Haystack Software Blog

I’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 download it from the product page.

Here are the details:

Feature Additions

• Configurable backup schedule: hourly, once/day at a certain time of day, or manually.
• Back Up Now feature.
• Pause backups for an amount of time you choose. Resume early if you wish. (‘Pause’ is better than ‘stop’ because you won’t have to remember to start it again).
• Progress indicator next to the “Other Computers” heading in the source list (on the left side of the window) so you can tell when Arq is still scanning for other computers’ backups in the S3 data.
• More informative status messages such as “Calculating upload size” and “Finishing backup” instead of just “Backing up …”
• Better communication of error and warning conditions.
• Estimated backup time is now calculated based on start of backup, not start of calculating upload size.
• More accurate progress bar in 2 scenarios — when saving the “packs” of small files, and when re-doing an initial backup that was aborted.
• More useful logging output when log level is set to Info.
• Much faster loading when browsing backups.

Bug Fixes

• More efficient caching of the set of objects in S3.
• Fixed an issue where calculating the upload size for a backup was incomplete when a permission error was encountered.
• Fixed issues with high memory usage in both Arq and Arq Agent.
• Fixed an issue that was preventing the “Start at Login” preference from persisting.
• Fixed 2 issues where packs weren’t being read correctly, leading to “object not found” errors.
• Fixed regression bug in restoring file permissions correctly for root-owned files.
• Fixed an issue where the folder’s progress bar was occasionally disappearing.
• Fixed an issue with trying to read extended attributes on files that don’t support extended attributes.

Enjoy! If you have any feedback or questions I’d love to hear from you! Just email support@haystacksoftware.com. Thanks!

- Stefan

This 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.

This 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 update to 1.4.2. Or download Arq here.

Great 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) — a 33% savings!

Arq with RRS Support

Arq 1.4 is out with support for RRS! Pick “Check for Updates” in the Arq menu to automatically update, or download it from the Arq product page.

For new users of Arq the default is to use RRS. For current users Arq continues to use Standard storage (I didn’t want to assume everyone would want to make the switch).

Migrating to RRS

If you’re a current user, just install the update as described above, then go to the Budget tab of Preferences and check ”Use Reduced Redundancy storage class for new objects”:

If you want to convert your existing S3 objects to RRS, click the button “Update Storage Class of Existing Objects.” Arq will determine which storage class each object is in:

Click “Convert” to migrate:

Enjoy the savings!

- Stefan