(I'm the author of Arq) I think the best backup strategy is a cloning product like SuperDuper combined with a versioning off-site backup tool like Arq. With a clone of your hard disk you can recovery very quickly (just boot from the clone disk). 1-Time Purchase. No cloud storage included. Backup to AWS, B2, Google Drive, Google Cloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, SharePoint, Wasabi, SFTP, Minio, Other. Now, Arq Backup can backup to multiple cloud services and there’s a separate version called Arq Cloud Backup that comes with cloud space of its own. That version is only available for macOS at the.
Stefan started thinking about Arq back in early 2009 because he wanted an easy-to-use backup program but couldn't find one that worked well. Stefan liked Time Machine and even bought a Time Capsule so he wouldn't have to remember to plug in an external hard drive. But it still only backed up when he was at home near the Time Capsule, and if his house burned down or someone stole his computer and Time Capsule his stuff would be gone. He wanted online backup.
He tried Mozy, Carbonite and Backblaze. They all offered 'unlimited' size backup for a fixed fee, but the 'unlimited' service had limits. He couldn't back up a network drive, for example. He couldn't keep backups of external drives reliably -- Backblaze promised to delete backups of external drives that haven't been connected for 30 days, even failed external drives.
Amazon S3 seemed like a great place for his backup data. It's backed by the power of a large, profitable, public company. It offers clear durability and availability numbers and replication to multiple data centers. And it wasn't an 'unlimited' type of offering, so they didn't add constraints to minimize the amount of backup data he had.
Backing up to S3 felt like real backup, but there wasn't any great software to do it.
Stefan had been working on a project that used Amazon S3 for storage, and stored its stuff as a content-addressable storage (CAS) system, written in Java. He decided to rewrite those bits in Objective-C. Then he added logic to correctly back up all Mac-specific metadata, plus strong encryption, plus a simple but powerful Mac UI. That became Arq.
It turns out lots of people were looking for something similar, and through word of mouth Arq has become very popular among Mac users. Since then we've added a lot more storage options besides Amazon S3, plus a Windows version of Arq.
Eleven years on, we're still improving Arq Backup.
Arq users were comfortable setting up the app and connecting it to their favorite cloud storage account, and they recommended Arq to their friends. But for friends who weren't as familiar with cloud storage technologies, Arq wasn't a great fit. They were expecting something simpler. So in 2018 we created Arq Cloud Backup. In 2020 we merged the 2 products into Arq Premium.
Arq Premium is a subscription service which includes the Arq app plus built-in cloud storage and web access to your backed-up files if you need them on the go.
Between us, I have been procrastinating. Unwilling to take the final step towards a truly comprehensive data protection plan. The first two stages (multiple copies, multiple formats) have been in place for years. Leveraging RAID1 (redundancy), multiple hard disk drives (backup), and DVD archival (format shift) but taking my important data off premises has been a sticking point because of trust, and simplicity. Frankly, I just do not have enough faith in any cloud storage provider’s security. They are all big juicy targets and the risk of a breach just seems more likely (cough, iCloud) than the type of event that would wipe away all of my home storage. Fortunately though, I recently found a solution that I am comfortable with – something that protects the data itself, and significantly reduces the risk of data leakage if there is a breach. Thank you Arq.
Arq is a simple application that supports all the major Cloud storage providers (Amazon AWS/Glacier/Cloud Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive/Cloud Storage), but the real trick to it is that it leverages client side encryption with a user provided key. Your key, that you create per provider, and only you have. So the data that ends up on the remote system is encrypted before it leaves your network and no one but the NSA, or a GPU farmer with too much time on their hands will be able to access it in transit or at rest on the Cloud provider’s disk.
There are some other great features that really make it stand out compared to applications that just copy data across the wire. Arq also offers data de-duplication (same data only uploads once) and time based file restore which completes the off premises backup story. As an added bonus the UI is simple, approachable, and straightforward enough that I never had to hit up the help files to get started. And while I am not sure that I would just hand it off to just any technophobe, with a little coaching it would be fine.
If, like me your data is stored on a headless server, it is critical that the solution works without requiring console access. So it was fantastic that Arq does all the heavy lifting from a Windows Service, so I do not need to log in and ensure that a UI application has started correctly.
If you are interested in a bit of control, there are several ways to specify how Arq works. Allowing email notifications, setting a storage budget per-provider, thinned backups, and some intelligence around bandwidth management. All said, configuring the software is as simple and well thought out as using it. It is not flashy, but gets the job done with minimal fuss.
Lastly this is what the folder looks like on the Cloud storage provider (Amazon Cloud Drive). Clearly not intended for human consumption, but as data is restored through the application itself that is OK.
Conclusion
If you page through all the image galleries, you will have noticed that it did not take long to move from trial to purchase. I was initially put off by the $40 price tag, but as I dug into it and became familiar with what Arq does, how it functions, and how well it works, it quickly became clear just how good a value it actually is. With complete client side encryption and time based, de-duplicated uploads, to all of the Cloud providers I use, Arq simply cannot be compared to simple file copy utilities. Now, I do have one niggle and it is that OneDrive is stupid slow. While that is not Arq’s fault, it is a concern given how long it takes to push data to it – although I was told that this will be alleviated somewhat in a future, more parallel, version of Arq. All told, if you were holding back from taking your data into The Cloud because of privacy and security concerns, I think the wait for a solution that just works is over. It is for me anyway – well done Arq.
Pro:
- Simple, easy to use encrypted off-premise backup tool
- Supports vast array of Cloud storage providers
- Time based file restore
- Supports quotas (budget)
- Runs as a service
- Free 30 day, fully functional trial
Con:
Arq Cloud Backup For Mac Download
- $40 seems a bit steep, at first