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So Backblaze B2 costs $0.005/GB per month for storage. Let's see what are my options here, I could prepay 166 years at an unknown company with an unclear record

by chx 7y ago

So Backblaze B2 costs $0.005/GB per month for storage. Let's see what are my options here, I could prepay 166 years at an unknown company with an unclear record of operations (I see the governing board is full of rather famous people but still -- that's not ops) and financials. Or I could just keep going with a company which has proven over 13 years it is solid both ops and financials wise.

418tpot 7y ago
Backblaze B2 also requires a verified mobile phone number in order to use it - even if you've already given them a credit card. I would love there to be an option available at Backblaze B2 pricing, without a massive invasion of privacy. Right now I'm using Linode's Object storage, which is priced at $0.02/GB per month which is still reasonably priced for my needs.
- chx 7y ago
  pvacodes.com
dexterdog 7y ago
Not to mention you could have a fund that pays the backblaze bill and as that monthly price dwindles over time the interest on your money would pay it in perpetuity. If something like permanent.org is setup intelligently they can even have a plan for a backblaze demise (god forbid) and use the fund to migrate to another provider(s) in that case.
- ValentineC 7y ago
  > Not to mention you could have a fund that pays the backblaze bill and as that monthly price dwindles over time the interest on your money would pay it in perpetuity. Assuming we're talking about storage in perpetuity without the need for maintenance, the fund would need someone trusted to administer it. I personally wish there was an inexpensive, trusted place for me to deposit a large sum of money, and have it automatically paid to service providers to maintain my domain/hosting/online identity in perpetuity, or until my deposit/endowment runs out. This sounds like what I want, only just for data.
cbg0 7y ago
If you don't need to have your data in the cloud, there's also the option of just buying the drives, backing up your data and then putting them in a box, no need to keep them spinning unless you need frequent access to said data. B2 is $0.06/GB/year, while a regular HDD would cost ~$0.03/GB/drive-lifespan.
- zvr 7y ago
  Having tried to keep "permanent" backups of my personal digital data for 35+ years, I should point out that one should not underestimate the problem of technological change. The "device" you use today will, in all probability, not be usable after a number of years, no matter whether you spin it up regularly and maintain it in a working condition. I have backups in countless floppies, diskettes, Zip drives, 9-track, QIC, DAT, SCSI, ...
- chris_st 7y ago
  Well, yeah, the idea of individual drives is great, but in practice I've had a lot of drives die.
  - cbg0 7y ago
    This was mostly a cost comparison I wanted to show, as the solutions of rolling your own set up at home vs a cloud set up are definitely very different. At 10TB, you're paying $600/year on B2, a price at which you could outright buy two 10TB drives and stick them in a larger NAS setup with ZFS or a simpler RAID-1 array.
    - chris_st 7y ago
      That's reasonable. Alternatively, I'm using Arq[0] (locally encrypted before upload, uploads to tons of different services, I'm using AWS S3 and Google Storage) so I'm paying ~$7/month for about 40G stored. And I don't have to worry about local drives dying or being stolen. Just another option. [0] https://www.arqbackup.com https://www.arqbackup.com
      - 7y ago
tootie 7y ago
Is Permanent a consumer product or enterprise? B2 is definitely enterprise.
101008 7y ago
I've never heard of Blackblaze B2 but it seems good according to some reviews and cheaper. Does it have a Desktop app or UI or something like that? I'd love to replace Dropbox with this. If not, someone should do a UI wrapper around B2 and charge for it ;)
- sp332 7y ago
  There is a basic web UI and command line client. But mainly what it has is an API that many third-party clients support. https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html
imglorp 7y ago
What's also interesting about this question is that storage density continues to double every several years. It would be safe to assume that the entire current planetary storage would fit on a thumb drive 166 years from now. Maybe by then it'll be magneto-spintronic-DNA time crystals.
INTPenis 7y ago
I think your comment just put a lot of people on to Backblaze B2. At least you did for me. I was using S3 but I think I'll consider Backblaze now as an alternative.
- ValentineC 7y ago
  One of the downsides of B2, especially for people located outside the US/Europe, is that they only have datacenters in the US west coast, and in Netherlands.
  - sosodev 7y ago
    You can put Cloudflare in front the bucket for free egress and a global cdn

by chx 7y ago

418tpot 7y ago

Backblaze B2 also requires a verified mobile phone number in order to use it - even if you've already given them a credit card. I would love there to be an option available at Backblaze B2 pricing, without a massive invasion of privacy. Right now I'm using Linode's Object storage, which is priced at $0.02/GB per month which is still reasonably priced for my needs.

chx 7y ago
pvacodes.com

dexterdog 7y ago

Not to mention you could have a fund that pays the backblaze bill and as that monthly price dwindles over time the interest on your money would pay it in perpetuity. If something like permanent.org is setup intelligently they can even have a plan for a backblaze demise (god forbid) and use the fund to migrate to another provider(s) in that case.

ValentineC 7y ago
> Not to mention you could have a fund that pays the backblaze bill and as that monthly price dwindles over time the interest on your money would pay it in perpetuity. Assuming we're talking about storage in perpetuity without the need for maintenance, the fund would need someone trusted to administer it. I personally wish there was an inexpensive, trusted place for me to deposit a large sum of money, and have it automatically paid to service providers to maintain my domain/hosting/online identity in perpetuity, or until my deposit/endowment runs out. This sounds like what I want, only just for data.

cbg0 7y ago

If you don't need to have your data in the cloud, there's also the option of just buying the drives, backing up your data and then putting them in a box, no need to keep them spinning unless you need frequent access to said data. B2 is $0.06/GB/year, while a regular HDD would cost ~$0.03/GB/drive-lifespan.

zvr 7y ago
Having tried to keep "permanent" backups of my personal digital data for 35+ years, I should point out that one should not underestimate the problem of technological change. The "device" you use today will, in all probability, not be usable after a number of years, no matter whether you spin it up regularly and maintain it in a working condition. I have backups in countless floppies, diskettes, Zip drives, 9-track, QIC, DAT, SCSI, ...
chris_st 7y ago
Well, yeah, the idea of individual drives is great, but in practice I've had a lot of drives die.
- cbg0 7y ago
  This was mostly a cost comparison I wanted to show, as the solutions of rolling your own set up at home vs a cloud set up are definitely very different. At 10TB, you're paying $600/year on B2, a price at which you could outright buy two 10TB drives and stick them in a larger NAS setup with ZFS or a simpler RAID-1 array.
  - chris_st 7y ago
    That's reasonable. Alternatively, I'm using Arq[0] (locally encrypted before upload, uploads to tons of different services, I'm using AWS S3 and Google Storage) so I'm paying ~$7/month for about 40G stored. And I don't have to worry about local drives dying or being stolen. Just another option. [0] https://www.arqbackup.com https://www.arqbackup.com
    - 7y ago

tootie 7y ago

Is Permanent a consumer product or enterprise? B2 is definitely enterprise.

101008 7y ago

I've never heard of Blackblaze B2 but it seems good according to some reviews and cheaper. Does it have a Desktop app or UI or something like that? I'd love to replace Dropbox with this. If not, someone should do a UI wrapper around B2 and charge for it ;)

sp332 7y ago
There is a basic web UI and command line client. But mainly what it has is an API that many third-party clients support. https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html https://www.backblaze.com/b2/integrations.html

imglorp 7y ago

What's also interesting about this question is that storage density continues to double every several years. It would be safe to assume that the entire current planetary storage would fit on a thumb drive 166 years from now. Maybe by then it'll be magneto-spintronic-DNA time crystals.

INTPenis 7y ago

I think your comment just put a lot of people on to Backblaze B2. At least you did for me. I was using S3 but I think I'll consider Backblaze now as an alternative.

ValentineC 7y ago
One of the downsides of B2, especially for people located outside the US/Europe, is that they only have datacenters in the US west coast, and in Netherlands.
- sosodev 7y ago
  You can put Cloudflare in front the bucket for free egress and a global cdn