Arq

[Weaselboy]

Can't you go to the Arq prefs and in that Network pane select all the networks on the list and UNcheck the hotspot?

 

[dai-leung]

Can't you go to the Arq prefs and in that Network pane select all the networks on the list and UNcheck the hotspot?

Yes, I could have. But one will have to remember every time when he uses iPhone's hotspot. If there is a way to Select "backup from all available wifi networks" except ATT hotspot, it would be preferred.

 

[Weaselboy]

Yes, I could have. But one will have to remember every time when he uses iPhone's hotspot. If there is a way to Select "backup from all available wifi networks" except ATT hotspot, it would be preferred.

For me it seems to default to having all the networks checked, so can't you just uncheck the hotspot one and it will never use that one again? Isn't that what you are trying to do?

 

[dai-leung]

For me it seems to default to having all the networks checked, so can't you just uncheck the hotspot one and it will never use that one again? Isn't that what you are trying to do?

Yes, that is what I am trying to do. Thank u! Your idea should work. I wasn't thinking.

 

[dai-leung]

For me it seems to default to having all the networks checked, so can't you just uncheck the hotspot one and it will never use that one again? Isn't that what you are trying to do?

You are right!

From ARQ support: "ARQ blocks networks based on their names. If you block "xxx's iPhone hotspot" in New York and later move to California, that network will still be blocked until you allow Arq using it. "

Thus, all the user needs to do is to turn on his iPhone hotspot once, then go to ARQ's preferences/network and unselect xxx's iPhone hotspot. Then thereafter ARQ will not use xxx's iPhone hotspot for backup until it is selected again.

 

[OldToad]

I'm having trouble setting up the email link in Arq Prefs to receive messages from Arq.
I use Apple Mail and I cannot find what to enter for SMTP Hostname, SMTP Port, Enable SSL, Authentication Type, etc.
Can someone help me with these parameters to enter? Cannot find the info in Mail app or Apple Help and Arq support was no help. Thanks!

 

[AVonGauss]

Deleted.

 

[OldToad]

The magic Google phrase is "iCloud SMTP" and select the first result.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht202304

Thanks for the link. Brushed up on what an "app specific password" was and after one was generated, used it - success!

 

[bwintx]

Got some excellent advice here a year ago, so am hoping for more of the same. Am considering adding a Mac laptop to the household. Would probably apply same backup setup as with the iMac I mentioned a few pages back — i.e., an external drive for Time Machine, a separate external drive for Carbon Copy Cloner, and online backup (via Arq) to B2. My question is about the B2 part. Would my current B2 “bucket” allow me to add the backup for this device, too, or must I create a separate “bucket” for it? Also: if either a one-bucket or two-bucket method is acceptable, is one a better idea than the other?

 

[BigMcGuire]

Got some excellent advice here a year ago, so am hoping for more of the same. Am considering adding a Mac laptop to the household. Would probably apply same backup setup as with the iMac I mentioned a few pages back — i.e., an external drive for Time Machine, a separate external drive for Carbon Copy Cloner, and online backup (via Arq) to B2. My question is about the B2 part. Would my current B2 “bucket” allow me to add the backup for this device, too, or must I create a separate “bucket” for it? Also: if either a one-bucket or two-bucket method is acceptable, is one a better idea than the other?

Good question. I am interested in responses to this as well. Just recently I incorporated CCC 5 into my backup routine. I’m using the same drives as my Time Machine backup for one, then another drive for CCC 5. I have Arq copying the home folder to my 4TB drive and going to B2 and Google Drive.

For My MacBook Pro: (I’ve retired my Mini and Windows laptop).
4TB Drive: Time Machine, Arq Backup of Home Folder, CCC 5. - Encrypted, stored at work.
1TB Drive: CCC 5 - Encrypted, stored at home.
500 GB Drive: CCC 5 - Stored at home, bootable.
Backblaze Unlimited Backup ($50/year)

To better answer your questions:

I initially put everything into one big bucket from all of my computers, work included. If you use separate keys it stores the data differently, if you use the same key, it will not back up data already there. So you can use the same bucket, but use a different security key to have the data separate. But I’d recommend a new bucket (see next paragraph):

Now, I have a bucket for my personal computers, a bucket for my work computer, a bucket for my wife’s computer. I find this better because I can create snapshots of the bucket easier for long term storage before I do some major data moving.

Just an FYI:
I’ve been so impressed with Backblaze that I bought their $50/year unlimited backup. Their software is really good, backing up every change I make to Backblaze all the time. I’ve suspended my personal B2 Bucket upload for now because of that. I still use Arq to backup my data to Google Drive and to an external drive. So, I’m kinda going overboard with backups but my data is very important to me.

Simple answer to your question: You can use same bucket, but use different key if you want data separated. I’d recommend a different bucket.

 

[bwintx]

Just an FYI:
I’ve been so impressed with Backblaze that I bought their $50/year unlimited backup. Their software is really good, backing up every change I make to Backblaze all the time. I’ve suspended my personal B2 Bucket upload for now because of that. I still use Arq to backup my data to Google Drive and to an external drive. So, I’m kinda going overboard with backups but my data is very important to me.

Thanks for the advice you gave in your full response. Re B2 vs “regular” Backblaze, specifically: last year, I got the impression in this thread and some other sites that Backblaze B2 was a better idea (and/or better deal, money-wise) than “regular” Backblaze, so to speak. Since you’ve used both and apparently prefer the latter, could you give some details about the differences? There is this on the Backblaze site but it’s nearly two years old and might not necessarily be as up-to-date as I’d like to see:
https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us...ference-between-B2-vs-Backblaze-Online-Backup

 

[BigMcGuire]

Thanks for the advice you gave in your full response. Re B2 vs “regular” Backblaze, specifically: last year, I got the impression in this thread and some other sites that Backblaze B2 was a better idea (and/or better deal, money-wise) than “regular” Backblaze, so to speak. Since you’ve used both and apparently prefer the latter, could you give some details about the differences? There is this on the Backblaze site but it’s nearly two years old and might not necessarily be as up-to-date as I’d like to see:
https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us...ference-between-B2-vs-Backblaze-Online-Backup

I had bought Backblaze unlimited earlier this year without really thinking about it, then got into Arq with B2. So since I paid for Backblaze Unlimited, I'm using that for now.

B2 - Better deal money-wise is definitely the case. I have about 350GB+ stored on B2 and it costs me about $1.32/mo. Backblaze Unlimited is a one time $50 charge per year. So $1.32 * 12 = $16 give or take a few. No contest there.

I still use Arq on my MacBook and work machine to backup to Google Drive, and kto an external drive hourly. But I let Backblaze unlimited backup to "Backblaze' now so I've stopped using B2 at the moment because I'm paying 2 unlimited personal backup plans.

However,

If I was to do it again, I'd probably just keep B2. A lot lot … lot cheaper. Backblaze Unlimited is nice, easier to set up, set it and forget it, and it backups all the time, allows for restoration without charging (B2 costs to restore). But, I'm keeping my B2 buckets ($1.32/mo) for now.

I prefer Arq and I like the B2 bucket system and the cost. When Backblaze Unlimited is over, I'll probably go back to my buckets. <lol>. But not sure, cuz I really like Backblaze, so I don't mind giving them some extra $.

 

[AVonGauss]

Deleted.

 

[DarkIcarus]

I prefer Arq with B2 over Backblaze personal backup. To me there are some important differences. I would class Arq more of a "proper" backup and Backblaze personal backup having more in common with a "sync" service. Arq with B2 will keep your backups whether you connect your computer or not. Backblaze personal backup will only keep external drive backups for 30 days when not connected and your main computer drive for several months. Also, most importantly to me, Arq will keep versions of your files indefinitely or until your budget is reached. Backblaze personal backup only keeps versions for 30 days. I see this as a big flaw and making it not a true backup. Versioning protects from mistakes, accidental deletion and most importably, data corruption. I think versioning is needed for long term archival backups.

As for using the same buckets. I choose not to use the same buckets. The reason for this is because if something goes wrong Backblazes end or my end and a bucket is unusable/damaged in some way, I still have my other backups and do not need to start uploading everything from scratch. I think it just gives more redundancy not keeping all your eggs in one basket. Also you can use the same password/key for each bucket if you choose or use different ones.

 

[AVonGauss]

Deleted.

 

[bwintx]

Not related to the current discussion, but since this is an active Arq thread. You now need to add the Arq application rather than Arq Agent application to the Application Data permissions in order to fully back up the home folder under Mojave.

Thanks for that word. Not on the beta, so will hope I remember this when Mojave is released to GA as 10.14.0.

 

[Weaselboy]

Any fellow Arq users who updated to macOS Mojave today... you need to go to this screen and add Arq to give it permission to access all your files for backup. Otherwise Arq will throw a bunch of errors it cannot access your data. I know this came up earlier in the thread, but I thought a reminder with a screenshot would be helpful.

Otherwise, Arq seems fine in Mojave so far.

 

[bwintx]

Any fellow Arq users who updated to macOS Mojave today... you need to go to this screen and add Arq to give it permission to access all your files for backup. Otherwise Arq will throw a bunch of errors it cannot access your data. I know this came up earlier in the thread, but I thought a reminder with a screenshot would be helpful.

Otherwise, Arq seems fine in Mojave so far.

View attachment 788238

Thank you! Was just nosing around here hoping one of you guys had the answer. And, sure enough, I had forgotten!

 

[dknightd]

I'm going to loose my offsite backup in a few months. So I'm looking for alternatives. I have about 20 TB of data I'd like to have an offsite backup of. I have a local backup, so this would be for "my house has burned down or robbed".
If that happened I'd like to be able recover 500GB quickly. The rest could wait, but I'd like to get it back. Suggestions? Thanks!

Edit. Maybe a once a month trip to a safe deposit box would be OK for the bulk storage. It does not change that often. Then cloud for the 500GB

 

[bwintx]

A lot depends on the device(s) on which you currently save the 20 TB. More info?

 

[dknightd]

A combination of concatenated drives. And one raid 6 box.
My working copy is local disks, some concatenated to make it look like 16GB.
I keep a local copy on a 20 TB synology NAS box. Remote backup is on a mixture of drives.
It is the remote drive(s) I want to replace. Hopefully I would never need them

 

[bwintx]

Since you want to eliminate using external drives to back up the Synology, that seems to leave tape backup as the next alternative backup to easily transportable media. Or have you already rejected that for some reason?

 

[dknightd]

I currently rsync to an off site computer. I'm trying to find a way to replicate that.

 

[bwintx]

I currently rsync to an off site computer. I'm trying to find a way to replicate that.

You mentioned a safe deposit box; is that definitely where the off-site storage media will go? That would be another good reason for tape backup, since all you’d have to carry back and forth would be tapes—as opposed to, say, small external HDDs.

 

[sjinsjca]

Found this thread and would like to share my excellent experiences with Arq so far.

In a couple months I'll be a refugee from Crashplan, which axed its home offering. For the year ending at my anniversary, I've enjoyed transition pricing to their Crashplan for Small Business offering. That will change soon and the price will become way higher.

I'm the "sysadmin" for half a dozen family computers (Macs, with one Windows machine). We use TimeMachine for backing up to external USB drives while Crashplan has served as our remote backup. However, TimeMachine'ing our computers with the USB drives connected to our Airport Extreme router has been highly unreliable-- very disappointing, as it was wonderful when it worked. So we have backed up with the drives directly connected to our computers.

After some research I decided to give Arq's free client trial a whirl, choosing a free trial on the Wasabi hot storage service (an Amazon-S3-workalike, but cheaper). Arq has its own "cloud backup" that includes storage, but for our multi-machine scenario it seemed cheaper to use their backup client with Wasabi. Arq supports a wide variety of cloud services, including the generic S3-workalike provided by the Minio framework (www.minio.io).

Getting Arq backing up to Wasabi was fairly quick work. You do need to be a bit of a geek. I used my own machine as the guinea-pig. It went smoothly and the full backup of its two drives took a few days, averaging perhaps 3MB/sec over WiFi. Provisioning our other family machines took a couple of minutes each. It all worked so well that I purchased Arq's full license with lifetime upgrades and set up a paid account on Wasabi after only a few days.

Where Arq really shines:

• Its compression and de-duplication technology. One of my drives has a bunch of essential installers from a particular software vendor on it. The installers each range into multi-gigabytes, and the 500GB drive is almost full. Since the installers are mostly from the same vendor, there are a lot of libraries and other files that are identical from installer to installer. Bottom line: between Arq's de-dupe and compression efforts, the total backup of that drive in my Wasabi bucket summed to only about 100GB! That's impressive. It minimizes bandwidth consumption and monthly storage costs.
• Its encryption. Files are encrypted entirely on your machine. Your encryption key is not known to the cloud provider, and all transfers are additionally over TLS-encrypted channels, so your data is entirely cloaked.
• Its performance. It uses about 1/10 the RAM and less than 1/10 the CPU resources that Crashplan does. Yet, it's faster and backs up more efficiently.
• Its user interface. It's crisp and clean and responsive, with a simple drag-and-drop approach to file restores. It looks good and performs identically on the Mac and Windows.

This is all great, but I still yearned for a LAN-based local backup that would do what Time Machine over the Airport Extreme was supposed to do. As it turns out, Arq has an answer for that too. They even document how to use a Synology network-attached-storage for the purpose (https://www.arqbackup.com/blog/backup-to-synology-nas-using-minio-and-arq/). Lacking a Synology NAS and having a stack of USB drives from my troublesome Airport Extreme setup, here's what I did:

1. I bought a refurb Chromebook (Acer C720P) for $113 off Amazon, with 4GB RAM and a 32GB SSD. This uses a dual-core Celeron of the Haswell family. The processor scored fairly well back in its day (http://cpuboss.com/cpu/Intel-Celeron-2955U) and this chip and model of Chromebook are safe choices for running Linux (https://platypusplatypus.com/chromebooks/5-best-chromebooks-for-linux/).
2. The instructions at https://chrx.org/#chromebooks get you up and running with the Chromebook-optimized, Ubuntu-derived GalliumOS Linux.
3. Install Docker and use it to run the Minio S3-workalike.
4. Establish the Minio machine as an additional destination for Arq.

I'm no Linux expert but the process only took a few hours to get working. I'm still testing it, but so far I have backed up a test folder and recovered it with no trouble. So far, backup performance over our LAN is about the same as to Wasabi over the Internet.

Arq has my top endorsement. Along the way I had a few questions, and the Arq people responded within a couple hours even on a weekend. Impressive stuff.