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So its not really "unlimited" storage they offer, there is a ceiling that matches the size of a users primary hard drive (max 6-8 TB at present?) with most user

by yc1010 12y ago

So its not really "unlimited" storage they offer, there is a ceiling that matches the size of a users primary hard drive (max 6-8 TB at present?) with most users probably using laptops with small drives. For example I would love to backup 3-4TB on my NAS, and be able to occasionally access+download and check integrity

Xylakant 12y ago
Incremental backups can easily exceed the size of your drive if you keep them around. I have 300-and-odd gigs of data on my drive, but my backup exceeds 1TB.
e12e 12y ago
Are you reffering to backblaze? They do indeed offer "unlimited" backups AFAIK (to the degree that the phrase makes any sense, obviously). They just don't allow for clients that follow "enterprise usage patterns" so to speak. Another way to put it would be that they specialize in a simple services, with a simple UI -- with the inherit limitations that come with it. I'd personally love it if they (backblaze) started up a sister-service that catered more to what I want -- but I think the cold reality is that it's hard to compete with Amazon S3 on price -- and if you do, in a big way, they can just dump prices to sink your business. At any rate -- you usually don't want to compete on price unless you're the biggest service around -- you wan't the high-margin part of the market...
brianwski 12y ago
Backblaze employ here. We don't back up NAS, but if you direct attach a Drobo we include that in "unlimited" for $5/month. FYI - our largest customer backs up about 60 TBytes for $5/month. So is it "unlimited"? If you have less than that it will work, we have proof! :-) But we lose money on that customer, we survive on the "average" amount of data people have, and on average a laptop of your average home user has only a few hundred GBytes.
mikeash 12y ago
Calling that "not really 'unlimited'" doesn't seem right to me. It's like calling a truly unlimited, uncapped broadband internet connection "not really 'unlimited'" because you still can't transfer more than speed x 1 month of data per month.

by yc1010 12y ago

Xylakant 12y ago

Incremental backups can easily exceed the size of your drive if you keep them around. I have 300-and-odd gigs of data on my drive, but my backup exceeds 1TB.

e12e 12y ago

Are you reffering to backblaze? They do indeed offer "unlimited" backups AFAIK (to the degree that the phrase makes any sense, obviously). They just don't allow for clients that follow "enterprise usage patterns" so to speak. Another way to put it would be that they specialize in a simple services, with a simple UI -- with the inherit limitations that come with it. I'd personally love it if they (backblaze) started up a sister-service that catered more to what I want -- but I think the cold reality is that it's hard to compete with Amazon S3 on price -- and if you do, in a big way, they can just dump prices to sink your business. At any rate -- you usually don't want to compete on price unless you're the biggest service around -- you wan't the high-margin part of the market...

brianwski 12y ago

Backblaze employ here. We don't back up NAS, but if you direct attach a Drobo we include that in "unlimited" for $5/month. FYI - our largest customer backs up about 60 TBytes for $5/month. So is it "unlimited"? If you have less than that it will work, we have proof! :-) But we lose money on that customer, we survive on the "average" amount of data people have, and on average a laptop of your average home user has only a few hundred GBytes.

mikeash 12y ago

Calling that "not really 'unlimited'" doesn't seem right to me. It's like calling a truly unlimited, uncapped broadband internet connection "not really 'unlimited'" because you still can't transfer more than speed x 1 month of data per month.