[vc_row][vc_column][vc_tta_tabs style=”modern” active_section=”1″][vc_tta_section title=”About” tab_id=”aboutf856-8f34″][vc_column_text]Arq is a cloud backup for Mac. It securely backs up your files to your cloud account or NAS. Arq Backup saves many copies of the files — a backup history. So, if you find a file has been lost or mistakenly erased, you will restore the previous version. Back up…
Backups are incredibly important after you have a hard drive crash. The challenge is convincing family and friends to start backing up before they go though a tragic learning event. One of the hurdles is the cost. They might figure they paid around $1,000 for their computer and expect it to last around 5 years. That comes out to $200 a year, and so $50 a year, or a 4th the cost of the computer for a backup service seems expensive. As a service provider myself I can understand the risk, overhead, and equipment costs these backup services have. That is why CrashPlan was so great. Purchase my parent’s a hard drive for $150, then use CrashPlan for free. 6 people in my family can backup to this one hard drive. If we all did a backup service for 5 years that would be $1,500 instead of $150. Wow.
I did a lot of searching for a consumer friendly solution similar to CrashPlan, but I could not find anything. There are no open source solutions with good enough reviews to warrant even trying out. What I settled on was using an open source file service with a paid backup program. Minio Server basically turns one of my Macs into an AWS S3 service. Arq Backup has a simple interface for backing up and supports backing up to a verity of services, including a self hosted S3 type storage. Arq has some advantages over CrashPlan, namely it is a native application, not a Java application. Arq also has a Windows version. Arq costs $50 a person. So for myself and my father, who have multiple computers, it does not get too expensive. We will end up purchasing 6 licenses or $300. That makes this solution for 5 years come out to $450. Still a lot better than $1,500. The kicker is that you basically need to already be comfortable setting up your own cloud service.
Here is how to setup your own with open source Minio server and a one time paid backup application Arq Backup on a Mac
Setting up Minio on a Mac.
First install Minio Server
brew install minio/stable/minio
start it with
brew services start minio/stable/minio
There is probably a better way to get to this file, but open:
/usr/local/Cellar/minio/{Bunch of numbers}/homebrew.mxcl.minio.plist
I modified line 15 to point to an external hard drive.
changed:
<string>/usr/local/var/minio</string>
to:
<string>/Volumes/sjoy backup/minio</string>
Then restart Monio
brew services restart minio/stable/minio
Find the Minio keys by opening the log file here:
/usr/local/var/log/minio/output.log
Note the keys in a safe place (1Password)
Now you should be able to see the Minio web interface at http://localhost:9000
Setup Port Forwarding and DNS
I am not going to go into detail, but in order to make this publicly accessible you will need to setup port forwarding on your router. Then either purchase a static IP from your ISP or use a service like https://dyn.com/dns/
Download and install Arq Backup:
https://www.arqbackup.com/download/
Open Arq Preferences and choose Destinations
Add an s3 compatible destination.
Put in the hostname and keys.
Start backing up.
Once the backup is finished, test out recovering a file.
Done.
Sources:
best way to run a service at login: use OSX's native process launcher and manager, launchd
