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My problem: I just want to back up 5 terabytes. It's on an external SSD, used for photos. Backblaze has forgotten how to count terabytes at all, preferring to

My problem: I just want to back up 5 terabytes. It's on an external SSD, used for photos. Backblaze has forgotten how to count terabytes at all, preferring to play games about how I need to have it attached and for how long, so people don't play games with their "unlimited" offering. "Did you plug in the external drive to a computer, and leave the computer on for 24 hours without it going to sleep, and reattach the drive regularly every 30 days? I'm sorry, it looks like we'll be erasing your backup. You can make another one and it will take several days to upload despite your very fast connection." I don't want to play these games either way, I just want to back up 5 terabytes. I don't even necessarily need an agent. You offer a similar pricing scheme to Backblaze ($N/mo/computer). Does your service support my use case, or should I keep looking?

hickimsedenolan 5y ago
>We charge you $9 / month per computer. Each computer is allowed to backup up to 5 TB of data. Seems to be exactly how much you want to backup.
philjohn 5y ago
Jottacloud offers unlimited (in reality after 5TB they start slowing your upload speed to them) with a cli, or rclone + restic support.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  It's worth noting that for most uses the throttling doesn't matter up to about 16TB, where you hit a harsh inflection point.
  - philjohn 5y ago
    And really, at that point, don't be a cheapskate, it's already super cheap (and reliable), so buy another account (or two, or three).
pieterhg 5y ago
You can make a snapshot of a Backblaze Personal and then store it in Backblaze B2. Works fine.
DenseComet 5y ago
Backblaze also supports that pricing model with B2, which is a fixed cost per gigabyte stored per month. B2 also has an S3 compatible API, which lets you use any backup software you want.
- ricardobeat 5y ago
  This. I use B2 to backup my NAS and it costs me a couple dollars a month. 5TB will cost you $25/month. The only way I know to go cheaper is Glacier “deep archive” storage which is roughly $1/TB, but a pain to manage, access time is measured in hours and it might cost 100x more in egress fees to download it all.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    This matches my price research exactly, and my conclusions. Stay away from Glacier because the gotchas are not worth it. The moment you need any of your data your cost will skyrocket. Plus dealing with AWS unpredictable pricing is totally not worth it. I b2 everything nowadays.
    - sreitshamer 5y ago
      Not sure when you last looked into Glacier, but they did away with the "peak hourly request" fee which could be insane if you restored data too quickly. Pricing is much more reasonable now. You still have to wait hours to download your data, but Glacier deep archive is about $.001/GB per month for storage and about $0.29/GB to download (plus some transaction fees that aren't usually significant).
  - ydant 5y ago
    Depending on your access patterns, Wasabi (https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/ https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/) could be cheaper, since they charge more $5.99/TB, but don't charge for egress ($0.01/GB at B2) or API calls ("GetObject" at $0.004 per 10,000 at B2).
    - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mceachen 5y ago
First and foremost: don't use an SSD for cold storage: depending on the chips in your external drive, the bits can decay in as little as 6 months: https://photostructure.com/faq/how-do-i-safely-store-files/#why-3-2-1-isnt-enough-data-integrity https://photostructure.com/faq/how-do-i-safely-store-files/#... Lots of copies keeps stuff safe. If you don't mind the hassle, you can buy a couple HDDs (maybe a 2.5" and a 3.5" from different manufacturers), rsync to both of them, and hand one to a friend or family member that lives an hour or two away from you. You may want to encrypt the drive, depending on contents and trust if the remote storage location. Repeat quarterly/annually depending on your data change velocity/appetite for data loss/willingness to muck with it. This should cost under $200, and the HDDs should last at least 5 years, so that amortizes to $40/year of 2 remote backups. No cloud offering can get close to that.
teddyh 5y ago
“5 terabytes is so little that I've forgotten how to count that low.” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6L-FlfeaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6L-FlfeaI
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  yesthatisthejoke.heic
  - teddyh 5y ago
    Well, pardon me for explaining the joke for people who might not know the reference.

hickimsedenolan 5y ago

>We charge you $9 / month per computer. Each computer is allowed to backup up to 5 TB of data. Seems to be exactly how much you want to backup.

philjohn 5y ago

Jottacloud offers unlimited (in reality after 5TB they start slowing your upload speed to them) with a cli, or rclone + restic support.

Dylan16807 5y ago
It's worth noting that for most uses the throttling doesn't matter up to about 16TB, where you hit a harsh inflection point.
- philjohn 5y ago
  And really, at that point, don't be a cheapskate, it's already super cheap (and reliable), so buy another account (or two, or three).

pieterhg 5y ago

You can make a snapshot of a Backblaze Personal and then store it in Backblaze B2. Works fine.

DenseComet 5y ago

Backblaze also supports that pricing model with B2, which is a fixed cost per gigabyte stored per month. B2 also has an S3 compatible API, which lets you use any backup software you want.

ricardobeat 5y ago
This. I use B2 to backup my NAS and it costs me a couple dollars a month. 5TB will cost you $25/month. The only way I know to go cheaper is Glacier “deep archive” storage which is roughly $1/TB, but a pain to manage, access time is measured in hours and it might cost 100x more in egress fees to download it all.
- freedomben 5y ago
  This matches my price research exactly, and my conclusions. Stay away from Glacier because the gotchas are not worth it. The moment you need any of your data your cost will skyrocket. Plus dealing with AWS unpredictable pricing is totally not worth it. I b2 everything nowadays.
  - sreitshamer 5y ago
    Not sure when you last looked into Glacier, but they did away with the "peak hourly request" fee which could be insane if you restored data too quickly. Pricing is much more reasonable now. You still have to wait hours to download your data, but Glacier deep archive is about $.001/GB per month for storage and about $0.29/GB to download (plus some transaction fees that aren't usually significant).
- ydant 5y ago
  Depending on your access patterns, Wasabi (https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/ https://wasabi.com/cloud-storage-pricing/) could be cheaper, since they charge more $5.99/TB, but don't charge for egress ($0.01/GB at B2) or API calls ("GetObject" at $0.004 per 10,000 at B2).
  - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mceachen 5y ago

First and foremost: don't use an SSD for cold storage: depending on the chips in your external drive, the bits can decay in as little as 6 months: https://photostructure.com/faq/how-do-i-safely-store-files/#why-3-2-1-isnt-enough-data-integrity https://photostructure.com/faq/how-do-i-safely-store-files/#... Lots of copies keeps stuff safe. If you don't mind the hassle, you can buy a couple HDDs (maybe a 2.5" and a 3.5" from different manufacturers), rsync to both of them, and hand one to a friend or family member that lives an hour or two away from you. You may want to encrypt the drive, depending on contents and trust if the remote storage location. Repeat quarterly/annually depending on your data change velocity/appetite for data loss/willingness to muck with it. This should cost under $200, and the HDDs should last at least 5 years, so that amortizes to $40/year of 2 remote backups. No cloud offering can get close to that.

teddyh 5y ago

“5 terabytes is so little that I've forgotten how to count that low.” — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6L-FlfeaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t6L-FlfeaI

fennecfoxen 5y ago
yesthatisthejoke.heic
- teddyh 5y ago
  Well, pardon me for explaining the joke for people who might not know the reference.