ARQ: OFFERS AN ARCHIVING ALTERNATIVE TO TIME MACHINE AND HOSTED CLOUD BACKUP SERVICES
There have never been so many options to clone, back up, and archive data from your Mac. And there have never been so few options for local networked backup. With Apple’s Time Machine and Time Capsule eating the heart out of the basic backup market for connected and networked archives, and several competing cloud-hosted services owning flat-rate unlimited storage, it’s hard for any developer to compete.
Code42’s CrashPlan and Econ Technologies’ ChronoSync are players in the game. CrashPlan offers a single software client that can copy data to a connected volume, a LAN-hosted volume, a friend’s Internet-reachable drive, or its own for-fee cloud service that has an unlimited storage option. ChronoSync is a ridiculously full-featured clone, mirror, and sync package that works with local and network-mounted drives, including Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, and also with Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Google Cloud Storage, as well as via SFTP (Secure FTP).
However, CrashPlan’s home flavor relies on Java after promising years ago to migrate to native software as the firm has done for its business customers. The software is funky and inconsistent, as I’ve found on two different Macs (though it runs fine on others in my family’s network). And it uses a proprietary format for archiving. ChronoSync is a fantastic option, but so deeply and comprehensively fleshed out, I’m afraid that it requires a relatively high amount of sophistication to use it well. I’ve spent many hours with it and have mastered it, but it’s too high a burden for more casual users.
