Last month, I wrote how CrashPlan is discontinuing their home service and that I had to find a suitable alternative. Backup solutions aren’t the most thrilling kind of software and investigating and evaluating the different options can hardly be considered fun. The complicating fact is that I have an atypical arrangement, or I suppose you could call it a specific set of requirements. I have a server along with other computers at home and another server at my mother-in-law’s along with her computer. Since I’m a firm believer of the 3-2-1 backup rules, I wanted to make sure everything is suitably protected.

What I finally decided to put my money on is Arq Backup by Haystack Software. While evaluating, I had initially moved on to another solution but came back to it as it did cover the core requirements: local backups, backups to another computer, and backups to cloud storage. Computer to computer was the biggest challenge, but Arq supports sftp (file transfer over an encrypted connection) which is easily supported by macOS.

After downloading and configuring the software, I let it run for a bit so the initial backups could complete. Yesterday, I installed the Windows version on the upstairs computer to make sure that worked as well and I’m now ready to unplug CrashPlan completely. Since Arq is software and not a service, the purchase is one-time and usable on all my computers. One backup requirement is cloud storage and I opted for Wasabi which is Amazon S3 compatible and will only run me about $3.50/mo for the nearly 1Tb of storage that I’ll be maintaining with them.

All-in-all I’m pretty satisfied. I have complete control over what gets backed up to where and flexibility in the schedule, space, and bandwidth usage for each client. Add to the fact everything is fully encrypted and cheaper overall, it certainly is a better solution to CrashPlan.

Oh, and since it’s not a service, they can’t pull the plug on me if they change their business model. 😝