Best Practices for Mac Backups, Cloud Storage Choices, and Folder Selection

General Topics
1

I am currently using Arq and Carbon Copy Cloner for backups of my MacBook, and I am interested in Kopia Backup. I would appreciate your recommendation.

  1. What is your recommendation for backing up my MacBook (currently 1.5 TB of data)? Which folders should I include or exclude from the backup? For example, should the Library folder be included, and should the Applications folder be included?
  2. I currently have 1 TB of iCloud storage and use Backblaze B2 with Arq for backups. For a secondary backup in addition to Arq, would you recommend Google Drive, Amazon, or another provider? I have noticed that they offer different storage models, some significantly cheaper than others, and I find it difficult to decide which option to choose.
  3. Kopia backups are client-side encrypted, so I assume privacy is not a concern even if I choose a backup server located abroad. Is that correct?
  4. Is it possible to transfer backups to another cloud provider later (for example, by using a tool to copy data from one storage provider to another) and then continue backups with the new provider?
  5. Has anyone used Arq previously and switched to Kopia? What has been your experience comparing the two applications?

I would appreciate your feedback, as well as any tips for a future Kopia user.

Thank you!

2

Dear all, anyone able to help me as a Kopia newbie with my above questions?

Further question: which storage option should I use for Hetzner storage box? SFTP? Webdav? Others?

Thank you so much in advance.

3
  1. I choose to exclude Library and Applications, as these are generally either temporary (and not needed later) or can be re-installed fresh later. For me, I like to keep my backups lean which is why I exclude these. I started out backing up my entire home folder, then used KopiaUI to explore snapshots and decide whether I’d realistically care to restore a target or not. Then I add to my .kopiaignore file.
  2. I recommend using an S3 target of some kind. I use Backblaze B2 and it is fast and cheap for Kopia backups. Great solution. Alternatives I’ve used are Tigris and Cloudflare R2. I did use Google Drive for a time, but ended up with a corrupt repo after restoring some deleted files in the Google Drive Web UI. I recommend against choosing Google Drive. Tigris gives you globally distributed by-default S3 buckets, so your latency will be theoretically low. I main Backblaze because it is still extremely fast and low-cost. Many here like Wasabi- I tried that one and liked it as well, but it is more expensive than Backblaze.
  3. They are client-side encrypted, yes. How you choose to store that depends on your view of “Store now, decrypt later” risk. I choose not to use overseas or blockchain based solutions like StorJ.
  4. Yes, kopia has a built-in tool to sync your repo. You should also be able to theoretically use a simple tool like rclone to quickly sync your repo to just about anywhere you want.
  5. I did not use Arq, but I tried restic, borg, BackupPC, rclone (with backup flags enabled), duplicacy, duplicati, tar, rsync, and Time Machine prior to settling on Kopia. I’ve tested backup and restore, as well as repo repair. All work very well, and I restore semi-regularly. I will be sticking with Kopia for the forseeable future.

Side note / tip, the UI really makes Kopia a breeze to use. I have multiple headless machines all backing up to the same target, with my daily driver macbook running the UI and is in charge of Maintenance. It’s great for checking and pulling files as needed.

4

thank you.

  1. as far as I know some apps save relevant data in the library application support folder? or am I wrong?
  2. I am using Backblaze B2 together with ARQ. I would use Kopia as a secondary backup, and therefore preferrably with another cloud provider. Currently I am thinking to use Hetzner (Storage Box) as it has convenient prices. However, it doesn’t offer S3, as far as I can tell: BX21

Thank you so much for all your answers. That helps a lot. Can you recommend any good tutorial or instruction as a starting point to set up my first backup with kopia?

5

Well… excluding ~/Library alltogether might not be the best idea. However, you can usually safely exclude:

~/Library/Caches
~/Library/CloudStorage
~/Library/Logs
~/Library/ApplicationSupport/Caches

All other excludes would have to be well thought of and would be depending on what other data you’d deen not neccessary to be restored. E.g. I also exclude all my iMazing Backups at ~/Library/Application\ Support/iMazing, plus any Ollama LLM…

6

You are correct: there are apps that store all their data in your Library folder (I really wish they didn’t, but I can see why some developers might want to protect their data from users accidentally messing with it). If these app do not also sync their data elsewhere (and sync is not backup, of course), you will definitely want to backup their data. As @budy points out, you can usefully exclude certain contents from your library backup.