Archive for December, 2010

Arq 1.7 is out!

Sunday, December 26th, 2010

This release is mostly focused on budgeting. There’s a new view that shows current S3 space usage, and a new menu item to trigger Arq Agent to enforce the budget.

Get the new version by selecting “Check for Updates” from the Arq menu, or download it from http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/

Here are the details:

Release Notes for Arq Backup Version 1.7

Feature Additions

  • Added a view showing S3 space usage.
  • Added S3 data trimming interval as a preference.
  • Added ‘Trim S3 Data Now…’ menu item to Arq Agent.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue that caused Arq Agent to crash when pausing and resuming.
  • Fixed issues with trimming backups (calculating and enforcing budget).
  • Ask for permission to launch Arq Agent (the first time) before launching it.
  • Fixed issues with license key editing.
  • Fixed an error that occurred when clearing the pause minutes field.
  • Fixed an issue where, after backup versions were rewritten, Arq Agent was returning the wrong backup-version ID to Arq, and Arq was erroneously displaying zero backup versions.
  • Fixed an issue with daily-backup scheduling that caused backups to run continuously for an hour.
  • Reduced memory usage during Arq Agent startup.
  • Fixed an issue where S3 “not found” results were being logged as errors.

Posted in Uncategorized | 25 Comments »

A little less data loss in the world

Monday, December 13th, 2010

I’m passionate building a software business as an indie Mac developer, but I’m equally passionate about helping people protect themselves from data loss.

Back in February 2010 I ran several online backup applications through a test suite called Backup Bouncer, hoping it would increase awareness among users and attract enough attention to get the providers of those applications to fix the issues. The results weren’t good. Backblaze failed 19 of 20 tests, Mozy failed 16, Carbonite failed all 20, Dropbox failed 19 and CrashPlan failed 12.

On June 30 someone tweeted Crashplan with a link to the Backup Bouncer test result asking when they’d address the restore errors I had documented:

Screen shot 2010-12-13 at 10.23.13 AM.png

Crashplan replied that all the issues would be fixed in the next release.

Screen shot 2010-12-13 at 10.29.02 AM.png

Finally in early December they released a new version that passes all but 1 of the tests.

Data Safety for Everyone

I’m very happy that Crashplan have fixed those issues, and I like to think I helped in a small way to make that happen. Of course I think everyone should use Arq ;) but even if they use a different product no one should suffer from data loss.

Hopefully Mozy, Carbonite, Backblaze and Dropbox will fix their issues with restoring metadata as well.

Posted in backup | 4 Comments »

iPhotoSync 1.3 is out!

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

This update adds documentation and fixes several bugs including other computers not showing up on launch.

To get it, pick “Check for Updates” from the iPhotoSync menu, or download it from the iPhotoSync page.

Release Notes for iPhotoSync Version 1.3

Feature Additions

  • Added ‘How It Works’ section to Help documentation.
  • Ask for permission before launching iPhotoSync Agent the first time.

Fixed Bugs

  • Changed network connection mechanism to address timeout errors in some situations.
  • When a remote computer is selected and the remote computer is still initially cataloging, update the progress bar properly as the remote computer progresses.
  • Fixed an issue where the “unique photos” number was actually the total photos number instead of the unique photos number.
  • Fixed an issue with the “Move to Applications Folder” function.

Posted in iPhotoSync, releases | Comments Off