[Dylan16807]

That sounds very acceptable to get those files backed up.

It shouldn't stress things to spend a couple weeks relaying a terabyte in small chunks. The most likely strain is on my upload bandwidth and yeah that's the cost of cloud backup, more ISPs need to improve upload.

[bayindirh]

I mean, cycling a couple of terabytes of data over a 512GB drive is at least full 4 writes, which is too much for that kind of thing.

> more ISPs need to improve upload.

I was yelling the same things to the void for the longest time, then I had a brilliant idea of reading the technical specs of the technology coming to my home.

Lo and behold, the numbers I got were the technical limits of the technology that I had at home (PON for the time being), and going higher would need a very large and expensive rewiring with new hardware and technology.

[Dylan16807]

4 writes out of what, 3000? For something you'll need to do once or twice ever? It's fine. You might not even eat your whole Drive Write Per Day quota for the upload duration, let alone the entire month.

> the technical limits of the technology that I had at home (PON for the time being)

Isn't that usually symmetrical? Is yours not?

[bayindirh]

> 4 writes out of what, 3000?

Depends on your device capacity and how much is in actual use. Wear leveling things also wear things while it moves things around.

> For something you'll need to do once or twice ever?

I don't know you, but my cloud storage is living, and even if it's not living, if the software can't smartly ignore files, it'll pull everything in, compare and pass without uploading, causing churns in every backup cycle.

> Isn't that usually symmetrical? Is yours not?

GPON (Gigabit PON) is asymmetric. Theoretical limits is 2.4Gbps down, 1.2Gbps up. I have 1000Mbit/75Mbit at home.

[Dylan16807]

> I don't know you, but my cloud storage is living

But you're probably changing less than 1% each day. And new changes are likely already in the cache, no need to download them.

> if the software can't smartly ignore files, it'll

Backblaze checks the modification date.

> GPON (Gigabit PON) is asymmetric. Theoretical limits is 2.4Gbps down, 1.2Gbps up. I have 1000Mbit/75Mbit at home.

2:1 is fine. If you're getting worse than 10:1 then that does sound like your ISP failed you?

[jonhohle]

How do you know how often those files need to be backed up without reading them? Timestamps and sizes are not reliable, only content hashes. How do you get a content hash? You read the file.

[NetMageSCW]

If timestamps aren’t reliable, you fall way outside the user that can trust a third party backup provider. Name a time when modification timestamp fails but a cloud provider will catch the need to download the file.

[Dylan16807]

Backblaze already trusts the modification date.

[NetMageSCW]

Why would it do that more than once unless you are modifying 4TB of data every day, in which case you are causing the problem.

[bayindirh]

I don't know how your client works, but reading metadata (e.g. requesting size) off any file causes some cloud clients to download it completely.

Of course I'm not modifying 4TB on a cloud drive, every day.

[Dylan16807]

Can you name such a client? That sounds like a terrible experience.