Online Backup

 

Super-easy off-site backup

True privacy and control

The most reliable cloud storage

iOS App

Awesome support

Storage Pricing

Arq is a one-time license fee: $29 per computer.

Amazon's AWS Free Usage Tier includes 5GB of free storage for 1 year.

Otherwise, pricing is $.125/GB per month (or $.093/GB per month for Reduced Redundancy Storage).

In addition, Amazon charges very small fees of $.01 per 1,000 requests for "PUT requests" and $.01 per 10,000 for all other types of requests. Data transfer into S3 (uploading) is free. For more details, see the S3 pricing page.

Accuracy

Arq restores all your data and metadata correctly, unlike some other online backup offerings. Backup Bouncer is a test suite independently developed by Nathaniel Gray 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	Failed 1 of 20 tests	View Results
Jungle Disk	Passes all tests	View Results
Arq	Passes all tests	View Results

What do these results mean? For most scenarios, probably nothing. Any of those backup apps can restore your file contents -- photos, Office docs, music files. You'll still be able to view your restored photos, edit your restored Office docs, play your restored music. But the dates on the files might not be correct, for instance. Arq is built with the view that if everything is backed up and restored properly, then you don't have to learn or worry about what all the metadata are and whether or not they matter for your situation.

Other 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.

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.

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 the “unlimited” service had limits. I couldn't back up a network drive, for example. I couldn't keep backups of external drives reliably -- Backblaze promised to delete backups of external drives that haven’t been connected for 30 days. They were vague about durability and availability of my backups. And then there was the risk of the backup storage provider closing up shop and me losing all my backups. I'd seen that happen before (Upline, Xdrive, Omnidrive, Digital Railroad).

Amazon S3 seemed like a great place for my 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 isn't an “unlimited” type of offering, so they don't add constraints to minimize the amount of backup data I have.

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.

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

Reviews

"My files get backed up to S3 using Arq" - Chris Wanstrath, GitHub co-founder

"a fantastic backup utility" - AppStorm's Best Mac Software of 2010

"simple and elegant and works as expected" - Macgasm

"Arq makes it easy to retrieve your Mac's files." - Mac360

"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

"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

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