4 ms·

Welp - affordability. It's expensive and arguably less reliable to get an external hard drive.

by munk-a 5y ago

dangs_p3n1s 5y ago
Penis
prox 5y ago
I have HDDs running longer than most Google projects do. So that point is really moot.
- whymauri 5y ago
  Ditto. And when I felt it was near end-of-life, I just moved it over to a more stable SSD. I'm honestly thinking I'm going to have to backup my entire G-Drive externally and wipe it (for the security of my Google account). I mean, who knows what will trigger the deletion of your Google account these days... I guess the storage I pay for is just for e-mails.
  - DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
    Incidentally, I’ve had more SSDs fail - or misbehave - on me than spinning-rust drives now. And I don’t just mean cheap SSDs either, but an Intel Optane 905p I own results in hundreds of PCI Express bus errors every minute when plugged-in to any ASUS motherboard I own, while a SATA Intel 530 woke-up one day completely unreadable. And throw-in a couple of Samsung SSD failures too. It’s enough to make me anxious between backups: at least with spinning rust-drives we can transplant the platters and controllers (separately, even!) while SSD hardware recovery is almost unheard of.
    - andrekandre 5y ago
      thats interesting, its been the exact opposite for me... though the ssds i use are for backup and arent used very often for writing... i wonder if that makes a difference?
    - genewitch 5y ago
      I keep SSDs less than half full and use trim, paranoiacly. Because of this I use an SSD for a year or two before I get a larger one, or an additional one (software and game assets keep getting larger!). I've never had even the cheapest mwave or microcenter special ssd die. Sata or nvme m.2, nothing. I also haven't had a spindle die in 15 years, ever since I started letting them sleep and using UPS to smooth out power. That noise you hear is me knocking on wood pretty frantically.
  - prox 5y ago
    Sounds like a plan, it’s actually cheaper in a sense. Today I saw my webhost had nextcloud one-click installs, that might be useful for those files you want accessible everywhere. I already pay for the space, so it doesn’t cost me extra.
  - theodric 5y ago
    >assuming the emails you're sent won't also eventually result in the locking and banning of your Google account
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  Try explaining RAID (not just RAID0/1, but RAID6 and RAID10) to an average consumer and expect them to maintain their own NAS - that’s a bit too much.
  - prox 5y ago
    I have vanilla HDDs who do their job nicely for years now. The most important files are duplicated across a few HDDs.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    RAID is overkill and bad designs can cause more issues than it saves. Two or more external-DDs, copied regularly per how much they are willing to spend time and lose data. One stored in some other place if possible.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      A Synology NAS with RAID1 and a few terabytes is $400 to $500 including taxes. Seems pretty cheap for not having to back it up regularly. Although, the second location risk would remain.
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        Until you get ransomed: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/synology-warns-of-malware-infecting-nas-devices-with-ransomware/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/synology-warn... You really want offline backups. Never recommend “not having to back it up regularly”.
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Yes, I guess there is no easy way out.
      - 20after4 5y ago
        the thing is, if you back up bad data to a RAID1, the mirroring isn't going to save you - you just wrote the bad data to both copies. RAID is not a substitute for rotating backups.
JadeNB 5y ago
> Welp - affordability. It's expensive and arguably less reliable to get an external hard drive. I think multiply redundant back-ups get expensive, but one external hard drive with scads of space is cheap (at least from the perspective of someone who grew up when you measured space in MB). It won't provide you the security against data failure, but it will provide some recourse for when the cloud provider yanks your data.
- nickthegreek 5y ago
  Won’t protect you from fire or theft either.
  - JadeNB 5y ago
    Well, it will if it's in a different location. But that's just what I mean—you don't need one solution that protects against everything; different solutions can protect against different threats, and all you really need is one to make it through.
xoa 5y ago
I don't think this really deserves to be downvoted does it? Even if it's simplified. And I say that as someone who is in a tiny fraction of the population in terms of having my own fairly serious business TrueNAS system at the core of my data story, behind an OPNsense firewall on a fairly fancy network setup and with also my own offsite backups and Backblaze B2. I'm working on upgrading my ESXi system too, continuing to take more stuff self-hosted. And I'm pretty happy with it all, as well as any other benefits it's just plain faster to do stuff locally. But it's definitely fundamentally more expensive because there are tons of fixed costs that would be much better amortized across more parties. The hardware could handle far more than I throw at it, and importantly the incremental cost of expanding the setup is much much lower then the setup cost. My NAS could easily have nearly triple the storage space at "only" the cost of the drives themselves and maybe a bit more memory (which is dirt cheap). It's not processor or bandwidth limited. I don't need that much space, but if there were another few folks joining me on using it and we split the cost between us we'd each pay less for more. And the whole thing as-is leans heavily on my own personal amortization and professional knowledge, I can justify some of it as a business expense and I actually already knew tons of the basics before doing anything for the first time. A larger group could have someone devoting even more time to it. That's the simple relentless logic behind "cloud services" really behind whatever layers of fancy marketing or conversely outrage. It really is cheaper at a basic level, but unfortunately the way it's often been implemented lends to centralization and perverse incentives. Efforts to address it have to tackle those head-on. Ideally at a minimum there'd be legally mandated offering of standard "cloud APIs" for every platform so that iCloud or whatever could be slotted right out for something else compatible. It does seem like there is potential for more decentralized sharing and discovery, but the UI and reliability challenges are quite significant. We'll probably see a lot of gyrations back and forth as everyone searches for the right balances depending on their own situations along with whatever semi-ignorant semi-opportunistic bumbling responses governments come up with. Unfortunately even on HN lots of people tend to reach for sledgehammers over scalpels when it comes to the law.
pdonis 5y ago
Most web hosting providers will give you plenty of space for a pretty low price, particularly if it's just data you want to store, not make accessible through a web interface. Also there's tarsnap.
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  Don't know how it is today, but decade ago it was admins favourite pastime to rummage through people accounts and look for juicy stuff. Girlfriend pictures, movies, diaries. Always encrypt data locally before sending to the cloud.

Welp - affordability. It's expensive and arguably less reliable to get an external hard drive.

by munk-a 5y ago

Welp - affordability. It's expensive and arguably less reliable to get an external hard drive.

dangs_p3n1s 5y ago

Penis

prox 5y ago

I have HDDs running longer than most Google projects do. So that point is really moot.

whymauri 5y ago
Ditto. And when I felt it was near end-of-life, I just moved it over to a more stable SSD. I'm honestly thinking I'm going to have to backup my entire G-Drive externally and wipe it (for the security of my Google account). I mean, who knows what will trigger the deletion of your Google account these days... I guess the storage I pay for is just for e-mails.
- DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
  Incidentally, I’ve had more SSDs fail - or misbehave - on me than spinning-rust drives now. And I don’t just mean cheap SSDs either, but an Intel Optane 905p I own results in hundreds of PCI Express bus errors every minute when plugged-in to any ASUS motherboard I own, while a SATA Intel 530 woke-up one day completely unreadable. And throw-in a couple of Samsung SSD failures too. It’s enough to make me anxious between backups: at least with spinning rust-drives we can transplant the platters and controllers (separately, even!) while SSD hardware recovery is almost unheard of.
  - andrekandre 5y ago
    thats interesting, its been the exact opposite for me... though the ssds i use are for backup and arent used very often for writing... i wonder if that makes a difference?
  - genewitch 5y ago
    I keep SSDs less than half full and use trim, paranoiacly. Because of this I use an SSD for a year or two before I get a larger one, or an additional one (software and game assets keep getting larger!). I've never had even the cheapest mwave or microcenter special ssd die. Sata or nvme m.2, nothing. I also haven't had a spindle die in 15 years, ever since I started letting them sleep and using UPS to smooth out power. That noise you hear is me knocking on wood pretty frantically.
- prox 5y ago
  Sounds like a plan, it’s actually cheaper in a sense. Today I saw my webhost had nextcloud one-click installs, that might be useful for those files you want accessible everywhere. I already pay for the space, so it doesn’t cost me extra.
- theodric 5y ago
  >assuming the emails you're sent won't also eventually result in the locking and banning of your Google account
DaiPlusPlus 5y ago
Try explaining RAID (not just RAID0/1, but RAID6 and RAID10) to an average consumer and expect them to maintain their own NAS - that’s a bit too much.
- prox 5y ago
  I have vanilla HDDs who do their job nicely for years now. The most important files are duplicated across a few HDDs.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  RAID is overkill and bad designs can cause more issues than it saves. Two or more external-DDs, copied regularly per how much they are willing to spend time and lose data. One stored in some other place if possible.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    A Synology NAS with RAID1 and a few terabytes is $400 to $500 including taxes. Seems pretty cheap for not having to back it up regularly. Although, the second location risk would remain.
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      Until you get ransomed: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/synology-warns-of-malware-infecting-nas-devices-with-ransomware/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/synology-warn... You really want offline backups. Never recommend “not having to back it up regularly”.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Yes, I guess there is no easy way out.
    - 20after4 5y ago
      the thing is, if you back up bad data to a RAID1, the mirroring isn't going to save you - you just wrote the bad data to both copies. RAID is not a substitute for rotating backups.

JadeNB 5y ago

> Welp - affordability. It's expensive and arguably less reliable to get an external hard drive. I think multiply redundant back-ups get expensive, but one external hard drive with scads of space is cheap (at least from the perspective of someone who grew up when you measured space in MB). It won't provide you the security against data failure, but it will provide some recourse for when the cloud provider yanks your data.

nickthegreek 5y ago
Won’t protect you from fire or theft either.
- JadeNB 5y ago
  Well, it will if it's in a different location. But that's just what I mean—you don't need one solution that protects against everything; different solutions can protect against different threats, and all you really need is one to make it through.

xoa 5y ago

I don't think this really deserves to be downvoted does it? Even if it's simplified. And I say that as someone who is in a tiny fraction of the population in terms of having my own fairly serious business TrueNAS system at the core of my data story, behind an OPNsense firewall on a fairly fancy network setup and with also my own offsite backups and Backblaze B2. I'm working on upgrading my ESXi system too, continuing to take more stuff self-hosted. And I'm pretty happy with it all, as well as any other benefits it's just plain faster to do stuff locally. But it's definitely fundamentally more expensive because there are tons of fixed costs that would be much better amortized across more parties. The hardware could handle far more than I throw at it, and importantly the incremental cost of expanding the setup is much much lower then the setup cost. My NAS could easily have nearly triple the storage space at "only" the cost of the drives themselves and maybe a bit more memory (which is dirt cheap). It's not processor or bandwidth limited. I don't need that much space, but if there were another few folks joining me on using it and we split the cost between us we'd each pay less for more. And the whole thing as-is leans heavily on my own personal amortization and professional knowledge, I can justify some of it as a business expense and I actually already knew tons of the basics before doing anything for the first time. A larger group could have someone devoting even more time to it. That's the simple relentless logic behind "cloud services" really behind whatever layers of fancy marketing or conversely outrage. It really is cheaper at a basic level, but unfortunately the way it's often been implemented lends to centralization and perverse incentives. Efforts to address it have to tackle those head-on. Ideally at a minimum there'd be legally mandated offering of standard "cloud APIs" for every platform so that iCloud or whatever could be slotted right out for something else compatible. It does seem like there is potential for more decentralized sharing and discovery, but the UI and reliability challenges are quite significant. We'll probably see a lot of gyrations back and forth as everyone searches for the right balances depending on their own situations along with whatever semi-ignorant semi-opportunistic bumbling responses governments come up with. Unfortunately even on HN lots of people tend to reach for sledgehammers over scalpels when it comes to the law.

pdonis 5y ago

Most web hosting providers will give you plenty of space for a pretty low price, particularly if it's just data you want to store, not make accessible through a web interface. Also there's tarsnap.

intricatedetail 5y ago
Don't know how it is today, but decade ago it was admins favourite pastime to rummage through people accounts and look for juicy stuff. Girlfriend pictures, movies, diaries. Always encrypt data locally before sending to the cloud.