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Your external drive may fail or be destroyed in a number of ways -- protection against this is a portion of what you're paying for.

by acid__ 9y ago

luke0016 9y ago
Well, I did suggest a safe. But sure, there are other ways it could be destroyed. As for failure, presumably it's already a back up, so assuming the source didn't simultaneously fail, I can just replace the external drive. If this makes you queasy, you could always buy a second drive. Two 1TB drives and a fireproof safe, that's equivalent to three years with Backblaze. Still seems pretty reasonable to me.
- keithwhor 9y ago
  Or spend five minutes uploading to the cloud and be done with it. This is such a ridiculous premise that wastes tens of hours (at least) just to save $10 that I'm pretty convinced you're trolling.
  - luke0016 9y ago
    I'm not sure how you come up with $10. Drives regularly last 5+ years. A single 1TB drive at $60 saves me $240 over Backblaze if it lasts 5 years. Throw in the safe, and I still save $180. Two drives and a safe? Still saving $120. I have drives that have gone well beyond 5 years too - so the longer they last, the more you save. And, what kind of connection do you have that allows you to upload 1TB in 5 minutes? That's spectacular. An ideal gigabit connection is going to take you a good two hours. Even that would be pretty amazing.
    - jjeaff 9y ago
      One thing to consider as well is that when you get to a certain level of storage, you need a dedicated box (so there is more hardware cost). I have 50tb of storage in my home server. The electricity cost for this box is about $35 a month. In my case it is so much strorage that it saves money, but if you have less storage and still need a dedicated box, it would be less so.
- senorprogrammer 9y ago
  A minor point: a fire-proof safe is not absolutely heat-proof. Put one in a fire, and it will heat up inside. Better ones also tend to release water vapour into the safe itself when heated (as a mechanism for keeping the internal temperature down and providing a positive pressure for keeping smoke, fire, and particulate out), which isn't great for hard drives either. I wouldn't rely on an on-premisis safe to prove any data integrity guarantees against anything but petty theft.

Your external drive may fail or be destroyed in a number of ways -- protection against this is a portion of what you're paying for.

by acid__ 9y ago

Your external drive may fail or be destroyed in a number of ways -- protection against this is a portion of what you're paying for.

luke0016 9y ago

Well, I did suggest a safe. But sure, there are other ways it could be destroyed. As for failure, presumably it's already a back up, so assuming the source didn't simultaneously fail, I can just replace the external drive. If this makes you queasy, you could always buy a second drive. Two 1TB drives and a fireproof safe, that's equivalent to three years with Backblaze. Still seems pretty reasonable to me.

keithwhor 9y ago
Or spend five minutes uploading to the cloud and be done with it. This is such a ridiculous premise that wastes tens of hours (at least) just to save $10 that I'm pretty convinced you're trolling.
- luke0016 9y ago
  I'm not sure how you come up with $10. Drives regularly last 5+ years. A single 1TB drive at $60 saves me $240 over Backblaze if it lasts 5 years. Throw in the safe, and I still save $180. Two drives and a safe? Still saving $120. I have drives that have gone well beyond 5 years too - so the longer they last, the more you save. And, what kind of connection do you have that allows you to upload 1TB in 5 minutes? That's spectacular. An ideal gigabit connection is going to take you a good two hours. Even that would be pretty amazing.
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    One thing to consider as well is that when you get to a certain level of storage, you need a dedicated box (so there is more hardware cost). I have 50tb of storage in my home server. The electricity cost for this box is about $35 a month. In my case it is so much strorage that it saves money, but if you have less storage and still need a dedicated box, it would be less so.
senorprogrammer 9y ago
A minor point: a fire-proof safe is not absolutely heat-proof. Put one in a fire, and it will heat up inside. Better ones also tend to release water vapour into the safe itself when heated (as a mechanism for keeping the internal temperature down and providing a positive pressure for keeping smoke, fire, and particulate out), which isn't great for hard drives either. I wouldn't rely on an on-premisis safe to prove any data integrity guarantees against anything but petty theft.