16 TB Cloud Drive from Google Costs $4.1K/Year

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domenic

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I wonder if they offer Backup solutions (and security) like Iron Mountain. If they do, Then 4.1K/year for 16T is peanuts. Iron Mountain charges $350/year for 20G and $100/year for 5G
 

razor512

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for that price, you can buy 55TB worth of storage and use 16 1TB drives for primary storage, and another 16 for backup and the remaining 23 drives for backups of the backups.
 

scryer_360

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I think its also good to point out that a divergence in the marketplace is happening here: those who store on the cloud, and those who store locally.

I've always considered myself a "tech buff" who has the latest and greatest when I can. As storage becomes cheaper, I've just been adding more locally. Some of my "tech buff" friends have 16 terabytes of storage (or more) in a mirrored backup. That actually costs less than Google's 16 terabyte online storage.

But as the article pointed out, there are those moving their data online. I'd refer to these people as more "layman" in their approach to data storage: the easier it is, the better. Its not complex, but still more than what people want to handle, to get a mirrored backup running in large quantities of storage. Many would rather pay even Google's $4000 price to store online rather than learn how to store that much, securely, themselves.
 

razor512

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or better yet, spend $2560 for 32TB of storage, then spend another $600 for a high end safe thats fire proof and extremely strong then properly fill it with padding then put 16 of the drives in there and then keep that as backup

it offers good data protection and best of all it wont use any of your upload or download bandwidth

or save the $600 and use truecrypt on the drives then store them as another house where someone else in your family lives

 

razor512

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[citation][nom]__-_-_-__[/nom]16TB for $4,096 hum... that's $256 per TB or $0.25 per GB for only storage... THAT'S a very cheap option for those who need that much storage[/citation]


1TB drive $80 x16 = $1280 1 time cost and you get 5-10 years of service out of the drive ($1280 today, 5 years later, still $1280)

google initial money 16TB $4096 (after 5 years $20,480 )

which seems cheaper to you?

learn how to store your own data and save $2816 on the initial purchase and save much more in the long run.
 
For non techies, it is a decent business plan. Large organizations that do not want to spend the cash on hardware and IT support could find it more feasible to store their data with google.
 

mariushm

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[citation][nom]tayb[/nom]I don't get it. I can buy a 2TB HDD for $180 from newegg. I could have about 45 TB of hard drive space to own instead of leasing 16TB from google for a year... And I would get to store things besides photos...Why would I do this? At all?[/citation]

Google will not store that 16TB on a single computer, as that would mean there's a single point of failure. That 16TB probably involves at least 50TB of data on about 5-6 servers placed in different parts of the datacenters they have so that if there's a power failure on a server rack and the hard drives fail, data can be recovered from a drives in a server on another rack.

As other people said, it would cost you more than the price of the drives: bandwidth, case (maybe you want to place it on a rack in a basement), motherboards, processor, memory, hardware raid controller (and you want raid 5 at least), UPS or at least surge protection...
 
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This is the ultimate big-brother scam. Anybody who's ever worked in corporate storage, network admin. or audit, knows that corporations typically keep user's home/profile/etc... folders on a server instead of a local hard-drive, so that audit/legal/whoever can immediately search anybody's files without their knowledge or consent. This is the same, but for civilians.

Anybody who thinks that in the year 2009 that a large corporation like google wouldn't gladly turn over your files to law enforcement(with or without a warrant) is naive at best. Your email and your debit/credit cards already do just that.
 
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LOL the replies from the kids who think they can do it this cheap at home by buying the stuff on Newegg.

It's not just the drives, it's the controllers, the cooling, the backing... and what most seem to forget: the insane network connection. Not to mention you'd need to work full time to maintain that stuff. Are you gonna get up in the middle of the night because your A/C unit went down?
I see replies about how people can do this from home. That's not the point! If it's "cloud" based you can access the information from anywhere with great reliability and speed. And I don't mean from you pizza face buddy across the street, I mean heaving the data accessible by employees working all around the globe. Your little DSL connection is not going to satisfy the needs of hundreds or thousands of employees.

Grow up, look outside your window and see how (global) companies work.
Have a nice day!
 

ALANMAN

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[citation][nom]konenavi[/nom]None for me, as far as I know Cox in Phoenix hasn't enabled any bandwidth limitations. If they had I would know by now.[/citation]

They haven't, and probably will be one of the last ISP's to do so if at all.
 

fuser

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[citation][nom]Shadow703793[/nom]You sir, fail at math. Brush up on your rounding numbers.[/citation]
Rounding? There was no rounding involved. Just some humor that I expected people here to get because I thought it was a tech forum. My bad ;-)
 

lashton

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[citation][nom]tayb[/nom]I don't get it. I can buy a 2TB HDD for $180 from newegg. I could have about 45 TB of hard drive space to own instead of leasing 16TB from google for a year... And I would get to store things besides photos...Why would I do this? At all?[/citation]

Yeah but you cant guaratee that your data is safe, google gurantees safety and this is what businesses need
 

dbowlin17

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My question, can I use that space as a backup hard drive, or does it have to be attached to gmail or that picture thing...?
 

amnotanoobie

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The 20GB for $5 annually seems like a good secondary backup storage for your photos. Though your primary backup should be a hard drive or optical media that is stored in a different location.
 

maydaynomore

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[citation][nom]LordEagle[/nom]LOL the replies from the kids who think they can do it this cheap at home by buying the stuff on Newegg.It's not just the drives, it's the controllers, the cooling, the backing... and what most seem to forget: the insane network connection. Not to mention you'd need to work full time to maintain that stuff. Are you gonna get up in the middle of the night because your A/C unit went down?I see replies about how people can do this from home. That's not the point! If it's "cloud" based you can access the information from anywhere with great reliability and speed. And I don't mean from you pizza face buddy across the street, I mean heaving the data accessible by employees working all around the globe. Your little DSL connection is not going to satisfy the needs of hundreds or thousands of employees.Grow up, look outside your window and see how (global) companies work.Have a nice day![/citation]
Thank you! Fianlly somebody said it.
Imagine this: I work for a company that has 53,000 employees world wide (over 100 countries) We need 16tb of storage space that can be accessed by any one employee, at any time. Can you provide this service for under $4k (high speed for at least 20,000 simultaneous connections?
 

bydesign

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@spoofedpacket
Google uses cheap off the shelf SATA drives in their data center, enterprise boy...

The sales pitch sounds great a first but for data that matters the track record and isn't so great. There are legal issues that haven't been tested and performance issues as well. An informed decision maker should be "scared" as this is not a risk free proposition.
 

Ransom22

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Microsoft's Skydrive already gives you 25GB of free storage and you get to use their office online features as they roll them out. Google should at least offer 20GB for free if they want to compete.

However, 16TB of storage is huge and in many cases worth the price tag. External HDDs are cheaper, but a pain to take with you everywhere you go. That's the convenience that warrants the cost.
 

bill gates is your daddy

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[citation][nom]a lil common sense[/nom]OK, so I can:1) Upload my data to Google. Google will sell my data and internet usage stats for profit. Google may or may not protect my data from intruders, but will certainly have a line in the contract absolving them of any liability for theft of my data. Google will charge me upwards of $4000 a year for 16TB of data, which will no doubt increase as time passes. Google will lock me out of my own data if I am late on payments. OR2) Purchase forty 1TB hard drives for about $4000. Put those 40 drives in RAID1, yielding 20TB worth of data with a failsafe against data loss. These drives will last 5+ years with a statistically insignificant increase to my electricity bill. The data on these drives will be in my possession and no one can lock me out of it.WHY WOULD ANYONE BUY THIS CRAP???[/citation]

I support you views on this completely except for the raid part. 40 1TB drives in a RAID1??? Try about 10 or 12 drives in a RAID5. You still receive data protection, you have a lower initial cost and electrical cost will be down. Select between either 1, 1.5 or 2TB drives depending on your available budget and space requirement.

Along with selling data (which is a billion dollar industry) my main concern is who will they allow access to your data? Are you willing to place all your most important and personal data online for corporations and the government to rummage through? We used to have a neat little thing called privacy...I just don't think we have that anymore.
 

counselmancl

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Is it just me or is anyone else concerned about storing private files with a third party? Maybe today you have laws saying they need a search warrant to read your documents and your thesis criticizing Obama falls under free speech, but tomorrow? That same thesis could get you labeled a terrorist. And what about the grey areas? Do they need a warrant to do a keyword search on everyone’s files? Now that they have a few hits on your data do they have probable cause?

My point is, there is an awful lot of trust here both of Google, a for profit company, and the government, which tends to look after its own interests before that of the people. One need only study history, American or world, and you will find governments routinely violate the laws and people’s rights. It happens every day here in America. Just be aware of this and tailor your actions accordingly.
 
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"tayb :
I don't get it. I can buy a 2TB HDD for $180 from newegg. I could have about 45 TB of hard drive space to own instead of leasing 16TB from google for a year... And I would get to store things besides photos...Why would I do this? At all?"

...And tell me what happens when:

- Your house burns down
- your house is robbed and they take/trash your gear.
- your RAID controller goes bad on that 5 year old MOBO you are running.

That is the main reason I run Mozy at home with my own encryption key.
 

bill gates is your daddy

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[citation][nom]LordEagle[/nom]LOL the replies from the kids who think they can do it this cheap at home by buying the stuff on Newegg.It's not just the drives, it's the controllers, the cooling, the backing... and what most seem to forget: the insane network connection. Not to mention you'd need to work full time to maintain that stuff. Are you gonna get up in the middle of the night because your A/C unit went down?I see replies about how people can do this from home. That's not the point! If it's "cloud" based you can access the information from anywhere with great reliability and speed. And I don't mean from you pizza face buddy across the street, I mean heaving the data accessible by employees working all around the globe. Your little DSL connection is not going to satisfy the needs of hundreds or thousands of employees.Grow up, look outside your window and see how (global) companies work.Have a nice day![/citation]

Hey douchebag...I work for a global corporation and I know how it works seeing how it’s my job. If you are truly a global corporation then #1, you are going to have more than hundreds or thousands of employees. You are going to have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of employees. #2 , being a global corporation you would not dare use something as idiotic as google to host your data. That infrastructure will be built inside the corporation seeing how it’s a global wide industry and must reach around the globe at a seconds notice. #3, I can easily build a 16TB raid in my house in a full size tower and support it without any issues. I am not going to need a chilling unit for the thing either. And the other beauty of it is that I can turn it on and off when I need to. As far as access goes….I can access my home network from anywhere in the world right now and reach any data that I am looking for.

Try reading the article sometimes you ass-hat. This is about INDIVIDUALS storing data in google’s cloud service not a CORPORATION. A corporation has no use for this. You need to stop looking out the window and start paying attention. It’s obvious from your comment that YOU do not have a clue of how a personal network or a global network works.
 

ssalim

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For a big company that requires this, $4k a year is a drop in the bucket.
Do you need this 8-16TB for personal use? absolutely not (unless you can afford and do need it).
 

mariushm

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It's targeted mostly to individuals, who need a temporary space from time to time. For example let's say a freelancer doing logos or banners and needs some space somewhere to show off mockups to the guy employing him, upload revisions fast and have the other person able to access them instantly and so on
 
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