Unlimited individual cloud storage?

Drez

Hi - anyone have an idea what the best service would be for a lonely loner like me looking for Cloud storage?

I want to offload a ton of data to a cloud service and NOT mirror that data on my local PC. I have a LOT of photos from my professional photography days and for all I know I may even go back into that at some point. But right now I'm not looking at any of that data. I want to have access to it, but it's cluttering up my 18+ terrabytes of local HD storage which I'd rather fill with very important documents instead.

Any thoughts? Dropbox has an unlimited storage option but it's $24/mo per user with a minimum of 3 users, which if my math is right would total $72/mo. Not TERRIBLE but not really what I want to pay right now, especially over a long timeline.

I definitely don't have the patience or energy to come up with my own server or build my own solution so I'm just looking for advice on existing subscription services. Any thoughts?

Cauld

Could you use Amazon photos? which is free unlimited storage with prime (photos only).

Drez

Cauld wrote: »

Could you use Amazon photos? which is free unlimited storage with prime (photos only).

Thanks, that's good advice and I'm actually already using that for many of my photos but I'm looking for a resource where I can dump any file type. Also it doesn't support video files (for free) which I occasionally have dipped into in my photoshoots. I did mention the photos but that's just one piece of what I need to store.

djmitchella

I haven't used it myself, but Backblaze has unlimited storage for $70/year, and they've been around for a while so (hopefully) will still be here in future. They have a 'comparison' page here where they, not surprisingly, come out on top but it's a place to find a list of other options. If I remember, their name comes to mind because they were doing blog postings about their hard drive reliability stats a while ago.

(How much data do you have to upload? If it's 18tb, then it's worth thinking about how long it will take you to transfer it all -- if you can upload at, say, one megabyte per second, that's 18 million seconds, or 208 days of solid uploading)

ArmsForPeace84

djmitchella wrote: »

I haven't used it myself, but Backblaze has unlimited storage for $70/year, and they've been around for a while so (hopefully) will still be here in future. They have a 'comparison' page here where they, not surprisingly, come out on top but it's a place to find a list of other options. If I remember, their name comes to mind because they were doing blog postings about their hard drive reliability stats a while ago.

(How much data do you have to upload? If it's 18tb, then it's worth thinking about how long it will take you to transfer it all -- if you can upload at, say, one megabyte per second, that's 18 million seconds, or 208 days of solid uploading)

Thanks for the tip, I was wondering about this, myself.

At the moment, I use a service with 2TB capacity and some good streaming support, but I don't need access to everything with that same regularity. Just an off-site dumping ground.

Drez

djmitchella wrote: »

I haven't used it myself, but Backblaze has unlimited storage for $70/year, and they've been around for a while so (hopefully) will still be here in future. They have a 'comparison' page here where they, not surprisingly, come out on top but it's a place to find a list of other options. If I remember, their name comes to mind because they were doing blog postings about their hard drive reliability stats a while ago.

(How much data do you have to upload? If it's 18tb, then it's worth thinking about how long it will take you to transfer it all -- if you can upload at, say, one megabyte per second, that's 18 million seconds, or 208 days of solid uploading)

Thank you! I’ll check that out.

Echo

Keep in mind that Backblaze is an actual backup, and not remote access to specific files. (Or at least when I was still using them.)

djmitchella

oh... yeah, now that I look, you're right. You can get files back if you accidentally delete them, but it's not just "unlimited extra storage", so I don't think it actually solves the original problem. From their FAQ:

The Backblaze service is designed to protect the files you care about. Thus, we will keep a remote backup of any file that exists on your computer. Just in case, Backblaze will even keep multiple versions of that file for up to 30 days by default. However, Backblaze is not designed as an additional storage system when you run out of space. So, please don’t try to upload your external hard drive to us and delete your data off your drive…or we will delete those files from our servers as well.

Poking around a bit, sync.com is $15/month/user for unlimited but needs two users; box.com also has some team plans that are also work out to be a bit less than dropbox per month.

dispatch.o

Self host with a Synology NAS and back up to a portable drive once every few months. You can put the drive in your car trunk or firebag/emergency box. The storage will only be limited based on how much you're willing to spend on hard drives.

edit: I suggest it because it's not really much effort to set up and Synology has an ecosystem similar to Apple

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Six

dispatch.o wrote: »

Self host with a Synology NAS and back up to a portable drive once every few months. You can put the drive in your car trunk or firebag/emergency box. The storage will only be limited based on how much you're willing to spend on hard drives.

edit: I suggest it because it's not really much effort to set up and Synology has an ecosystem similar to Apple

I back up to a synology NAS but then have that backup to a backblaze-fronted Amazon S3 bucket that they call B2 storage.

I’m currently backing up 370 gigs and pay about $2/month.

dispatch.o

Six wrote: »

dispatch.o wrote: »

Self host with a Synology NAS and back up to a portable drive once every few months. You can put the drive in your car trunk or firebag/emergency box. The storage will only be limited based on how much you're willing to spend on hard drives.

edit: I suggest it because it's not really much effort to set up and Synology has an ecosystem similar to Apple

I back up to a synology NAS but then have that backup to a backblaze-fronted Amazon S3 bucket that they call B2 storage.

I’m currently backing up 370 gigs and pay about $2/month.

Yeah. "Deep Freeze" options are great for once in a while backups you don't mind having to retrieve and decompress without always-available access.

I don't know of any truly unlimited storage options that would allow 18TB of accessable data for any sort of low price, so this thread is very interesting.

Edit: Most unlimited storage options I've seen have some conditions attached unless they cost a fortune.

That_Guy

I've been pretty happy with BackBlaze myself. If you just need backup services and not general cloud storage, they're the best deal in town.