When I started developing Arq it was partly because I couldn’t find an existing online backup offering that gave me enough control. I wanted to control exactly which files would be backed up, and I didn’t want to be constrained by rules that many of the “unlimited backup” offerings had like excluding network drives, excluding [...]
How to back up your Mac using Arq
July 21st, 2010Arq 1.5 is out!
July 16th, 2010I’m really excited to ship Arq 1.5! It includes scheduling options like once-per-day backups and manual-only (one of the most requested features) as well as Pause/Resume and Back Up Now functions. It also includes a whole bunch of refinements and bug fixes. To get it, pick “Check for Updates” from the menu in Arq, or [...]
Arq 1.4.4 is out!
June 18th, 2010This release fixes a bug that causes high CPU usage after Arq Agent has been running for many hours and there are backup errors (e.g. folder to be backed up isn’t available). Pick “Check for Updates” from the Arq menu to automatically update to 1.4.4. Or download Arq here.
Arq 1.4.2 is out!
June 4th, 2010This release fixes a few bugs: Bug Fixes Added a scroll view around the excludes list when it gets too long to fit on the screen. Fixed ‘Signapore’ typo. Fixed packaging to use symbolic links and remove header files (resulting in smaller app bundle size). Pick “Check for Updates” from the Arq menu to automatically [...]
CrashPlan restore analysis
June 1st, 2010I’m the author of Arq, a backup product for the Mac, so I’m certainly biased, but in this post I’m only going to describe the factual results of a backup/restore with CrashPlan. You can verify these results yourself. Warning: What follows is technical nitty-gritty. If you just want to know why Mac metadata are important [...]
The Importance of Metadata on the Mac
June 1st, 2010Your backup product/service should back up your data completely and correctly. This of course includes each file’s contents, but on the Mac it also includes many types of “metadata”. What are “metadata”? The general definition is “data about data”. In the case of Mac files, metadata include the file’s size, its modification date, its owner, [...]
S3 storage now 33% cheaper!
May 20th, 2010Great news! Amazon just announced “Reduced Redundancy Storage” (RRS) for S3. Objects stored with the RRS “storage class” are “99.99% durable over a given year,” whereas “standard” storage is 99.999999999% durable (overkill for backup for most people). Objects stored with RRS are only $.10/GB per month ($.11 in the Northern California region — see pricing) — [...]
Quick survey to make Arq even better
May 15th, 2010If you’re an Arq user, I’d really like to get your feedback on Arq and find out what else you’d like it to do for you. Could you please take this 5-question survey? http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2FM23K7 Fill out as much or as little as you’d like. I’ll share the response summary (minus those who don’t want their [...]
False alarm, and Arq 1.3.15
May 13th, 2010Sorry about that last blog post folks. False Alarm Turns out Arq 1.3.14 works fine. A customer had reported that his backups were gone right after he updated, and I thought I reproduced the problem, but it turns out I didn’t reproduce the problem, and furthermore it wasn’t actually a problem! The customer had pushed [...]
Arq 1.3.14 problem
May 13th, 2010[UPDATE: Ignore this post. It was a false alarm. See the following post for details.] The version of Arq that I just shipped has a bug which may cause it to drop old backup versions. To everyone who already downloaded it, I sincerely apologize, and I’m working nonstop to fix it. I recommend you re-install [...]