[stoppingdown]

To me that's not cost effective and needs to go down another order of magnitude to be interesting for me. Let's say my total data set is 3TB. That'll be $30/month or $360 a year. I can easily buy 3 consumer grade 3TB hard disks for that much with change left over (keeping two local at all times, cycling the 3rd one offsite), and that will last multiple years. Personally I don't use 3 copies, only two, so the cost is even lower.

 

I understand your point, but you should put some other stuff into the equation. If you buy your disks, you're also taking also all the risks of failure. On the average, even customer grade disks are reliable, but there's the chance of taking a lemon. With the cloud, you're guaranteed of quality. With your own disks, you're also taking the risk of having them stolen, or - please touch iron - having them damaged together house damages, or a trivial voltage spike, etc. I mean: pricing is not only related to the direct facility/service we buy, but also to the associated risks; let's talk of "ownership costs".

 

Anyway I won't insist since I've just written that I'm not using the cloud, but going your same way of local hardware. Let's say that cloud pricing are going to drop and this should make this solution more palatable - sure, even disks will be cheaper in future, but under a certain price threshold I wouldn't worry about using a cheaper solution, rather than having less things to take care of.