you have a large backup stored on S3 or Google Drive - has anybody used this, and can tell me if it upgrades it seamlessly to take advantage of the new features (e.g. LZ4 compression), or if you need to do a fresh upgrade?

Re: Arq 5: Massively faster backup and restore for Mac and Windows

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that Arq can back up to Amazon Cloud Drive, which offers unlimited storage for $59.99 a year. As soon as they offered that I switched from Glacier storage; Cloud Driver is faster, cheaper and less fiddly.

the pricing is great for the US... not so good for the rest of the world (for example: https://www.amazon.co.uk/clouddrive/pricing?ref_=cd_home_pla... )

That’s weird. I live in Sweden and I was able to sign up for the $59.99 unlimited plan just by surfing to https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/home
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