10TB of data to back up - where to?

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Hi all,

I’ve been using Duplicati for my home-office since CrashPlan Home went away and for the most part very pleased with it - a few teething problems here and there but nothing that hasn’t ultimately been resolved.

When CrashPlan Home was pulled, I downsized what I was backing up and switched the hosts I absolutely needed an off-site backup of to their small business offering. Life carried on at a slightly increased price but I was pretty happy with that.

Now however they are getting more restrictive about what you can back up and certain files that I rely on archiving (VM images) are now hard coded into the file exclusion list. See What is not backing up - Code42 Support?

I suspect that as time goes by CrashPlan will make it harder and harder to realistically back up data with their service, and it’s time to move elsewhere. The problem is, my main file server archives around 10TB of data to CrashPlan. Where on Earth do I put this volume of data without it costing me a fortune? I definitely want it off-site, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be in “the cloud”.

10TB on S3 in N. Virginia is $235.40 at current pricing for the storage alone, without the data transfer and PUT/GET requests. So that’s clearly not viable.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your help!

James

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I went from CrashPlan to Duplicati + Wasabi (S3 compatible), currently have just 2TB data and paying $7 per month.

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Wasabi and B2 are significantly cheaper than S3. But in reality both will still be more expensive than Crashplan. For 10TB you will probably pay ~$50/mo with either Wasabi or B2.

The Crashplan business model has not been proven sustainable - I believe that’s why they are continually worsening the product (discontinuing the Home version, suddenly not backing up certain file types, etc).

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4

www.jottacloud.com

€75 per year for unlimited storage.

I’m currently storing 9.3TB backup data there.

Up-/Download speed is depending on your file size. The larger the files, the slower the upload. Download not impacted by this limitation.

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“Unlimited storage” with a “fair use” policy are a bit problematic. From the Jottacloud terms of service:

Although Jottacloud does not limit bandwidth or storage on Unlimited subscription plans, we reserve the right to limit excessive use and abuse of the Service. If a user’s total storage and network usage greatly exceeds the normal usage of an average Jottacloud user, and/or indicates that the Service is being uses for other than normal individual and non-commercial use, this may be deemed as abuse of the Service.

In these abovementioned cases, we reserve the right to offer an alternative Jottacloud subscription, cancel the subscription, or in some cases delete the user account and/or user data. The user will be contacted by us with a suggested solution or notice of action in such events.

Everything will be fine until at some point, too many people do excessively use their account and their business becomes unprofitable. Then they will either block your account or charge you more. You will have a new “Crashplan experience”. Sure, for some time, you get a good price. But don’t expect it to work forever.
And take into account the time to re-upload 10 TB of data. If they cancel your account, one month may not even be enough to download the data.

Also one thing to consider is speed: Do they guarantee something? In the case when your server crashed and you need to download the 10 TB backup, what will be the speed? Often, downloading the first GB is fast, but then they will slow you down. “Excessive use!”. Then you wait several weeks until your backup is restored? Don’t complain, you just get what you paid for.

So, if you don’t care about the hassle, go for “unlimited storage”. But if you rely on your backup and it is important to you, better choose a provider with profitable prices.

For 47,48 € (currently 52,98 USD) per month, this German data center provides you with 10 TB either as a “storage box” (webDav, FTP, Samba, …) or nextcloud:
https://www.hetzner.com/storage/nextcloud
https://www.hetzner.com/storage/storage-box

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6

of course unlimited always has a limit.

however the people at jottacloud seem to be friendly - they will contact you with a solution and either you agree to pay more or have to move on.

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Is that a special deal for 2TB for $7/month as their pricing is listed as $.0059 per GB/month ($5.99 per TB/month)?

Or do you have a contract period and then pricing is re-evaluated?

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I would recommend hubic.com
You get 10TB for I think 5eur - but it’s hosted in Europe.

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Are you actually using their service? It seemed they were in financial trouble and closed out approx a year back in a sudden ‘servers stopped working and we abandoned the website’ way

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I do, and they are still operating. They are owned by ovh which is pretty big, so I don’t think they will disappear.

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I see - are you based out in France/nearby? I am free tier and encountered enough troubles that I gave up on them - from the below seems like not isolated but I guess YMMV.

https://cloudstorageinfo.org/hubic-cloud-storage-scam-legit-review

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Poland - so still close enough I guess. I think only upside is cost - retrieval is slow but this is my last-case-resort backup and I am backing up from NAS so I don’t care if backup runs multiple days.
I done some basic restore tests but I didn’t do full recovery.
If you have more money to spare (or if your backup is critical) I would recommend something else.

And of course for me it was benefit that it’s NOT in us :slight_smile:

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whats your OS? If you aren’t running a server, Backblaze is $6 a month now and their upload speeds are MUCH better than Crashplan.

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Hubic is closed: The hubiC service is now closed to new subscriptions.

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Thank you everyone for the detailed responses - some really interesting options there that I was unaware of. I reviewed my monthly backup report by CrashPlan today and the volume of data “selected for backup” has gone down hugely. It’s time for them to go in the bin sadly. In answer to one of the earlier questions, the backup is being performed from a Linux server. That’s not hard and fast - it could be another host type (e.g. Windows). I have some options to look at which is amazing - thank you!

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Alternative idea:

  • Find a friend with a 24/7 Linux server
  • Buy another hard drive, hook it on your friends Linux server
  • Back up to that

My brother and I both have multi-TB backups, so we just back up to each other. Beyond the initial setup, it’s free monthly!

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Usage statistics for Duplicati Backend stats show SSH (SFTP) is the number two backend behind File, although I’m sure some of that is local not offsite. SFTP servers exist for Windows too, and many NAS systems also have it. Even though it’s easy to get, FTP over the Internet is not secure (clear-text login). FTPS (FTP secured with SSL/TLS) and WebDAV are also possibilities for building something yourself. Setting up self-hosted Minio on Windows 10 with automatically renewing SSL certificate is S3 protocol.

Backing up 10 TB might be pushing capacity limits (after some versions) for a single drive these days, however if you want something easier on the electric bill than a PC-based server, a single-bay NAS for about a hundred dollars plus drive might work. You won’t get drive redundancy, but maybe that’s OK…

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you want something easier on the electric bill than a PC-based server, a single-bay NAS for about a hundred dollars plus drive might work

I use an UDOO x86. It’s got the size and power requirements of a raspberry pi, but it runs x86 code: https://www.udoo.org/udoo-x86/ :slight_smile:

Pair that with a 10 TB hard drive for around $225, it’s worked great for me!

But you’re right, for someone just needing only an offsite backup solution, an NAS+hard drive combo that supports Duplicati is easier to maintain than a separate Linux server.

Main reason I love Duplicati: It naturally supports different OSs, different backends, and different setups, far better than anything else.

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I was able to have a friend locate a QNAP TS-451 with 12TB in his office and make it available to me as a backup target.

That is my offsite solution for now.

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The advantage of backing up to your friend: In the case when you need to restore the huge backup, you may be able to drive to your friend an pick up the drive/NAS/device there and physically move it to your site. This can improve restore speed significantly.

At the time I tried hubiC it was so slow for me (located in Germany) that I would not have been able to upload 10TB of data in a year. HubiC is also an example of incredibly cheap cloud space that did not survive.

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