Mac Client For Amazon Glacier

11-05-2021 admin

Not too long ago, Amazon introduced Glacier, an online storage/archiving solution that starts at just a penny per GB per month. Depending on your storage needs, Amazon Glacier could be the most cost-efficient way to back up your data for a lifetime. Here's what you need to know about it and how to set it up.

Amazon Glacier is a low cost cloud storage as a part of Amazon AWS services. We can store our data to Glacier at a very low cost. It is great to store data that is not frequently accessed.

Starting out with Amazon Glacier can be a little daunting. At first appearance it seems like you need a backup client like FastGlacier ($30 Windows), Arq ($40 Mac), or SAGU (Free Windows/Mac).
Why would anyone use glacier for consumer needs, when Google Drive provides almost the same price without any additional complexities? Glacier 1TB is $7 (and that's in the cheapest data center), Google Drive's 1TB is $10.

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How Amazon Glacier Works

Amazon Glacier is a low-cost, online storage service where you pay every month only for what you use (online storage space plus data transfers). It's like Amazon's other inexpensive storage service, S3—only about 10 times cheaper. Why does it cost so little? Amazon's designed Glacier to be optimized for data you don't access often—think long-term storage of photos and videos, archived project files, etc. You're not supposed to use it to regularly retrieve files or constantly delete them off the servers, and if you do it'll cost you.

The most important thing to know about Amazon Glacier is that if you want to retrieve files, it takes 3 to 5 hours to complete. So this isn't for backing up and quickly retrieving a file you accidentally deleted and need right away.

Your files and folders are stored in Amazon Glacier containers called 'vaults.' Amazon calls all the stuff in your Glacier vaults 'archives.' These can be a single file or you can zip multiple files and folders into a single archive, which can be as large as 40TB. If you ever need to retrieve your data, you request it by archive. (They don't want you downloading an entire vault at once; you'll pay dearly if you want to.)

Finally, pricing is a bit complicated and Amazon doesn't provide software for uploading and downloading your data, but there are great third-party tools you can use. (See below)

Amazon Glacier vs. CrashPlan and Other Backup Services

So why bother with all these quirks when you can just use CrashPlan, Backblaze, or another popular online backup service? To be honest, if you just want a set-and-forget online backup system, one of those online solutions would be best.

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However, if you're already backing up your data locally to a NAS or external drive, and perhaps also using cloud storage and syncing like Dropbox or Google Drive, Amazon Glacier can be your dirt cheap offsite backup. (Remember the 3-2-1 backup rule?) That way, you have your local backup for retrieving deleted files, restoring your system after a crash, or whatever else. Your Amazon Glacier backup is there just in case your computer and backup drive both get ruined, like in a fire or an earthquake.

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All this depends on how much you want to store offsite, though. Let's compare with our favorite online backup, CrashPlan:

CrashPlan's 10GB backup plan for one computer is $2.99 a month. For that same amount of data on Glacier it's roughly $0.10 a month. (Using the Glacier server region US East as an example, since it's one of the lowest priced ones.)
CrashPan's unlimited backup for one computer is $5.99 a month. That's about the same you'll pay per month to store 600GB on Glacier.
Other examples: 100GB would be $0.88 a month on Glacier; 200GB would be $1.88 a month; 300GB would be $2.88 a month.

(CrashPlan has more attractive pricing if you pay for a year or more in advance rather than monthly, let's compare apples to apples.) So essentially, if you have less than 600GB to backup offsite, Glacier is the more affordable option. Amazon Glacier is to online storage as pay-as-you-go or prepaid cell phone plans are to wireless plans.

And again, this is assuming that you don't need to retrieve any of that data regularly (e.g., you use your local or Dropbox backups instead), because, as I mentioned earlier, there are retrieval fees.

To see if it's worth it for you, use this Glacier Cost Calculator, putting in the size of the data you want backed up. (The early deletion fee is if you delete data uploaded in the last three months; it comes out to about $0.03 per GB—or the amount you'd spend storing it for three months, so you might as well just keep it there.)

How to Back Up to Amazon Glacier

If it sounds good to you, getting started with Glacier is pretty easy.

Step 1: Sign Up for Amazon Web Services

First, sign into your Amazon account or create a new Amazon Web Services account here. You'll need to enter a credit card, but won't be charged until you start using Amazon Glacier/AWS. You'll also have to verify your identity over the phone and then choose a customer support plan (most people will want the free version).

While you're at it, protect your account with multi-factor authentication (MFA) on the last screen of the setup, a.k.a. two-factor authentication, a second layer of security for your data. If you have Google Authenticator on your mobile device, for example:

Select 'virtual MFA' from the types of authentication methods on Amazon
Then, in Google Authenticator, go to the options menu to Add an account > scan QR barcode
With your mobile device, scan the barcode Amazon displays on the screen
Then enter the authentication codes from Google Authenticator into the Amazon security page

Step 2: Create a Security Access Key for Your Amazon Glacier Account

Next, head to the Security Credentials page in Amazon Web Service, expand the 'Access Keys' section, and click the 'Create New Access Key' button. You'll download the key file (CVS format) to your computer, which has the numbers required for Amazon Glacier client software to access your files.

Step 3: Create a Vault in Glacier

In the Amazon Glacier console/homescreen, click the Create Vault button. You can also click the region name at the top navigation bar to change to a different data center. (Amazon requires you to choose a data center for your Glacier storage: e.g., US East, US West, Asia, EU. These have different pricing schemes. In general, the US East and US West-Oregon are less expensive, but you'll want to check the cost calculator mentioned earlier.)

Just name the vault, select if you want notifications on activity for the vault, and you're done. You can have multiple vaults (e.g., 'Photo archive' or 'Software backups') in your Glacier account—as many as 1,000 vaults per region—if you want to organize them better. Also, many Glacier clients allow you to create vaults directly in the software.

Step 4: Download and Install an Amazon Glacier Client

Third-party software makes uploading, syncing, and automatically backing up your data easy. I'm using Fast Glacier (free, Windows) because it has a lot of features, like bandwidth throttling, drag-and-drop support, a sync tool, and support for smart data retrieval (this saves you money if you have to retrieve files, by staggering the job requests). Other popular clients include CloudBerry Explorer and previously mentionedArq for Mac. Digital Inspiration has a nice overview of several Glacier clients.

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For the rest of these examples, I'm going to use Fast Glacier screenshots, but they should be similar in other programs.

Step 5: Connect Your Amazon Glacier Client to Your Account

Open up the Security Access Key file you downloaded to grab the Access ID and Secret Key codes to put into your client. Once you do so, you'll see the vaults you created and can upload files and folders to them.

In FastGlacier and CloudBerry Explorer (and probably the other clients), you can simply drag-and-drop folders and files to start the upload. You can do this with mapped network drives—great for backing up a NAS. This is where you would also download or delete files (knowing the limitations mentioned above).

Step 6: Automate Your Backups

FastGlacier has a convenient comparison and syncing tool (under Files > Compare with local folder), where you can see which files are missing from Glacier and choose to synchronize them (with options to upload only changed files, new files, or missing ones). This needs to be manually launched, though.

To automate the backups in FastGlacier, you'll need to do it with Windows Task Scheduler. In Task Scheduler, create a new task, and point it to the FastGlacier sync script (C:Program FilesFastGlacierglacier-sync.exe). In the arguments for the task, put in the name of your Glacier Account, source folder on your computer, region you've selected for your vault, Vault name and directory where you want to backup to. See FastGlacier's command line older sync tool instructions or Get in the Sky for more examples.

As an alternative, CloudBerry Backup ($29.99, Windows) is more of a traditional backup tool for this job or you can even do it for free via FTP backup.

That's basically it. For a few dollars a year, you add more redundancy to your backup system, with the confidence of having your most precious data saved on redundant servers and an average 99.999999999% durability for your archives.

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AllExperiencesPros

ConsSpecs

No privacy concerns. See More

When it comes to ease of use most cloud backup service are pretty easy as it is just one signup, with Arc you need to download install and activate it to then register for an Amazon account, this extra step may be troublesome to some people or just annoying. See More

Amazon services offer solutions with almost 100% durability and 99.99% availability. Even if the system loses. See More

Sync files as fast as your internet plan allows you to. See More

Backup and use your files from any device with Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, or iOS. See More

Higher than all the other cloud services except Mega. See More

Unlike all the other clouds this makes it great for sharing large files. To lots of people. See More

This is nice if you don't care about what is people see on the page when you share the file and you have large files to send. See More

Support for all file systems and distributions. See More

Cool branding feature possible for the videos and pictures :) See More

A lot of sharing options between accounts and other non-pCloud-users. See More

Rewind option is possible for free up to 15 days back in time, 30 days back with Premium plans and you can pay for a whole year of file versioning only 39 EUR! See More

Platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux

Offline access:Yes

See All Specs

749

AllExperiencesPros

Cons

The free tier will cover most personal home pages. See More

Amazon S3's web interface is quite confusing, especially for first-time users, but there are many tutorials online that help beginners to set up a static site on S3. See More

There's no cap in storage or traffic. Cost is based on usage. See More

Amazon will try to retrieve the money every month after one year trial. If you have no money you will be banned. See More

S3 storage costs $0.03 per GB and gets cheaper the more is stored, PUT, COPY, POST, or LIST requests are $0.005 per 1,000 requests and GET and all other requests are $0.004 per 10,000 requests. And with some restrictions is available for free for a year. See More

By default, S3 sets uploaded files to private. You can configure your S3 bucket to auto-apply public permissions by copying and pasting a template. But the template might be intimidating to some users. See More

You can provision a S3 bucket, upload files, setup the DNS, and go live in under 10 minutes. See More

Amazon S3 does not have SFTP support, instead the S3 web interface has to be used. See More

S3 is fast even without a CDN. See More

Simple to set up with Amazon's CloudFont CDN. See More

To set up a custom domain, Amazon Route 53 has to be configured as the DNS provider with the domain registrar, two buckets have to be created and configured with the name the same as the domain - one including, one excluding www. A more in-depth explanation can be found here. See More

There's no server to manage, so no security issues to patch or keep watch. See More

183

AllExperiencesPros

ConsSpecs

Box is available for Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phones. Which mean access to ones files no matter the device or platform used. See More

Any time the app is opened the user's log-in needs to be typed in, which can become annoying. While it is a nice privacy feature, an option to turn it off would be nice. See More

There are plug-ins for applications that allow interactions with Box. See More

They are not willing to listen to Linux community. They've also deleted a bunch of messages from Linux users on their forum See More

Not being able to easily back up office works through an integrated office suite can be a set back when comparing to backup apps like Drive. While you can set certain apps to save their files to the Box folder, it is not as easy as using something like Google Docs, which not only saves while you are working but as soon as you are done, with no extra steps. See More

Such as advanced sharing options, task assignment, notifications. Making an easy way to stay up to date on assigned tasks. See More

Platforms:Windows; OSX; Android; iOS; Windows Phone; BlackBerry

112

AllExperiencesPros

Mac Client For Lync

ConsSpecs

If you wanna host your database on the cloud server, you can have both the option as Database as a Service (Pre-installed and managed database) or Infrastructure as a Service (If you want to have root access and manually want to install the database). See More

GPU is not provided. See More

All the cloud services are with 99.95% uptime. See More

F(x) Data Cloud provides public cloud server at a cheap price. The basic plan starts at $1.99/month. See More

Typically answers in minute. See More

They provide 32 vCPU, 128 GB RAM, 2000 GB SSD, 9 TB network. For large businesses, high configurations are required. See More

Server locations:United States

ISOs:Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, OpenSUSE, Windows

Block Storage:Yes

See All Specs

306

Elasticity in the pricing allows for users to only pay for what they use in data, this way there is no overcharging when ones limit wasn't hit. This also allows for users to constantly change their backup usage without fear of being charged too much or having to constantly switch their plans. See More

User can choose to backup to their own private cloud as well as a public cloud such as AWS. This choice allows for piece of mind as to where ones data is residing. See More

User have the option to test out the software with a 30 day free trial. See More

Platforms:Windows; Linux

AllExperiencesPros

ConsSpecs

Linux, Windows and Mac. See More

Mega has a higher than normal chance of having legal troubles due its founders past, thus there's a higher than normal chance that the service may be shut down with all your files in it and no way to retrieve them. See More

All files uploaded to Mega are first encrypted on the users side. To access files a decryption key must be supplied. For ease of use, the decryption key can be appended to the URL you share. See More

The only way to access your account is with a password and there is no way to recover it if you lose it. See More

50 GB trial for new accounts after registering for a month, then 15 GB. There's also three upgrade plans, starting at 500GB and $110/yr. See More

Just drag and drop files in the browser window, then create a link for sharing. You will need an account to create a link. To streamline the process for new users you can start uploading as soon as you access the website and create an account while it's uploading. See More

Platforms:Windows; Android; iOS; Mac OS X; Chrome OS; Linux

Continuous:Yes

See All Specs

5814

AllExperiencesPros

ConsSpecs

Encryption allows the use to access their files with only their own keys and the deduplication saves on costs of storage as any duplicate file will be removed automatically. So not only is the platform safety minded but cost is taken into account for the user as well. See More

Users will have to manually delete their old backups as there is no way to set a threshold of when older backups should be removed. See More

Platforms:Linux; OSX; BSD

AllExperiencesPros

ConsSpecs

Terms of Service forbid any kind of nudity, or that incites, advocates, or expresses pornography or racism among other things. See More

If you use Office 365 with OneDrive, you can share a file to edit collaboratively in real time. See More

This may be intentional by Microsoft to force OneDrive users to use Windows. When OneDrive picks up a 'Linux' user-agent it becomes slow whereas when from the same computer and browser it picks up a 'Windows' user-agent it becomes considerably faster. See More

It integrates with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc as if you were using OneDrive locally. See More

Once setup OneDrive folder and local folders can be the same slowing for seamlessly integration into Windows OS. See More

When Android, iOS and Windows Phone users shoot a photo with their phone it is automatically uploaded to OneDrive via app. See More

Music files put in the Music folder in OneDrive sync with Groove Music. See More

If you use Windows 8 or 8.1, OneDrive is already built in your system and can be accessed via file explorer. See More

Platforms:Windows; OSX; Android; iOS; XBOX

104

AllExperiencesPros

ConsSpecs

iCloud syncs a users settings and files across a range of Apple hardware making for a simple solution to backup and sync data across ones Apple devices. See More

Integrates different office tools such as Keynote or Pages for writing and presentations, etc with iCloud. See More

Does not allow uploading certain file types. See More

Platforms:OSX; iOS

198

AllExperiencesPros

ConsSpecs

Google account holders and non-holders can be set to access and/or collaborate on files/folders in real-time. Additionally, you can find files you've shared not only by filename but by person you've shared the files with. See More

Google as of yet has a client for Linux, leaving many who use the service forced to use third party apps or the webpage. See More

This space is shared across Drive, Gmail & Picasa. See More

Data privacy is widely known as one of Google's weaknesses. Data shared through Google is most likely matched up with the user's profile inside other Alphabet inc. subsidiaries, and, due to the business model, used commercially. See More

For example, you can use search to search through both Drive and Gmail. See More

They can create derivative works, they can perform it, they can modify it, and they can publish it at will. There are many other specific rights they take over your product. Read the Terms carefully and compare with ANY others. See More

Includes tools for writing, presentations and spreadsheets. See More

Third party Drive applications running in Chrome or Android can add functionality such as image/video editing, project management, flowchart creation, etc. See More

It supports none of these common protocols used for access to network storage, which severely limits OS integration. You are forced to use the browser or a standalone client, which isn't possible on all systems. See More

Mac Client For Skype For Business

Drive lets you save any file from your email. See More

Desktop client constantly crashes. See More

You can work from any device, especially mobile. See More

$1.99 per 100GB, for up to 16TB. See More

By clicking Ctrl + Alt + G in Windows or Command + Alt + Shift + G is OS X you can access previous version of the file. See More

You can search images by object, place, or face when they've been added to your google photos collection. Google Assistant also helps you find screenshots that could be archived, images that aren't in the correct orientation and pictures that would work well as animations or albums. See More

Platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux; Android; iOS

Project management:Yes

See All Specs

22480

AllExperiencesPros

Cons

Acronis is available for: Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Facebook See More

Capabilities, features, and GUI, are less robust on the Mac version. See More

https://kb.acronis.com/content/48668 See More

Acronis expects most users to restore from local copies. Cloud restoration capabilities is far from robust. One has to navigate a file tree to download files in small batches because larger downloads (talking anything more than a few GBs) times out. Major PITA. See More

Has a variety of bugs that can make the software almost unusable. Very slow, frequently hangs, and has been known to freeze the computer. Can make your data inaccessible and offers unhelpful error messages with no further instructions. See More

AllExperiencesPros

Mac Client For Openvpn

ConsSpecs

You can use Dropbox via website, by installing a desktop client that creates a folder that you simply drag and drop files into, or with their mobile app. Everything synchronizes across all devices used and cloud storage. And Dropbox offers easy methods of sharing whatever is within it. See More

There is just too little of free space available comparing to the competition. See More

Dropbox is available on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows, OS X and Linux. By having a client for so many OS's pretty much anyone is covered no matter what kind of device or OS they are using. See More

They don't apply end-to-end encryption, files are visible to admins, governments, etc.. See More

Whether using desktop client or web interface, simply right click on the file you want to share and select Dropbox > Share link, then send the link to the people you want to share the file with. The recipient does not require a Dropbox account. See More

Using a desktop client: right click on the folder you want to share and select Dropbox > Share This Folder, then enter the e-mail addressees of people you want to share the folder with. See More

Extensive collecting and distribution of user data to commercial third parties. See More

If a small portion of the file is changed it sends/receives only the differences (not the whole file), which is fast and bandwidth-efficient. See More

Recently dropbox decreased the number of linked devices to 3, so you can't have more than 3 linked devices. This is problematic if you use Dropbox to sync between your computers. See More

There are official and third-party Dropbox add-ons that extend the functionality of the service and add ease of use of existing features. Additionally, Dropbox can be integrated with existing applications to bring its functionality to other apps. See More

Dropbox keeps deleted and earlier versions of files for a month. See More

For instance, all photo albums got deleted. It used to be very easy to share a couple og photos, now it's PAINFUL and must be done file by file. See More

Uploading generated contents (cache, compiled code, etc.) is prone to conflicts, wastes bandwidth and free space. See More

Dropbox personal accounts start out free, with 2GB of space, but users can get extra space by recommending the site to friends, or taking part in events like 'Dropquest', where users can win extra space by solving puzzles. See More

Your files always synced online means instant disaster recovery. When your hard drive becomes unbootable, pick up another laptop and just carry on with your life from where you last saved. See More

This summer I lost thousands of files due to this problem on older projects which subsequently needed revising and had to be rebuilt as tons of the source was gone. See More

As long as you have enough storage available, you can upload files of any size using Dropbox desktop client. See More

If you reinstall the operation system for your PC and you do not close Dropbox, it will delete all files. See More

You get extra free space for you and your friend if they sign up. See More

To save bandwidth and download speed you can choose to compress a folder into a zip archive for download. See More

To not slow down the network or save traffic you can limit the upload and download speeds of Dropbox. See More

Dropbox offers native Linux support, integrates with Nautilus file manager. See More

Platforms:Windows, Linux, OSX, Android, iOS, Windows Phone

Versioning:Yes

11345

AllExperiencesPros

ConsSpecs

You set it up once and from then it runs in the background whenever you are not using your computers (or at specified times). See More

CrashPlan's home edition will be shut down on October 23, 2018. They are no longer accepting new signups or subscription renewals. See More

You can set up different files/folders to back up to specific places. See More

CrashPlan updates only that part of the file that has changed, saving bandwidth and time. See More

The BackupClient is based on Java and therefore a lot more memory-intensive than most other backup solutions See More

The $5/mo individual plan and the $12.50/mo family plan gets you unlimited cloud storage. See More

Custom 448 bit user-provided encryption key can be used to encrypt the backed up data in the cloud. See More

They will send you an external hard drive to your house. See More

CrashPlan saves all previous versions of a file. See More

Platforms:Windows; Linux; OSX; Android; iOS

Continuous:Yes

See All Specs

3921

AllExperiencesPros

Cons

This is very helpful to remotely update one or more devices or ensure all settings are the same on devices when managing multiple device backups on the same account. See More

They offer same-day responses when emailed feature requests but take days and days and non-helpful responses when inquired on issues. See More

This enables updating the installed version on remote devices. See More

While not having an automated version upgrade doesn't enable unattended backup (particularly desired for remote devices or for non-techy users), these options exist: The web UI admin console has an option to update the version. When a new version exists, an 'Upgrade' button appears on the client UI. See More

The progress indicator can show total bytes backed up and remaining, and the file that's being backed up. See More

While testing it by editing a file, the app missed it for many hours. However, it usually found the file a many runs later/the next day and backed it up. This flakiness is enough to be concerned. See More

When including OS-specific directories in the backup, it regularly freezes on a file, and never the same file. It's possible to cancel the backup, run it again, and it almost always works. Support said not to backup OS directories, and this is true for other backup products too; CrashPlan did not have this issue. See More

It's one of the few options with subscription plans for unlimited devices and tiered backup quotas, and not a ridiculous price. See More

It's necessary to regularly check if it's working because it can lock-up on some files, or continually say 'verifying files'. It's a flakey product. See More

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