RE: When you run out of money

["Daniel Staal" <DStaal@usa.net>]

On Thu, June 30, 2011 5:53 am, Hywel Mallett wrote:
> I'm sure Colin will respond with how much 44GB will cost (roughly), but
> I can tell you that tarsnap costs virtually nothing to use - Don't tell
> Colin, but I think it's under-priced!
>
> I look after a couple of tarsnap accounts. One has been going for just
> under a year, and has low use (We backup only a few GBs, but back it up
> with a great amount of duplication each night). That use has yet to use
> 25 cents of usage. The other account backs up a few tens of GBs, has
> been doing so for over a year, and has done a couple of disaster
> recovery tests (which use a lot of transfer). That one has used just
> over $2 in 14 months.

I just want to enter a qualification to this: tarsnap is cheap *for small
backup sets.*  As backup sets get larger, it can get expensive.  If price
is your primary consideration and you have a fair amount of data to store,
there are cheaper options.  (For instance: Tarsnap is $0.3 per GB/month. 
CrashPlan is just over $0.03 per GB/month, as long as you are storing near
10 GB.  There are others out there with similar ratios for higher amounts
of minimum storage.)

Of course, tarsnap is still easy to use, open, secure, and works on
anything you can compile the client for.  These have value too.  ;)  I
just want to point out that 'cheap' is relative, and tarsnap's main reason
for being cheap is that is *only* bills for what you actually use.  Most
other backup systems you would need to pay for more than you use.

Daniel T. Staal  (Who's paying $90 a month for tarsnap...)

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