Arq Mac OS
I recently finished upgrading all my Macs to the long-awaited version 7 release of my preferred backup software, Arq. I use it to backup all my Macs and Windows computers to the cloud storage provider Wasabi, which is inexpensive relative to eg. AWS S3. I use the open-source backup software restic to backup my Linux machines, also to Wasabi.
Arq Macos
Arq uses multiple threads and LZ4 compression for very fast throughput. Arq offers sophisticated file-exclusion filters, storage budgeting, extensive logging, email reports, many scheduling options, and full control over which networks and how much bandwidth Arq uses. Arq is available for Mac OS X and Windows. Music is a voyage of discovery. One that now goes much further with the creation of the ZOOM ARQ AR-96 Aero RhythmTrak. The ZOOM ARQ AR-96 is an all-in-one production and live performance instrument which includes an integrated drum machine, sequencer, synthesizer, looper, and MIDI controller with a built-in accelerometer. Arq is super-easy online backup for the Mac. Back up to your own Google Drive storage (15GB free storage), your own Amazon Glacier ($.01/GB per month storage) or S3, or any SFTP server. Arq backs up and faithfully restores all the special metadata of Mac files that other products don’t, including resource forks, ACLs, and creator codes.
(Yes, I know AWS and GCP now have cheap archival storage options; but I’m not migrating terabytes of backup data.)
During a discussion about Arq 7, Andrew asked why I don’t just use restic for my Mac backups as well. This is a lightly-edited version of my answer:
I actually have a few reasons for this:
To use restic, I’d have to wrap it in my own backup script and run it via launchd myself.
I would have to to extra work to get eg. notification emails on errors, which Arq handles for me out of the box. And I know from experience I’d spend a nontrivial amount of time working through macOS permissions problems and other launchd weirdness. Plus, I don’t even know how I’d run restic on Windows, though that’s a minor concern.
Arq has controls for limiting network bandwidth, CPU usage, and (new in Arq 7) disk IO; and it sounds like Arq 7 has added some performance improvements that I wouldn’t get with restic. Lucky creek no deposit bonus.
CPU and bandwidth limits can be achieved, of course, with standard Unix tools, just like email notifications, but again: I don’t want to rewrite Arq.
The file restore experience is easier with the Arq GUI, especially with its drag and drop integration with Finder. I’ve restored files with both restic and Arq; it’s possible with restic but easier with Arq.
I don’t trust restic quite as much.https://cak-unit-bonus-slots-all-star.peatix.com.
I have run into weird errors which imply that my restic repository has had some nonzero number of integrity issues. The restic devs were able to help me prune out bad backups and get the repo back into a healthy state, and I think they fixed a possible cause for this issue in the most recent version, but … still.
That all said, I’ve been able to restore files on multiple occasions from that and other restic repositories.
I wouldn’t gain a lot.
I’d do a lot of work getting all the aforementioned features & behaviors working smoothly, and at the end of the day I’d have a DIY version of Arq that I trust less than Arq. I’d be backing up to the same backend, so cost would be similar. Only difference is the cost of Arq, which I’ll happily pay not to have to do all this myself.
At the end of the day, if the Arq team released a Linux version of Arq that somehow worked as well on the server as it does on macOS, I’d consider moving to it from restic.
Check out my article on using Qrq with a Google Cloud Storage Nearline. It’s cheaper than Amazon Glacier.
Being a photographer, I have a lot of pictures on my hard disks. Using a Canon 5D Mark II with it’s 23 megapixel sensor shooting in RAW doesn’t help. My main backup is two different NAS servers doing alternating TimeMachine backups every other hour, a feature added in Mountain Lion. This is great, because if one backup unit breaks down or gets stolen, I still have another copy on the other NAS. But what if both got stolen? Imagine the horror? So I’ve been searching for an offsite backup solution that’s cheap and just works. And now I think I found it.
Amazon Glacier
Amazon has launched a new service called Glacier for storing files that doesn’t need to be accessed often. And the price per Gb is dirt cheap. So using this service would be perfect to use for my purpose. But to make everything easy, you need a backup program that supports Amazon Glacier for storage, and fortunately I found one.
Amazon Glacier is an extremely low-cost storage service that provides secure and durable storage for data archiving and backup. In order to keep costs low, Amazon Glacier is optimized for data that is infrequently accessed and for which retrieval times of several hours are suitable. With Amazon Glacier, customers can reliably store large or small amounts of data for as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month, a significant savings compared to on-premises solutions.
Arq 3 Backup for Mac OS X
Arq 3 is a backup application that can do backup to Amazon S3 or Glacier. It doesn’t use Amazons server side encryption so the data is sent encrypted directly from Arq 3 itself. Haystack Software provides a command line utility called arq_restore on github enabling you to access your data without Arq 3, which is a nice touch if they should go out of business and not leaving you stranded with data you can’t access. An even better solution would have been to put a unencrypted compressed file containing the source code for arq_restore in every backup bucket.
Setting up the backup
The application installs a menu bar icon to make access to the application a breeze.
Arq Mac Os Downloads
After getting registering for an account at Amazon, something Arq 3 guides you through, you just add the folders you want to have backed up.
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You can select to store it in S3 which has faster access times but is more expensive, or choose Amazon Glacier with it’s lower cost but have slower access times.
You can exclude files and folders from the backup, or choose to not backup files that fit a specific search criteria.
Budget
One nice feature is the Budget preference. Here you can set up a cost limit so you don’t get any surprises when it’s billing time. Very handy!
Bandwidth throttling
Arq Mac Os X
You can set up the backup to slow down when you are actively using your Internet connection, set it for full speed or choose a specific bitrate for uploading. I have a 100/10MBit line and upload at full speed and the application seems very CPU friendly, something not all backup programs can brag about.
Scheduling
You can set how often the backup executes. There is options to set different times for S3 and Glacier. I wish that you could set this per folder also, but that’s an minor annoyance.
First backup
Roham! mac os. Be prepared that the first backup will take a long time. Of course this depends on the amount of data to backup and the speed of your Internet connection. But after the initial backup, only changes are uploaded.
Restore
If you need to restore, Arq will test your download speed, and then do an estimate of total cost for downloading your backup data. If you have a fast internet line, the restore could become very costly, because you pay more the faster you download. But there’s a built in function for setting the download speed manually, essentially throttling the download. You get a cost estimate, so if your not in a hurry, just enter a lower download speed value. You get an estimate cost for restore directly, so choosing how fast you want your data is easy.
The fear of loosing years worth of photos is something I hope this will remedy. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.