I’ve been using Arq to back up two computers since CrashPlan Home ended in 2018. I have a lifetime Arq license for the software, and bring my own storage.
I’ve been using Wasabi Unlimited Egress (now called Wasabi Pay as You Go) S3-compatible storage. It used to be a good deal: $4.99 per TB per month, with no other charges*.
But there have been several price increases:
2018: $4.99/TB/month
2018 later: $5.99
2023: $6.99
2026: $7.99
At this rate they’ll be $10/TB in five years.
So I’m looking to move to a different storage provider. Right now I have 4.1 TB in Wasabi, but I put a budget in Arq to keep the cost down. Let’s say I would be storing up to 5 TB. I’m using Time Machine-style thinning.
Do any Arq users have suggestions? Has anyone tried a bulk data move from one S3 storage provider to another?
Right now the leading candidates are:
iDrive e2
Mega S4
* There used to be a 90 day minimum storage charge for objects, but it vanished from the invoice in March. It was only about 50 cents though.
Like you, I moved to Arq when CrashPlan stopped wanting home users.
For near S3 compatible, include Backblaze B2.
I am using Google Drive (Google One) with 2 TB. For 5 TB plan it is about AUD 5.50 per TB (paid annually) - say about USD 3.5 to 4 per TB.
Apart from price, I am using Google Drive because performance (upload/download speed) is much better than Wasabi, Backblaze B2, etc. I assume this is because Google uses servers in Australia.
I use Google Cloud Archive with Arq. I use it with my Photos and some other things that are important to me in case of disaster. As far as I remember I will need to wait for some minutes from starting download before it will begin. Luckily never needed to do it. It is very cheap as long as you do not need to download. But if disaster struck it would probably be covered by insurance. I pay $3.20 for 2.02 TiB. I asked Claude: My cost is $3.20 for 2.02 TiB. what is that in $/TB? Claude: “Let’s work through it:
So your rate works out to about $1.44 per TB per month.
For comparison, that’s slightly above the standard US Archive rate of ~$1.23/TB-month which lines up with what you’d expect, since Sweden (europe-north1) typically runs a bit higher than US regional pricing.”
(I use Arq with B2, plus a local networked machine backup of a subset of my data.)
Just on the bulk data move question: I’m not sure I’d bother.
Add the new destination, run both until at least one generation of backup is complete before you stop the old one, and when you think you’ve got enough “history” there, remove the old one.
Yes, there’s a short period where you’re paying double, but it’ll be a lot less time (and probably money) spent dealing with it.
Last week I migrated the MacBook Pro backup from Wasabi to MEGA S4 using rclone, and then adopted the new storage location in Arq. In a few weeks I’ll do the same for the iMac, and then I’m done with Wasabi.