The less I have to manage the more work I can get done and that can translate to more time for hobbies and family. 
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I want them to charge a rate that lets them offer their service in a way that is viable for them and reliable for me. The two things I don’t want to scrimp on are backup and security (especially encryption) services. I would prefer all service vendors to offer me free services, but given that they’re unlikely to do so, I don’t mind paying for value.
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I hear you there. Slowly eliminating software I previously thoughts was mission critical. For newer but fewer packages that really are becoming mission critical.
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I just renewed Backblaze last week (such timing!), so I’m good for now. But I may well move to Arq Premium when it comes time to renew. My Backblaze backup is only 270 GB right now, and I only backup my MBA because I don’t want to pay for two computers.
I use the base model M2 Mini as a Plex and Homebridge server. It looks like with Arq I could add it to the backup and actually reduce my costs (relative to the price increase, that is, since Arq would come to about what I currently pay Backblaze) — I’m unlikely to hit the 1 TB cap, and Arq allows for multiple computers.
For a while I tried doing network backup from the Air to the Mini, and then backing up the Mini to Backblaze, since Backblaze will back up attached drives.
I quickly discovered doing that was going to routinely put me over my XFinity data cap, though. Pretty much all my media is streaming, and network TimeMachine backups use a lot of bandwidth, apparently.
Does Arq Premium let you back up to other locations in addition to their cloud storage? I can’t find the documentation that says one way or the other, aside from a bullet point that says “all the features of Arq 7.” I’m using Arq 7 to back up to both my Synology and a Wasabi cloud storage bucket. Premium might be a better deal for me if I can continue to back up to the Synology as well as their storage.
I think so? I was perusing this old thread earlier tonight and that seems to be the case.
Perhaps @svsmailus can shed some light; his post in that thread has information from Arq support.
I back up some files to Arq’s servers and some files to an SSD connected to my wife’s iMac.
I’m using Arq to back up to a Mac mini and that has Backblaze on it. Arq premium might work well for me as well.
Regarding enjoying my computer, let’s put work aside, and filling of important documents even.
I enjoy my hobbies on my computer and I use a simple backup system, Bacblaze, because I can afford it. I also choose a few, simple apps that don’t have ongoing costs (if possible) because I don’t want that subscription burden when I retire.
If I switch to another hobby, woodworm for example, I’ll enjoy making things but never considering making double to have a backup. If I loose what I made, that’s a bummer but never mind. Same for computer files. If I lose my music creations then I’ll be gutted, but move on and make new ones.
What I’m trying to say is I back up because it is sensible and convenient, but it’s not critical for my hobbies. Not is using the greatest/latest tool.
It’s not unreasonable, and it is value for money still. But… I already balk at the yearly price for 3 computers, one with 1 year versioning. I’m currently paying USD$258 plus tax and that will become USD$297 plus tax — a 15% increase, though with additional value in the other two computers getting the extended versioning (one of which it will be valuable for).
But man, when I put it in local currency and add tax… NZD$571 is eye watering. And more than an Apple Watch SE.
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It’s really not a “no-brainer”: backup is about living with and managing risk. It’s not too difficult to think of lots of ways in which your mac and its data could go wrong, but some of these are much more likely than others and the consequences can be very different for different people and circumstances.
It’s really important to think about RESTORING as well as backing up. I’ve had to restore my mac three or four times in the last ten years. Every single time has involved an internet recovery of the OS and restoring from iCloud or Time Machine. The consequences of minor glitches in that process have been minor. I don’t run a business and only my photos are irreplaceable.
I’ve just come out of Backblaze: it’s cheaper and more reliable for me to back up locally and also make an archive hard drive of my photos now and again to go off-site. If my house burns down etc. I’d have bigger problems than restoring my Mac, but that’s my situation. You pays your money and you makes your choice.
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I back up locally, so no subscription cost.
There are pros and cons, and I am not an expert, but I’m much more comfortable relying on my “own infrastructure” to access my backups than relying on “society’s and a business’s infrastructure”. I have two backup drives, one in my house, one elsewhere.
The way I see it, for my own risk (I am not a business), there are two things I prep for:
- me or Apple making a daft error that results in loss of data
- a disaster
For the first, a daft error, any backup system will do for me. The backup is a safety net because sometimes computers go wrong.
For the second, a disaster, I’ve never experienced one but I’ve thought about it and don’t want to rely on external systems I don’t have control over. If there is a fire, how reliable will my internet access be? Would I want to spend time downloading stuff once I’ve found an internet connection, or would I prefer to plug and access whatever files I needed in an emergency (my assumption is that actual system restoration would come later, but I still need to access key files in the meantime).
In reality, I have never needed backups except to rectify something stupid I’ve done, but I think in the event of a disaster, when realistically I won’t really care about most files at that moment, I know I can quickly regain access to what I might need. (I guess with the caveat that I do need a device to plug the drive into…)
Unfortunately, the reality is that prices just go up - internet access, cell phone, streaming TV, electricity…very little in my experience costs substantially less over time.
I do use both BackBlaze and Are (to Wasabi) to have two cloud backups. Probably overkill, and probably time for me to rethink the strategy, but I have had to restore from cloud backup twice over the past 10 years (not everthing, but in both cases a significant amount of data and files that I would have been unhappy to have lost).
Another perk of cloud storage, which I have posted about previously (no idea where that thread is). A few years ago, my daughter traveled some 1500 miles away for graduate school. The day after she arrived, her MBA died (turned out, eventually, to be a dead system board, but that’s another story). With one day before classes started and her desperately in need of all of her data and a working computer, I was able to order a new MBA at the local BestBuy, have her pick it up, remote into her new computer, install Arq, and restore her files from her Arq backup. The next day, when classes started, she was ready to go and that was worth the cost of the online storage.
Everyone’s needs vary, and one way to look at BackBlaze is to ask the question of how much recent data can you afford to lose? If, for example, losing a month of work would not make any difference to you, you might do just as well with an offsite drive that you bring in once / month to clone your system to.
If, like me, however, the most important files tend to be the most recently created, then a more continuous backup strategy makes sense, and BackBlaze (and Arq) do provide a hassle-free way to accomplish that, albeit at a higher cost. (I guess one might argue that if you replaced your backup hard drive yearly, the cost of the drive is going to be pretty close to the new cost for BackBlaze each year, so you aren’t really saving money…)
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Arq Premium is using their own attached cloud storage.
I‘m using Arq 7 with Wasabi as S3 Storage Provider. It also supports onedrive, SFTP, B2, Dropbox etc.
everything encrypted before uploaded.
It’s excellent. Highly recommend this and choose your own storage provider. Maybe you already have one.
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I use Arq to Backblaze B2. It has been rock solid and for my data backup needs cheaper than a regular BackBlaze license.
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It’s not ideal but I used this method for years. Each day I carried backup tapes home and returned the next morning with others recorded weeks earlier. My system had some serious weaknesses. For example, my home wasn’t a secure storage location. And if we had a disaster, we would have lost all data created/modified since the last time I carried the tapes home.
Outside of hard drive failure, the biggest threat to my data is wildfire. Grabbing a backed up portable hard drive is part of the “get the hell out of the house now” plan, but in crazed emergencies anything can happen.
As much as I would like a local system to be sufficient, it isn’t. Carrying something to an offsite storage on a regular basis — I’m fairly remote so I’d have to rent storage space somewhere, and it would likely be 45 minutes to an hour drive. So that’s not happening on a regular basis. I doubt I’d even get as frequent as every couple of weeks.
Not too happy about the large price increase — especially with my other insurance increasing as well — but I may just live with it as the cost for piece of mind. I just renewed a few months back, so I have some time to explore alternatives, if I decide to.
The B2 prices made a similar tradeoff, starting in October. It’s increasing 20% to $6/TB, but downloading up to 3x your storage size in a month is free now (still $10/TB after that.)
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Thanks! 20 characters
That’s the beauty of offsite cloud storage. It’s automatic and all I need to do is watch for alerts and do a test restore every few weeks.