Re:Archiving JPEGs for long-term storage
by willglynn on Saturday February 17, 2018 @07:43PM
(#16403735)
Data storage devices have a finite lifetime, so data storage is necessarily a recurring expense.
Copies that can't be read aren't copies any more, which means regular access is a requirement, which means another recurring expense.
Different requirements can reasonably result in different solutions, but a USB hard drive on its own is simply not comparable to storage service. A redundant set of USB hard drives with a specified replacement schedule and testing procedure would be comparable -- but if you amortize all that out, we're talking about $X + Y hours per month for Z GB of storage, which compares directly to $X/GB-month if time has a dollar value.
From this perspective, I argue that storage services like S3, Glacier, B2, and Digital Ocean Spaces are priced fairly.
Copies that can't be read aren't copies any more, which means regular access is a requirement, which means another recurring expense.
Different requirements can reasonably result in different solutions, but a USB hard drive on its own is simply not comparable to storage service. A redundant set of USB hard drives with a specified replacement schedule and testing procedure would be comparable -- but if you amortize all that out, we're talking about $X + Y hours per month for Z GB of storage, which compares directly to $X/GB-month if time has a dollar value.
From this perspective, I argue that storage services like S3, Glacier, B2, and Digital Ocean Spaces are priced fairly.