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I've regularly been curious about this, but Crashplan has a stable reputation and seems much less expensive for large backups. For those who have researched Cr

I've regularly been curious about this, but Crashplan has a stable reputation and seems much less expensive for large backups. For those who have researched Crashplan, why did you choose Arq instead?

relix 13y ago
I'm using Crashplan now but when my subscription runs out I will switch to Arq+AWS Glacier. I'm currently around the 300GB mark for backup space. Using glacier this would cost me $3/month, about $36/year or half as much as I'm paying for Crashplan ($60 with a discount). Even if it was more expensive for me, I would still switch, because I don't trust Crashplan completely. There have been stories from users of backups getting corrupted when they needed to recover, and the upload speed to Crashplan is so slow it took months for the full 300GB to upload (I'm getting around 0.5 - 2Mbps up on my 100Mbps/100Mbps connection, I believe they are artificially throttling it to discourage people from storing a ton of data). This means new data takes a long time to be 100% safe, especially when for example I dump my camera's memory to disk. On top of that, if their upload speed is this low, their download speed probably is, too. If my data crashes, I need the backup yesterday. I can't wait a week to download the 300GB at 10Mbps. I believe Amazon's speeds would be much higher.
- archagon 13y ago
  Don't you need to pay a ton to actually get your data out of glacier?
  - relix 13y ago
    That's ok. When that happens I'll gladly pay a premium to get my data fast. That should only happen once every few years though.
  - dmd 13y ago
    Not if you're willing to wait a few hours - a delay of the same or smaller order of magnitude as the transfer is going to take anyway. For example, suppose you're restoring 50 GB. If you want to start the retrieval 4 hours from now (the minimum), you'll pay $97. If you're willing to wait 10 hours, that drops to $43. 20, $25. 40, $16. Goes down to $7 at the limit. You can play with the cost at http://liangzan.net/aws-glacier-calculator/ http://liangzan.net/aws-glacier-calculator/
    - archagon 13y ago
      For me, the far more likely case would be 500GB, kept for a year. Even with 1000 hours (more than a month!!) for a restore, I'd still have to pay $125. CrashPlan lets me do this for free, and allows me arbitrary access to my backed up data to boot. It just seems like a better deal, unless you're really worried about data corruption in the cloud.
      - kl4m 13y ago
        It's the same price for ~72h retrieval...
        archagon 13y ago
        Still, it means your monthly price isn't actually what it seems. With 72 hour retrieval, you'll be paying about $14 a month, compared to CrashPlan's $5. And what if you need the data earlier? If you have bad luck and your hard drive crashes a month after you make your backup, you'll end up paying about $100 a month, at least for that month. CrashPlan's flat rate means you don't have to stress out about the fine print.
        relix 13y ago
        You have bigger problems if you need to recover from backup once a year.
        archagon 13y ago
        Even at 5 years it still averages out to about $7 a month. CrashPlan is significantly cheaper, unless you want to bet against ever needing the backup. (Which may be sensible, I admit.)
MikeCodeAwesome 13y ago
I've used JungleDisk, CrashPlan, and now Arq. I left JungleDisk because it went sideways and S3 was too expensive. After that was CrashPlan; I liked its free remote backup option. But then my backup destination disappeared behind carrier grade NAT. That left me with paying for regular CrashPlan or looking elsewhere. Enter Arq. Based on my estimated usage, for two computers, I calculated the following estimated yearly cost. JungleDisk S3 $288 CrashPlan $120 Arq Glacier $ 32 Assuming I didn't screw up my estimate, Glacier was a no-brainer, even with up-front cost of two Arq licenses ($70). This month is the first full month in which I'm not seeding my initial Arq backup to Glacier. I'm hopeful that the cost will be significantly lower than CrashPlan.
leejoramo 13y ago
As I have replied to several questions in this thread and said that I use both CrashPlan and Arq for remote backups let me give my rational. CrashPlan: I have used since soon after they first appeared for Mac. They have really strong compression and de-duplication to minimize and speed data transfers. I personally use their consumer and small business solutions. However, I also maintain their CrashPlan PROe enterprise backup for several clients. The fact that they have a very strong enterprise product, provides me with a great deal of trust in the quality of CrashPlan's work. I think they have be best solution I have used for a notebook that is on the move. I backup to both their remote servers and to my own home office server. Thus, I have the option to quickly restore from my own local server, their much slower remote server AND I can have a CrashPlan Next Day send me a copy of my data on a disk drive. I do wish they could get rid of the Java dependency for their Mac Client software since it is a RAM hog. CrashPlan rates very well at saving Mac OS X meta data. Arq: I like the approach to backing up to Amazon S3 which I know is a very reliable storage environment, and Glacier has made it dirt cheap for last resort archival backups. I like the fact that at least through Version 3 there has been an open source software GitHub hosted restore. If Haystack software disappears there are still options to restore. I believe Arq is one of the very few Mac OS X remote backup systems that preserves ALL meta data. I have used lots backup software over 30 years. Every backup system has failings and bugs. And the operator (normally me) is capable of making mistakes. That is why I use multiple products to do backup. I am interested in exploring Arq new features especially using SSH/SFTP which will allow me to self host, and may cause me to re-evaluate my overall backup approach.
- Serow225 13y ago
  I've talked to the CrashPlan folks recently, and they have been working on native clients for a while now. They wouldn't tell me a release date of course, but it's in the works :)
- sreitshamer 13y ago
  Using multiple backup products is a very good idea!
veidr 13y ago
I have used CrashPlan for my sister and parents' computers (because I'm a cheap asshole, mainly... S3 was too expensive for me to pay for on their behalf... now that Arq 4 supports Glacier well and other cheap/free options, I will be switching them to Arq next time I go back to US and A...). When CrashPlan works it is OK (and only just OK -- it is sill a bloated Java service that runs and backs up slowly, with a poor UI to boot). But in my experience, and that of many others I know, CrashPlan has MAJOR OUTAGES on a regular basis. Like the app won't connect to CrashPlan backup service for DAYS/WEEKS at a stretch. To their credit, at least CrashPlan doesn't delete the evidence of such outages from their support forum the way that companies like Apple do: http://goo.gl/sl4zx http://goo.gl/sl4zx ← link requires login but you can login with google etc I think on the Mac, Arq is the best backup thing going right now.

I've regularly been curious about this, but Crashplan has a stable reputation and seems much less expensive for large backups. For those who have researched Crashplan, why did you choose Arq instead?

relix 13y ago

I'm using Crashplan now but when my subscription runs out I will switch to Arq+AWS Glacier. I'm currently around the 300GB mark for backup space. Using glacier this would cost me $3/month, about $36/year or half as much as I'm paying for Crashplan ($60 with a discount). Even if it was more expensive for me, I would still switch, because I don't trust Crashplan completely. There have been stories from users of backups getting corrupted when they needed to recover, and the upload speed to Crashplan is so slow it took months for the full 300GB to upload (I'm getting around 0.5 - 2Mbps up on my 100Mbps/100Mbps connection, I believe they are artificially throttling it to discourage people from storing a ton of data). This means new data takes a long time to be 100% safe, especially when for example I dump my camera's memory to disk. On top of that, if their upload speed is this low, their download speed probably is, too. If my data crashes, I need the backup yesterday. I can't wait a week to download the 300GB at 10Mbps. I believe Amazon's speeds would be much higher.

archagon 13y ago
Don't you need to pay a ton to actually get your data out of glacier?
- relix 13y ago
  That's ok. When that happens I'll gladly pay a premium to get my data fast. That should only happen once every few years though.
- dmd 13y ago
  Not if you're willing to wait a few hours - a delay of the same or smaller order of magnitude as the transfer is going to take anyway. For example, suppose you're restoring 50 GB. If you want to start the retrieval 4 hours from now (the minimum), you'll pay $97. If you're willing to wait 10 hours, that drops to $43. 20, $25. 40, $16. Goes down to $7 at the limit. You can play with the cost at http://liangzan.net/aws-glacier-calculator/ http://liangzan.net/aws-glacier-calculator/
  - archagon 13y ago
    For me, the far more likely case would be 500GB, kept for a year. Even with 1000 hours (more than a month!!) for a restore, I'd still have to pay $125. CrashPlan lets me do this for free, and allows me arbitrary access to my backed up data to boot. It just seems like a better deal, unless you're really worried about data corruption in the cloud.
    - kl4m 13y ago
      It's the same price for ~72h retrieval...
      - archagon 13y ago
        Still, it means your monthly price isn't actually what it seems. With 72 hour retrieval, you'll be paying about $14 a month, compared to CrashPlan's $5. And what if you need the data earlier? If you have bad luck and your hard drive crashes a month after you make your backup, you'll end up paying about $100 a month, at least for that month. CrashPlan's flat rate means you don't have to stress out about the fine print.
        relix 13y ago
        You have bigger problems if you need to recover from backup once a year.
        archagon 13y ago
        Even at 5 years it still averages out to about $7 a month. CrashPlan is significantly cheaper, unless you want to bet against ever needing the backup. (Which may be sensible, I admit.)

MikeCodeAwesome 13y ago

I've used JungleDisk, CrashPlan, and now Arq. I left JungleDisk because it went sideways and S3 was too expensive. After that was CrashPlan; I liked its free remote backup option. But then my backup destination disappeared behind carrier grade NAT. That left me with paying for regular CrashPlan or looking elsewhere. Enter Arq. Based on my estimated usage, for two computers, I calculated the following estimated yearly cost. JungleDisk S3 $288 CrashPlan $120 Arq Glacier $ 32 Assuming I didn't screw up my estimate, Glacier was a no-brainer, even with up-front cost of two Arq licenses ($70). This month is the first full month in which I'm not seeding my initial Arq backup to Glacier. I'm hopeful that the cost will be significantly lower than CrashPlan.

leejoramo 13y ago

As I have replied to several questions in this thread and said that I use both CrashPlan and Arq for remote backups let me give my rational. CrashPlan: I have used since soon after they first appeared for Mac. They have really strong compression and de-duplication to minimize and speed data transfers. I personally use their consumer and small business solutions. However, I also maintain their CrashPlan PROe enterprise backup for several clients. The fact that they have a very strong enterprise product, provides me with a great deal of trust in the quality of CrashPlan's work. I think they have be best solution I have used for a notebook that is on the move. I backup to both their remote servers and to my own home office server. Thus, I have the option to quickly restore from my own local server, their much slower remote server AND I can have a CrashPlan Next Day send me a copy of my data on a disk drive. I do wish they could get rid of the Java dependency for their Mac Client software since it is a RAM hog. CrashPlan rates very well at saving Mac OS X meta data. Arq: I like the approach to backing up to Amazon S3 which I know is a very reliable storage environment, and Glacier has made it dirt cheap for last resort archival backups. I like the fact that at least through Version 3 there has been an open source software GitHub hosted restore. If Haystack software disappears there are still options to restore. I believe Arq is one of the very few Mac OS X remote backup systems that preserves ALL meta data. I have used lots backup software over 30 years. Every backup system has failings and bugs. And the operator (normally me) is capable of making mistakes. That is why I use multiple products to do backup. I am interested in exploring Arq new features especially using SSH/SFTP which will allow me to self host, and may cause me to re-evaluate my overall backup approach.

Serow225 13y ago
I've talked to the CrashPlan folks recently, and they have been working on native clients for a while now. They wouldn't tell me a release date of course, but it's in the works :)
sreitshamer 13y ago
Using multiple backup products is a very good idea!

veidr 13y ago

I have used CrashPlan for my sister and parents' computers (because I'm a cheap asshole, mainly... S3 was too expensive for me to pay for on their behalf... now that Arq 4 supports Glacier well and other cheap/free options, I will be switching them to Arq next time I go back to US and A...). When CrashPlan works it is OK (and only just OK -- it is sill a bloated Java service that runs and backs up slowly, with a poor UI to boot). But in my experience, and that of many others I know, CrashPlan has MAJOR OUTAGES on a regular basis. Like the app won't connect to CrashPlan backup service for DAYS/WEEKS at a stretch. To their credit, at least CrashPlan doesn't delete the evidence of such outages from their support forum the way that companies like Apple do: http://goo.gl/sl4zx http://goo.gl/sl4zx ← link requires login but you can login with google etc I think on the Mac, Arq is the best backup thing going right now.