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?
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
