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Comment by davak | Hacker News Reader

Arq is the tool you need.

Files you backup with Arq are only visible through Arq. This application seems different:

> "No proprietary encoding of archive descriptions. No proprietary encryption or compression features that would make it complicated or even impossible to use other clients."

That makes it different and more usable (at least for me), even if its behavior isn't "Time Machine" alike.

A trial or a demo would be nice.

Arq's backup format isn't a secret. It's fully documented [1]

[1] https://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/s3_data_format.txt

That matters and helps little to a regular user. If you want to access the data from the AWS web interface, or any other client (Transmit, etc.), you are out of luck if you use Arq.

Not being proprietary is an advantage. Freeze is as simple as it can be.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but de-dup and versions can't be done with the standard format. Which means Freeze can't do it.

> but de-dup and versions can't be done with the standard format

I really do not know.

Freeze is really meant to be a plain simple file transfer client, although it has some "helper features" like compare mode which shows differences between a vault's inventory and a local folder and the highlighting of duplicates.

But it is not meant to be a replacement for a full featured backup solution like Arq. I think some people like it a bit more "low-level" and simple and that's what Freeze is for.

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