Well I disagree, we had pretty fast automatic backup in Aperture that didn’t cause any lockdown for the end user – I guess using another thread and queuing up database transactions meanwhile would help. Anyway, I do it by hand as I want to control my backups just now and have a working copy if the database gets corrupt of some reason or two.
As for Backblaze, I think all those options are viable, you could even download individual folders/files if needed. If I ever had a need to get a copy of my backups I would use the service where they send me all the contents on a hard drive and if I send back the drive in three weeks I don’t need to pay for the drive. So far never had the need to use this, I think I’ve used Backblaze daily for 10+ years across three different Mac computers.
I didn’t say ZIP files aren’t safe. If you want to use a ZIP file you can upload it to a cloud service. You should not put a DEVONthink database in a cloud-synced folder or online.
I said exporting ZIP files multiple times a day is not something we would advocate.
Regarding BackBlaze I would defer to @ksandvik on this as we don’t use it here. Also you are showing options for viewing and restoring files, not for backing them up.
But it is safe to put it online via an Arq backup?
Arq handles things similar to Time Machine, so it is data-safe according to the experience of @eboehnisch has been using this mechanism for some time now.
2 Likes
+1
Been backing up data including .dtBase2 to B2 with Arq for years. Arq v6, recently out, has issues, as noted, but v5 is chugging along flawlessly.
1 Like
Thanks - I will give it a try.
Are the Arq 6 issues only for people upgrading from Arq 5?
Can’t say. Yes, the issues affect a lot of people upgrading, if the forum chatter is believable, which it generally is not. The developer has removed the ability to upgrade to v6 from v5 until at least June 2020.
1 Like
Well you can still download Arq 5 so maybe I will start there to be safe.
1 Like
So, back to the original question. 
My Arq has about 7.8GB of cache in my user’s library. I would imagine you can just delete the contents and Arq will re-create them. I would give it a shot. Otherwise, maybe just deleting a backup job and re-creating it.
I’ve been thinking of switching to Arq so this has been an interesting conversation to follow.
I was slowly losing drive space over the course several months and hardly noticed it; but then realized the issue after upgrading to Catalina as the rate of loss increased. I used all kinds of tools to examine my drive, eliminate files, and look for culprits. I finally solved it (or seem to have solved it) by stopping my backup software, Cloudberry, and trashing the large number of backup files it had been placing on my drive, the one it was suppose to be copying (250gb worth). I read somewhere of similar problems with other backup software, even Time Machine, which can apparently run afoul of Apple’s security design of having two disk volumes, one for user data, and the other for system files (which is mostly hidden?). If I understand it right, sometimes copied volumes get placed back on Apple’s hidden volume.
My only remedy, I believe, is to look for backup software that has better stability with the new OSX design. Cloudberry has great flexibility and options, but I’m uncertain about it now. Should I move to Arq?
Zombieing this post. I was considering Arq, but I’m holding off while they sort out what seems to be some issues with the latest release.
So the way I understand it, if I manually export my db’s to a zip file, I should then be able to stash them in, say, OneDrive as a backup and that would be safe? It looks very much like that’s what you’re saying here, but I just want to ask to be sure.
Thanks in advance.
Short and simple: yes.
And as an additional info: Instead of saving zipped databases manually you could set up reminders with a script to do so. That’s the way I handle cloud backups.
Great, that’s what I’ll do. Thanks for the info.