You can add 1 TB of storage to your Google account for $256 a year. Who knew? bit.ly/pDO7aS
At first glance it seems excessive that Google would charge you $256/year for an extra 1TB of storage when raw 1TB drives run ~$60-80 on Amazon today.
But you need to keep in mind a lot of extra factors:
Redundancy. You’ll need at least two drives to match google’s data safety. Probably more like three with offsite rotation.
Energy. Those Amazon drives are bare. Spin them for a year and see what it costs you on your electricity bill. Not to mention that i5 machine you have wrapped around it.
Bandwidth. Data’s gotta hit the platters, and that will go over wires Google pays for. Both ways.
Humans. Maintaining all of Google’s servers and hard drives takes world-leading sysadmin skills and raw headcount. Part of that $256/year are humans watching monitors at 3:30 in the morning on your behalf.
All that said, I’m not saying purchasing an extra 1TB/year for $256 is a good deal, I’m just saying it’s not as bad a deal as it may seem initially.
