The Backblaze Pod: 67 Terabytes of Storage for Under $8K

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/' target='_blank'>http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/0...-cloud-storage/</a><br /><br /></div><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/dht/auto/1273523036.usr1.jpg" style="border: 0;" /></p><p>I'm a <a href="http://www.mozy.com/?ref=3f9a896b&amp;kbid=30184&amp;m=4&amp;i=75" target="_blank">Mozy customer myself</a> [Affiliate, use coupon code MAY to save 10% off] - I have 443 GB worth of data backed up with them, and I'm paying $3.98 a month to do it - but I have to admire the geek chops the guys at Backblaze had to create the solution they needed to run their backup service. They looked at the pre-made solutions out there, but all of them were extremely expensive...so they decided to build their own. 45 hard drives, offering 67 terabytes of storage...that's just awesome!</p>

[ptyork]

For backup this is crazy, but for one of those "I gotta rip from Blu-Ray and stream non-transcoded HD on demand for every movie made" types, this is pretty darned great (not me...). Just throw in 2GB drives and bump it up to 89'ish TB for about the same price at May 2010 prices. That's at least (89,000 GB / 25GB) 3,560 ripped Blu-Ray discs stored natively in MPEG-2. Just imagine. a movie a day for 10 years!! Oooh! Ahhhh!

When reality settles in, something much smaller would be great for a home user. Take this as a blueprint for Goliath and create David. It certainly does leave me wanting to design a cool custom WHS box. I wonder where you can find those port multiplier backplanes...

[Tony Rylow]

There's a reason it was so much cheaper than the other solutions.. They are using home desktop level hardware instead of the enterprise class parts they should be using. Hope they have good backups!

[Jason Dunn]

There's a reason it was so much cheaper than the other solutions.. They are using home desktop level hardware instead of the enterprise class parts they should be using. Hope they have good backups!

I read through most of their blog post, and it seems like they're using consumer-level drives because it makes sense from a cost perspective. Hard drives are amazingly reliable nowadays, so if they can save money and offer a competitive service by using consumer-level drives, why not?