I'm a digital packrat. For the last decade or two, I've maxed out hard drives in my trusty desktop so I could keep everything. I have hundreds of gigabytes each of pictures, home videos, music, movies, and software. I've come to the realization that I have a large number of files that I access infrequently. For instance, it's pretty rare that I need to retrieve my ISO files to reinstall Windows 7 and Office and the like.

What I'd like to do is offload a good number of those files to cloud storage. And I don't mean cloud backup - I already have CrashPlan, and it will back up my files to the cloud provided they remain on my system also - I want some place to park those files where I can get them off my system altogether. Yet it's very important to me that I be assured of the ability to retrieve them when I need them, and that it won't cost me an arm and a leg to do so. I also don't want a solution whose primary focus is keeping files in sync across computers (a la Dropbox).

I've eyed Amazon Glacier, which seems purpose-built for things like this, yet the complexity of the retrieval billing makes me quite nervous. I don't want to click the wrong button and end up with a $23,000 bill. I tried Amazon Cloud Drive, but can't get the desktop app to install, and it keeps logging me out of the website every time I try to upload files through Chrome.

Does anyone have recommendations for high volume (1-2TB), infrequently accessed cloud storage?

Other than for providing offsite backup I don't see the point. 4tb drives are under $200 now. Get a couple, one to store, one to back up the storage to.

You can get 16tb of Raid-5 for under $1000.

Offsite storage is part of it. I also want to make use of the drives in my computer for more frequently accessed files. My computer already has 12TB (4x 3TB) of storage, with 6TB usable and 6TB backup, on top of the boot drive. If I can free up 1-2TB of infrequently accessed files, that gives me quite a bit more headroom. Sure, I could go and replace the drives with 6TB units (upgrading only to 4 seems silly when I'm already at 3), but I don't really want to spend $1,200 on new hard drives.

I don't want to bother with running a RAID array either. I used to do that 2 desktops ago. Doing it on the cheap with software RAID is unreliable and slow. I don't want to spend the money on hardware RAID either. And beyond that, I don't really consider RAID-5 to be redundancy. Having to rely on data on other disks + parity bits to computationally reconstruct lost data is living dangerously. It complicates recovery quite a bit (especially on larger disks where you become increasingly likely to encounter an unrecoverable read error while trying to rebuild a drive). And implementing RAID increases the chances of a drive failure.

I use Amazon S3 for my archiving, and unless you're uploading and storing TBs and TBs of data, the monthly cost is quite low and I believe you can set billing limits and alerts. The setup was quite simple, although you will need a good S3-able FTP client to move then sync your data before you delete it from your local PC.

All of my GBs and GBs of older photos (probably 100GB worth) are on S3 now and my bill was never more than $2/mo or less and that is not even with Glacier (which is a waste unless your cloud data is a huge amount). Also they may send you coupon offers periodically to complete surveys, and for most consumers, the $25 coupon value can leave you with a free year of storage.

My dropbox has gone overboard now forcing me to pay $10/mo to keep it going, but I also installed Amazon Work Docs as an option to move some of that content off DB and get under the free account threshold and the account is combinable with S3 for one simple monthly bill.

I run 2 servers for this - one in the UK and one in Dubai (I am technically resident in both locations though I spend less than 1 month a year in the UK).

The UK server runs "FreeNAS" and has around 4 TB of storage (mirrored) and is accessible externally only through FTP (by choice - it can do SMB or "Windows shares").

My Dubai server runs Windows 2012 R2 (not reachable from the internet) on top of which I run some Hyper-V virtual machines, one of which is my Windows Home Server 2011 which is also accessible over the web (Home Server's user interface) and FTP. Home server has some significant limitations when it come to uploading or downloading multiple files.

D.

I use OneDrive. The cost is very low (around 7$ per month) and I get 10TB of storage space. As a bonus I also get 60 Skype out minutes per month and Office 365.

Can't beat that really...

why would you want to store iso files? You can just download them from the source if/when you need them.

-David

Does OneDrive no longer have the 20,000 file limit? I'm seeing mixed messages on this.

It isn't always so easy. Microsoft has made things easier for certain products, but not all. Plenty of other ISOs are backups of CDs/DVDs I've purchased from other publishers, and would not know how to obtain replacement media if necessary.

^^This^^

We have the Office 365 Home plan which is $99/yr and allows everyone in my family to have Office on their computer, and 1TB of storage on OneDrive each (and Microsoft has said the OneDrive storage will be upgraded to unlimited by the end of the year).

So create a folder(s) on your OneDrive that you don't sync locally then upload anything you want to it. You can still access those files from a browser on any device, or through the OneDrive mobile app that's available for all platforms.

Thanks, I'll look into OneDrive. I already have an Office 365 Small Business subscription (for Exchange email and the like) and it includes OneDrive.

I think if you have the office 365 business version, you get unlimited Onedrive storage.

Correct. But you won't see it yet, Microsoft has said the upgrade to unlimited storage will roll out by the end of the year.

Hmm... seems there is a bigger difference between OneDrive for Business (powered by SharePoint) and regular OneDrive (not) than the name would suggest...

OneDrive and OneDrive for Business are entirely different platforms, different security, different privacy policies, OneDrive for Business has an SLA while OneDrive does not, etc.

OneDrive is consumer grade, OneDrive for Business is enterprise grade.