Arq® Blog

If you’ve got TBs of data to back up with Arq to Backblaze B2 cloud storage then their Fireball service might be just the thing for you. It’s a 70TB Synology NAS. They send it to you, you fill it up and send it back, and they ingest the data into B2. If you’ve got […]

Previously, a B2 account could only have 1 set of credentials, with full access to everything in your B2 account. Now Backblaze has added application keys, so you can create a separate set of credentials with access to only 1 bucket, for example. We’ve updated Arq in version 5.13.1 to support application keys. Configuring Arq […]

Arq can back up to any folder you want, so you could configure it to back up to a folder that lives on your NAS, but there’s a better way: use Minio! Minio is an open-source S3-compatible storage server. If you install Minio on your NAS (Synology supports Minio via Docker on many of its […]

Arq can backup NAS shares. Here’s how to set that up on a Mac. (For Windows skip to the “NAS Backup on Windows” section.) NAS Backup on Mac Arq will back up whatever folders you tell it to back up, but it doesn’t know where those folders really exist on your Mac. So, if you […]

Arq 5.11 is out for both macOS and Windows. The big change in this update is to validation. “Validation” is the process by which Arq checks that every object referenced by the latest backup record still exists at the destination, and has the correct contents. Prior to 5.11, validation happened as part of the backup […]

If you’re using Arq on a Mac, please download and run the 5.10 installer to get an update that fixes a security vulnerability (see details below). Click this link to download the installer DMG: Arq 5.10 Double-click the DMG file to open it. Double-click the Arq icon in the DMG file to install. Arq for Mac Vulnerabilities […]

Now you can back up with Arq to Backblaze’s B2 storage! It’s a super-cheap option ($.005/GB per month) for storing your backups. Arq 5.9 for Mac and Windows is a free update for all Arq 5 users. Just pick “Check for Updates” from Arq’s menu to get it. Or, if you’ve checked “automatically update Arq” […]

If you’re getting “The system cannot find the file specified” errors from Arq on Windows, it may be due to the files not being included in VSS snapshots. Arq uses Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to back up files that are open/locked. A common example is Outlook .pst and .ost files. While Arq will […]

Yesterday, as part of responding to a security incident, the Amazon Drive security team temporarily disabled API access for Arq as well as some other apps. In less than 24 hours Amazon determined that Arq was not involved in the incident, and re-enabled Arq’s API access. In a meeting yesterday Amazon folks were not able to provide […]

I hate writing blog posts like this.  In Arq 5.7.9 we changed the way Arq caches the list of objects at the destination for AWS, Google Drive and Google Cloud Storage. For those 3 destination types, all non-packed objects were stored in one “objects” directory. If you had years of backups and/or terabytes of data, […]

Amazon Web Services announced several changes on 21 December, 2016. They’ve reduced prices, they’ve expanded from 1 retrieval tier (3-5 hour delay) to 3 tiers, and they’ve replaced their confusing retrieval pricing with much simpler per-GB pricing.  Price Reductions Prices for Glacier storage were reduced in most AWS regions. Prices dropped about 23% in most […]

UPDATE 3 February 2017: Amazon Web Services has replaced their confusing retrieval pricing with straightforward per-GB pricing. Read the AWS blog post and our blog post about it. Arq is our Mac backup app that backs up your files to your own Amazon Glacier account. Backing up to Glacier is very popular because the storage cost is […]

Today we released Arq 5, and we’re really excited about it! We implemented a bunch of the most-requested features, and we worked hard on improving the performance. Big Price Change With Arq 5 we’re switching from per-computer licenses to per-user licenses! Buy one license and use it on all your Macs and PCs! Way Faster […]

Yesterday Amazon Web Services announced their new Seoul region is now available. Today we shipped an update to Arq for both Mac and Windows that supports it! It’s a free update for Arq 4 customers. If you’re already using Arq 4, pick “Check for Updates” from Arq’s menu to install Arq 4.4 (Windows) or 4.15 (Mac). If not, […]

If you receive an email from Amazon Web Services with the title “Time to remove or rotate your AWS access keys” it’s because you’ve got root access keys in your account that are more than a year old, and Amazon wants you to remove them. If you’re using Arq to back up your files to AWS, you […]

If you’re backing up to Amazon Web Services with Arq, you’ll need a “key pair” consisting of an “access key ID” (the public key, like a username) and a “secret access key” (the private key, like a password). You could create a root key pair with permission for everything, but AWS prefers that you create […]

You can now store your encrypted Arq backups in your own Amazon Cloud Drive account! Amazon Cloud Drive includes unlimited storage for $59.99/year, so you can back up everything. Amazon provides a web interface to upload and download files, but Arq uses its API to upload directly to the cloud. Arq is our cloud backup solution that encrypts […]

Last night at the SpiceWorks “unplugged” event in Boston, 4 local IT managers sat on a panel and answered audience questions about buying products. It was really helpful for me, as I’ve been wondering whether selling to corporate IT folks is totally different from what I’ve been doing so far with Arq, our online backup […]

The other day Wendy emailed me because Things crashed and she lost a lot of work, and she couldn’t figure out how to get back her data using Arq. We traded a few emails over the next few hours, but it quickly became clear to me that she wasn’t wasn’t comfortable digging into her Library […]

No. For a bootable backup we recommend SuperDuper. Arq is complementary to SuperDuper; SuperDuper creates a bootable backup on another hard drive, and Arq creates versioned backups online. Duplicate Backup A bootable backup is a duplicate of your hard drive. It’s great if you need to get up and running very quickly in the event […]

Arq 4.10 is now available, and it includes support for backing up to Google’s just-announced “nearline” storage! Google’s new nearline storage is excellent for backups. Nearline pricing is super-cheap, like Amazon’s Glacier, but without Glacier’s hassles and confusing restore fee structure. Uploading is free. Downloading (if you need to restore) is $.12/GB for data transfer plus $.01/GB nearline-retrieval fee. If you’re already paying for […]