Hello Everyone,
I want to use Duplicacy and iDrive e2 as a backup for my home NAS and I’m wondering what were your thoughts on iDrive e2. It’s pricing seems cheap compared to others and I’m wondering if that equals issues.
Comments really appreciated as well as other storage options.
TIA
Please read the whole topic, not just a headline.
TLDR: you get what you pay for.
Use Storj instead. Similar pricing, but significantly more robust: reliable, durable, decentralized, eco-friendly, and performant – you are always close to some nodes.
Just a warning that Duplicacy is not very storj friendly without tweaks. Out of the box, duplicacy creates enough files in the cloud to make storj more expensive than it should be (the per-segment fee). For example, my 1.5TB Duplicacy backup created 323,000 files in the cloud which would cost an extra $2.84/mo on top of the regular size-based fee.
I see you recommending storj here on other threads too, but you should also add a caveat about needing to modify chunk sizes to not be hit with unnecessary extra costs that the default Duplicacy config would incur.
I’ve used IDrive E2 for a few months now (the $40/yr for 2 TB plan) with a different backup software and I’ve tested it extensively without any issues. It is my secondary cloud backup storage though, so personally I’m willing to take some risk with the cheaper storage so your priorities may vary of course. The pricing does seem too good to be true which is definitely something to consider.
Good point. Chunks size adjustment and recommendation to use s3 gateway if upstream is limited.
It would have been nice if duplicacy automatically varied the default chunk size based on the remote.
Definitely. What do you have your Duplicacy chunk size set to with Storj? I’ve been meaning to try it out with the free storage offering first to see what it’s all about (though if chunk size is global then I wouldn’t be able to change it without impacting my other backups).
Thanks for your reply.
As iDrive is an S3 gateway should the chunk size be changed? If so, how is this done and what should it be set to?
Also, can the chunk size be changed after you have already uploaded data to iDrive?
TIA
Chunk size can be defined per storage. It would not make sense for it to be global.
The reason for increasing chunk size for storj is to reduce number of segments and fees. IDrive does not have per-segment fee. Use default chunk size with them.
They run on a very thin margins. They have to be cutting corners everywhere. It’s easy to tweak erasure coding and increase risk of data loss for short term profit. Backblaze charges more and they are still not profitable. I don’t trust smaller players with larger claims; in light of user experience reported in the thread linked above — justifiably so. There is no free cheese. You will pay either way — either with money now or with your time and data later.