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> The 4TB Toshiba (model: MD04ABA400V) are not in the Q1 2024 Drive Stats tables. This was not an oversight. The last of these drives became a migration target

> The 4TB Toshiba (model: MD04ABA400V) are not in the Q1 2024 Drive Stats tables. This was not an oversight. The last of these drives became a migration target early in Q1 and their data was securely transferred to pristine 16TB Toshiba drives. That's a milestone. Imagine the racks that were eliminated

Dylan16807 2y ago
Yeah, but just thinking about it reminds me how annoyed I am that they increased the B2 pricing by 20% last year. Right after launching B2, in late 2015, they made their post about storage pod 5.0, saying it "enabled" B2 at the $5/TB price, at 44 cents per gigabyte and a raw 45TB per rack unit. In late 2022 they posted about supermicro servers costing 20 cents per gigabyte and fitting a raw 240TB per rack unit. So as they migrate or get new data, that's 1/5 as many servers to manage, costing about half as much per TB. It's hard to figure out how the profit margin wasn't much better, despite the various prices increases they surely had to deal with. The free egress based on data stored was nice, but the change still stings. Maybe I'm overlooking something but I'm not sure what it would be. In contrast the price increases they've had for their unlimited backup product have always felt fine to me. Personal data keeps growing, and hard drive prices haven't been dropping fast. Easy enough. But B2 has always been per byte. And don't think I'm being unfair and only blaming them because they release a lot of information. I saw hard drives go from 4TB to 16TB myself, and I would have done a similar analysis even if they were secretive.
- philistine 2y ago
  Inflation. At the rate it went up the last couple of years, a 20% price increase to put them back on the right side of profits is more than probable.
  - Moru 2y ago
    Also a storage inflation on the users side. People have more data on bigger drives that wants a backup.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      This is B2, the service that charges per byte. More data makes it easier for them to profit.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Maybe I wasn't clear, but the hardware costs and the operation costs should all have dropped between 2x and 5x as a baseline before price increases. Inflation is not even close to that level. And those hardware costs already take into account inflation up through the end of 2022.
    - justsomehnguy 2y ago
      > e hardware costs and the operation costs should all have dropped between 2x and 5x That would work if they fully recouped the costs of obtaining and running the drives, including racks, PSUs, cases, drive and PSU replacements, control boards, datacenter/whatever costs, electricity, HVAC etc. and generated a solid profit not only to buy all the new hardware but a new yacht for the owners too. But usually that is not how it works, because the nobody sane buys the hardware with the cash. And even if they have a new fancy 240TB/rack units, that doesn't mean they just migrated outright and threw the old ones ASAP. So while there is a 5x lower costs per U for the new rack unit, it doesn't translate to 5x lower cost of storage for the sell.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        I would sure hope the original units were recouped after 8 years. You can look at their stats and see that the very vast majority of their data is on 12-16TB drives, and most of the rest is on 8TB drives. Even with those not being the very newest and cheapest models, their average server today is a lot denser and cheaper than their brand new servers 8 years ago.
      - philistine 2y ago
        TL;DR Business is hard.
bombcar 2y ago
> That's a milestone. Imagine the racks that were eliminated I'm imagining about 3/4ths ;)
- djbusby 2y ago
  I'm imagining 4x capacity
- seabrookmx 2y ago
  3/4ths of the racks that had 4TB drives, assuming they didn't also expand capacity as part of this. But they run many drive types.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
Perhaps not eliminated, but repurposed with fresh 16TB drives. And the power savings per byte stored!

Dylan16807 2y ago

Yeah, but just thinking about it reminds me how annoyed I am that they increased the B2 pricing by 20% last year. Right after launching B2, in late 2015, they made their post about storage pod 5.0, saying it "enabled" B2 at the $5/TB price, at 44 cents per gigabyte and a raw 45TB per rack unit. In late 2022 they posted about supermicro servers costing 20 cents per gigabyte and fitting a raw 240TB per rack unit. So as they migrate or get new data, that's 1/5 as many servers to manage, costing about half as much per TB. It's hard to figure out how the profit margin wasn't much better, despite the various prices increases they surely had to deal with. The free egress based on data stored was nice, but the change still stings. Maybe I'm overlooking something but I'm not sure what it would be. In contrast the price increases they've had for their unlimited backup product have always felt fine to me. Personal data keeps growing, and hard drive prices haven't been dropping fast. Easy enough. But B2 has always been per byte. And don't think I'm being unfair and only blaming them because they release a lot of information. I saw hard drives go from 4TB to 16TB myself, and I would have done a similar analysis even if they were secretive.

philistine 2y ago
Inflation. At the rate it went up the last couple of years, a 20% price increase to put them back on the right side of profits is more than probable.
- Moru 2y ago
  Also a storage inflation on the users side. People have more data on bigger drives that wants a backup.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    This is B2, the service that charges per byte. More data makes it easier for them to profit.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  Maybe I wasn't clear, but the hardware costs and the operation costs should all have dropped between 2x and 5x as a baseline before price increases. Inflation is not even close to that level. And those hardware costs already take into account inflation up through the end of 2022.
  - justsomehnguy 2y ago
    > e hardware costs and the operation costs should all have dropped between 2x and 5x That would work if they fully recouped the costs of obtaining and running the drives, including racks, PSUs, cases, drive and PSU replacements, control boards, datacenter/whatever costs, electricity, HVAC etc. and generated a solid profit not only to buy all the new hardware but a new yacht for the owners too. But usually that is not how it works, because the nobody sane buys the hardware with the cash. And even if they have a new fancy 240TB/rack units, that doesn't mean they just migrated outright and threw the old ones ASAP. So while there is a 5x lower costs per U for the new rack unit, it doesn't translate to 5x lower cost of storage for the sell.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      I would sure hope the original units were recouped after 8 years. You can look at their stats and see that the very vast majority of their data is on 12-16TB drives, and most of the rest is on 8TB drives. Even with those not being the very newest and cheapest models, their average server today is a lot denser and cheaper than their brand new servers 8 years ago.
    - philistine 2y ago
      TL;DR Business is hard.

bombcar 2y ago

> That's a milestone. Imagine the racks that were eliminated I'm imagining about 3/4ths ;)

djbusby 2y ago
I'm imagining 4x capacity
seabrookmx 2y ago
3/4ths of the racks that had 4TB drives, assuming they didn't also expand capacity as part of this. But they run many drive types.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

Perhaps not eliminated, but repurposed with fresh 16TB drives. And the power savings per byte stored!