Trustworthy Online Backup

Backup You Can Count On

Your backups are stored at Amazon S3 ("Simple Storage Service"), the gold standard of reliable online storage in the industry, backed by Amazon.com, a large stable company.

Backups of your Mac are complete and accurate, including all "metadata" -- something that many other online backup offerings can't claim (see results).

Super Easy

Awesome Support

We believe backup is a critical function, so we strive to fix critical issues in Arq quickly, often delivering a fix within hours.

If you have questions or feedback, please email support@haystacksoftware.com and Stefan will get back to you promptly.

You're In Control

Arq stores your backup data in your own Amazon S3 account, encrypted with your own password -- neither Amazon nor Haystack Software has access.

Arq encrypts your data before it leaves your computer using AES-256, a government and industry standard.

Your backups are stored in an open, documented format. We've also delivered an open-source command-line utility called arq_restore that's hosted at github, so you can read your data anytime without depending on Haystack Software (although we're in this for the long haul, so we'll be around for a long, long time!)

Perfect Complement to Time Machine

Time Machine works well and provides fast restore, but you have to remember to plug in your backup device (unless you have a Time Capsule), and it doesn't cover all scenarios:

• theft of computer and backup device
• backup while traveling (unless you bring your backup drive)

Arq backs up whenever/wherever there's an Internet connection.

Accuracy

Arq restores all your data correctly, unlike some other online backup offerings. Backup Bouncer is a test suite independently developed by Nathaniel Gray (author of HexaLex) to verify the accuracy of backup products restoring Mac file data and metadata -- in his words, to "keep the ugly backup tools out of the club." I tested Arq and some other leading online backup offerings and the results are presented here:

Backup Bouncer Test Results

Product	Results
Backblaze	Failed 19 of 20 tests	View Results
Mozy	Failed 16 of 20 tests	View Results
Carbonite	Failed 20 of 20 tests	View Results
Dropbox	Failed 19 of 20 tests	View Results
CrashPlan Central	Failed 12 of 20 tests	View Results
Jungle Disk	Passes all tests	View Results
Arq	Passes all tests	View Results

What do these results mean? Learn more.

Pricing

Arq is a one-time license fee: $29 for 1 computer, or $49 for up to 5 computers in the same household.

Amazon S3 pricing is more complex.

Amazon charges for storage (the majority of the cost), data transfer in (backing up), and data transfer out (restoring).

Amazon also offers 2 classes of storage, "Standard", and "Reduced Redundancy Storage" (RRS). RRS is sufficient for backup and is the default with Arq, but you can change this in Arq's Preferences.

For example, if you need to back up 40GB of data, the initial estimated cost would be:

Type	Amount	Cost (US $)
Data Transfer In @ $.10/GB	40GB	$4.00
Data Transfer In Discount (until Nov 1, 2010)	40GB	$-4.00
	Total	$0.00

If your files change about 5% per month, the ongoing esimated cost would be:

Type	Amount	Cost Per Month (US $)
Storage (RRS) @ $.10/GB	40GB	$4.00
Data Transfer In @ $.10/GB	2GB	$.20
	Total	$4.20

In addition, Amazon charges $.01 per 1000 requests for "PUT" requests and $.01 per 10,000 requests for all other types of requests. Arq will make many PUT requests when uploading and other requests when verifying data and/or restoring, but they don't add up to more than a few cents typically.

Features

Wayback Machine

Arq keeps multiple "versions" of your files — a backup history.

Following the initial backup, Arq automatically makes incremental backups every hour, every day, uploading just the files that have changed since your last backup. Arq keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month.

No Limits

Arq backs up everything you tell it to back up:

• It doesn’t skip videos or ignore certain file types.
• It backs up files of any size -- 4GB 40GB, it doesn't matter.
• It backs up your external drives and your network drives.
• It doesn’t delete backups of your external drives just because you haven’t plugged them in lately.
• It doesn’t forcibly delete backups older than 4 weeks.

Flexible Scheduling Options

Arq can run every hour (like Time Machine), once per day (at a time of day you choose) or "manually". You can always click "Back Up Now" to start backing up any time.

You can tell Arq to pause its backups: you specify the time to pause, and it resumes automatically once that time has elapsed.

Flexible Bandwidth Options

Arq can upload to S3 at maximum speed, or at a fixed transfer rate that you choose. Or choose automatic transfer rate to slow down uploads whenever you're using the Internet for other tasks.

Space Efficient

Arq "de-duplicates" your backups, never storing the same file twice in your S3 account.

The Story Behind Arq

I started thinking about Arq back in early 2009 because I wanted an easy-to-use backup program but couldn’t find one that worked well. I liked Time Machine and even bought a Time Capsule so I wouldn't have to remember to plug in an external hard drive. But it still only backed up when I was at home near the Time Capsule, and if my house burned down or someone stole my computer and Time Capsule my stuff would be gone. I wanted online backup, at least for my most important documents and photos.

I tried Mozy, Carbonite and Backblaze. They all offered “unlimited” size backup for a fixed fee, but they all weird constraints -- most didn't back up network drives, and one deletes backups of external drives that haven’t been connected for 30 days). And their security felt like a lot of handwaving instead of straight talk. They all said they encrypt my files, but there was no way for me to verify that since I couldn't access my stuff on their servers. One of them even required me to give them my password in order to restore.

Backing up to servers that are under someone else's control that I have no access to just doesn't feel like backup to me. Backing up to S3 felt like real backup, but there wasn't any great software to do it.

I 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. I decided to rewrite those bits in Objective-C. Then I added logic to correctly back up all Mac-specific metadata, plus strong encryption, plus a simple but powerful Mac UI. Thus Arq was born.

Recent Reviews

"If you’re serious about backups and like the idea (I do) of having your stuff on Amazon S3, go download Arq. It’s just great." - MacStories review

"I love Dropbox for its elegance and simplicity, but actually those are exactly the qualities I like in Arq too." - AppStorm

"It’s exactly as simple as it can be, and it f***ing works perfectly." - Mason Mark

"...it kicks Jungledisk’s ass when it comes to speediness." - Snipe.Net

"powerful" - Full Creative

"I love it" - Trevor Turk

"Die technische Seite von Arq macht einen sehr sauberen und vielversprechenden Eindruck." - macfidelity

"Empfehlenswerte Mac-Datensicherung" - MacMacken

"phenomenal user experience" - OS X Attack

Recent Tweets about Arq

Screen Shots

Back up anything

Exclude files by name or path

Set maximum S3 storage budget

Limit network impact

Versioned backups

Restore from your other computers