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Comment by bayindirh | Hacker News Reader

I follow r/Datahoarder for best practices and methods for getting my own stuff (like HumbleBundle or purchased eBook libraries) to my own local storage but, some of them really abuse online storage providers. I cringe sometimes reading all the posts.

Why on the world someone try to mirror nearly everything to somewhere like Scrat from the Ice Age?

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It’s mainly because they can, but I also bet it’s that feeling that you’re “cheating” the system (like why people cheat in online video games)

I understand and while we all understand that it isn't technically "unlimited", they still are just using the service they pay for in the way it was advertised to them. If it isn't unlimited and you don't want to deal with that 0.1% of users, do not advertise it that way.

Again, I think it's ridiculous to use online storage services in that way but still, is it really fair to blame the consumer here?

I use some of the techniques as offsite "well, maybe it's with that cloud storage?" disaster recovery backup options.

I have used Backblaze, and was storing 16TB there, and that was $50/month.

I did a simple envelope calculation, decided I could either hand-roll a offsite system with 2x consumer harddrives, or look for other options.

I have 28TB backed up with another provider now.

Why haven't I tried either AWS or Azure cold-tier storage?

I have maybe 2 hours a month where I can spend looking into solutions to my offsite backup situation, and I am somewhat concerned that I could mess up the AWS solution and cost myself thousands of dollars. This coupled with a lack of time, significant competing concerns (keeping a job during a global pandemic job market; work-load; personal life), and "eh, I'll get to it"-laziness, means I have to put this on the back burner.

If you handed me a simple solution using rclone, zfs send, btrfs-send, or a pre-canned "this is what it would cost" Bacula approach, I would move to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding

Some people even hunt for "Unlimited for life" early adopter plans and grab them, then abuse them.

One of the backup services imposed a 12TB limit. Evernote reverted their unlimited data storage pledge, Google retired unlimited data in GSuite. I cannot say all of them due to hoarders but, Evernote CEO openly said that "People tried to zip and upload their backups to our servers. We're not that big".

>Google retired unlimited data in GSuite

They actually did not. The $12/user/month plan with an unenforced data limit was rebranded as the $20/month Enterprise Standard plan with unlimited storage explicitly allowed. Existing users are currently grandfathered in at the $12 price but may be forced to "upgrade" at some point in the future.

"Customers that have 5 or more End Users will receive a total amount of Google Drive storage equal to 5TB times the number of End Users, with more storage available at Google's discretion upon reasonable request to Google." is not very comforting language.

I think you're looking at the Business plan. Enterprise is separate. You can't get an Enterprise plan without contacting Sales unless you're grandfathered in.

https://workspace.google.com/terms/user_features.html

I'm looking at Enterprise.

> You can't get an Enterprise plan without contacting Sales unless you're grandfathered in.

Having to contact sales and prove myself is not exactly the same as being retired, but it's pretty similar in a lot of ways.

Oh I see. So it's actually the same as the old plan (unenforced storage limit), but without the (also unenforced) minimum of 5 paying users.

I also just read that you can in fact get an Enterprise plan without contacting Sales by buying a Business plan and then upgrading through the admin console.

So maybe less retired, more downgraded.

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