[msw_w]

Amazon S3 with reduced redundancy will cost about $45.00 per month plus the cost of the initial data transfer in. EC2 with a reserved Linux micro instance and 500 GB of EBS storage will cost more at about $60.00 plus the cost of the initial data transfer in.

A couple of months agao, I went through the same research as you and it is hard to beat S3 storage costs and ease of use. My requirements are more modest at about 100 GB per month though.

There is a handy Amazon calculator here: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

[ra]

Thanks. Yeah I use EC2 for other things, and you're right. Reduced redundancy S3 is at least as good as a RAID1 dedicated server, possibly even better[1].

1. Amazon S3 standard storage is designed to provide 99.999999999% durability and to sustain the concurrent loss of data in two facilities, while RRS is designed to provide 99.99% durability and to sustain the loss of data in a single facility.