To repost the comment I made on the article: I think this is an unfair comparison and Cory is oversimplifying. For example: "Rather than buying a hard-drive o

To repost the comment I made on the article: I think this is an unfair comparison and Cory is oversimplifying. For example: "Rather than buying a hard-drive once and paying nothing – apart from the electricity bill – to run it, you can buy cloud storage and pay for those sectors every month." Files stored on services like Amazon are split among many hard-drives to protect from data-loss should any single drive fail. Not only that, but data is also replicated in multiple sites to protect from a geographic or network disaster in a single location. More than that, the cloud-provider is assuming the cost for any failed hardware in running this setup, the cost of paying someone to physically replace the hard-drives. That's just the part which keeps the data safe. What about the availability? If you keep your data at home in a desk-drawer then you can't access it on the road. With a cloud service you are getting always-on, always-available data access, with guaranteed levels of speed which will be far in excess of the capability of domestic broadband connections (in which the upstream connection is throttled). So while I agree that there is a definitely cost difference between cloud services and buying and running your own hardware, the cost is associated with real tangible value, it's up to you to decide if that value is worthwhile. Personally, I value that my backup service in the cloud will not loose my data. I can't say the same for the USB hard-drive on my desktop.