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After looking at a few alternatives (Borg, Duplicacy etc.), I setup Arq on my Mac yesterday. One thing that irks me about these solutions is that they seem to

After looking at a few alternatives (Borg, Duplicacy etc.), I setup Arq on my Mac yesterday. One thing that irks me about these solutions is that they seem to scan my folders each time they want to backup. Are there tools that are smarter about this? For e.g., while running, they could keep a log of what's changing and only scan those while backing up.

novok 7y ago
You would probably need the kernel / filesystem to keep track of it to keep it efficient. And even then that is iffy if you implement it as a kernel extension vs. something integrated into filesystem code. I've found arq backup overall slow once you start hitting 0.5TB overall. It's a design issue.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  > You would probably need the kernel / filesystem to keep track of it to keep it efficient I believe most operating systems have a mechanism for this. E.g. on macOS it's called fsevents, Linux has inotify
  - 72deluxe 7y ago
    Yes, these utilities would probably need something in them such that fswatch implements (https://emcrisostomo.github.io/fswatch/ https://emcrisostomo.github.io/fswatch/) - very useful.
tzs 7y ago
> After looking at a few alternatives (Borg, Duplicacy etc.) I may have looked at Duplicacy. I'm sure that I looked at one of Duplicacy [1], Duplicati [2], and Duplicity [3]. Whichever one that was, I kept getting it mixed up with the other two when looking for information online, and finally said "screw this" and bought Arq. [1] https://duplicacy.com/ https://duplicacy.com/ [2] https://www.duplicati.com/ https://www.duplicati.com/ [3] http://duplicity.nongnu.org/ http://duplicity.nongnu.org/
Abundnce10 7y ago
I've been thinking about setting up a backup for my Mac for a while now. How long does it usually take to scan your folders during a backup?
- 6ak74rfy 7y ago
  I am backing up ~130 GB data (with a combination of large and small files) every 12 hours to S3. The first upload quite some time but all the later ones take ~10 minutes in total.
8fingerlouie 7y ago
Arq for Mac is great for backing up, though the restore util could use a little work. It's not exactly user friendly. I've used it on my macs for years without any issues at all. I switched after Time Machine broke down for the n'th time in a month saying it needed to recreate the backup, and not once in the 3-5 years i've been using it has it every given me any problems with broken repositories, and every integrity check/restore has succeeded. Arq on Windows is a different beast though. I'm sure it's technically solid, but the UI leaves a lot to be desired. On windows boxes i default to Duplicaty.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- 1_player 7y ago
  > Duplicaty Did you mean Duplicacy or Duplicati?
  - 8fingerlouie 7y ago
    Duplicati (https://www.duplicati.com/ https://www.duplicati.com/). On my servers i use Borg like any sane person would, but the lack of a good client UI makes scheduling backups on a personal computer a lot more work than i'm willing to put in.

novok 7y ago

You would probably need the kernel / filesystem to keep track of it to keep it efficient. And even then that is iffy if you implement it as a kernel extension vs. something integrated into filesystem code. I've found arq backup overall slow once you start hitting 0.5TB overall. It's a design issue.

kalleboo 7y ago
> You would probably need the kernel / filesystem to keep track of it to keep it efficient I believe most operating systems have a mechanism for this. E.g. on macOS it's called fsevents, Linux has inotify
- 72deluxe 7y ago
  Yes, these utilities would probably need something in them such that fswatch implements (https://emcrisostomo.github.io/fswatch/ https://emcrisostomo.github.io/fswatch/) - very useful.

tzs 7y ago

> After looking at a few alternatives (Borg, Duplicacy etc.) I may have looked at Duplicacy. I'm sure that I looked at one of Duplicacy [1], Duplicati [2], and Duplicity [3]. Whichever one that was, I kept getting it mixed up with the other two when looking for information online, and finally said "screw this" and bought Arq. [1] https://duplicacy.com/ https://duplicacy.com/ [2] https://www.duplicati.com/ https://www.duplicati.com/ [3] http://duplicity.nongnu.org/ http://duplicity.nongnu.org/

Abundnce10 7y ago

I've been thinking about setting up a backup for my Mac for a while now. How long does it usually take to scan your folders during a backup?

6ak74rfy 7y ago
I am backing up ~130 GB data (with a combination of large and small files) every 12 hours to S3. The first upload quite some time but all the later ones take ~10 minutes in total.

8fingerlouie 7y ago

Arq for Mac is great for backing up, though the restore util could use a little work. It's not exactly user friendly. I've used it on my macs for years without any issues at all. I switched after Time Machine broke down for the n'th time in a month saying it needed to recreate the backup, and not once in the 3-5 years i've been using it has it every given me any problems with broken repositories, and every integrity check/restore has succeeded. Arq on Windows is a different beast though. I'm sure it's technically solid, but the UI leaves a lot to be desired. On windows boxes i default to Duplicaty.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
1_player 7y ago
> Duplicaty Did you mean Duplicacy or Duplicati?
- 8fingerlouie 7y ago
  Duplicati (https://www.duplicati.com/ https://www.duplicati.com/). On my servers i use Borg like any sane person would, but the lack of a good client UI makes scheduling backups on a personal computer a lot more work than i'm willing to put in.