[rikkus]

Storage is cheap indeed, though it takes some effort to make it cheap.

99% of the digital data I'm keeping for the long term is family photos and videos. All my photos go to Dropbox (easy copy-from-device and access anywhere) and are then backed up to multiple locations by CrashPlan.

It'll be a while yet, but in the next few years I'll be hitting the 1TB Dropbox limit. I'm hoping that Dropbox make a >1TB 'consumer' plan in the next couple of years. There's no way I'm assuming my backups are fine, deleting from Dropbox to make space, then finding out in a few years that some set of photos is missing.

I also sync up to Google Drive - but again, there's a 1TB limit (or a large cost).

In the future, I might have to create a new Dropbox account and keep the old one running. Storage might be cheap, but keeping it cheap is tricky.

[joombaga]

Are you using the small business version of CrashPlan? I was using CP too until they discontinued their B2C.

[SyneRyder]

Same here - I'm currently still migrating from CrashPlan B2C to using Arq backing up to Backblaze B2. (Being able to access B2 from Panic's Transmit Mac app made B2 really attractive to me as well, and it looks like I'll save a lot of money compared with CrashPlan.)

[joombaga]

I'll look into this. Thanks for the info!

[viraptor]

> Storage might be cheap, but keeping it cheap is tricky.

If it's really for pure backup, not continuous sync, Glacier is $4 per TB.

[white-flame]

That's $4 per TB-month. Meaning you're effectively paying more than the cost of a 1TB hard drive replaced every year, for every TB you're storing. Plus fees to get your data back out. An 8TB drive, replaced every year, is half the cost per TB, with no additional access cost.

Depending on how price conscious you are, I agree with the GP's "keeping it cheap is tricky". And with things like backup, even if you do it yourself, the time spent maintaining it should be negligible: Occasionally kick off a format shift or failed drive replacement, have scripts running everything else.

[viraptor]

> Meaning you're effectively paying more than the cost of a 1TB hard drive replaced every year, for every TB you're storing.

Yes. But what you get in return is not having that data at home. It doesn't matter how many copies you have locally if your home gets robbed, flooded, or burns down.

[imtringued]

Glacier is good for dumping data into it but it's absolutely terrible for getting your data out and for full retrievals it's also very expensive. Don't rely on it for anything other than emergency backups of your backups.