High volume cloud storage or backup solution

Question

I am looking for a personal cloud storage or backup solution that supports a high volume of storage for a reasonable price and the fewest possible restrictions. Something that caters to my desired requirements might not exist, but suggestions for anything that comes close are appreciated.

The basic desired requirements are:

• On the order of 10 TB of storage
• No limits on file size
• Should support just one user, without need for additional users to get more storage
• Should have a desktop app for Windows
• If backup solution: No limits on backup/restore capabilities or bandwidth
• If backup solution: No limits on what can be backed up (e.g. external drives, network drives, etc.)
• If backup solution: No requirements to back anything up (e.g. Backblaze requires backing up main drive)

What I can compromise on:

• Sharing: being able to share would be nice, but not mandatory
• Speed: dialup speeds are not reasonable of course, but a steady ~500 kB/s in each direction is plenty fine
• Security: as long as the software doesn't try to read my entire private storage, and I can choose what exactly to store in the service, things like full e2e encryption are not a requirement

Here are some services I have looked at, but each has significant drawbacks:

• OneDrive:
  • Every plan requires either to split storage into 1 TB segments, or pay a lot more ($10/TB). I am also not sure whether it's possible to use multiple accounts for the "home" tier on the same computer
  • 10 GB file size limit
• Box.com
  • Minimum of 3 users, making the price unreasonable
  • 5 GB file size limit
• Sync.com
  • Two-user minimum, making minimum price $30/mo with half the space unnecessary. Theoretically this service is the closest to what I want, but the price might be the upper limit of what I'm willing to pay, not mentioning the psychological aspect of paying for a superfluous user
• Backblaze
  • Requires backing up Drive C
  • Not a real backup service—it auto-deletes files that aren't currently in the system after 30 days, including unused drives
  • No backing up network drives

Every other service I have checked is significantly more expensive.

Answer 1

You could use Backblaze B2 which is quite inexpensive per GB.

It doesn't have a desktop client per se, but you can use the free Cyberduck software as the desktop client.

A couple others I heard of recently are Sia and Storj but not sure if they check all the boxes you posted. The idea behind them is interesting (distributed encrypted network comprised of unused space).

Answer 2

After a while I ended up choosing iDrive, which has lowered prices since I asked the question. Unfortunately competing services are still not offering the same amount of storage for the same price.

iDrive offers a 10 TB package for ~$100/year at the time of this writing (does not appear to be related to Black Friday, in fact I subscribed at a lower price point), and might have additional discounts.

Specifically, it supports the following things that were fundamental requirements of mine:

• 10 TB of storage
• No limits on file size
• Personal account, i.e. no minimum user requirement
• Has a desktop app for Windows
• No bandwidth limit or any similar limit that I could find
• Has the ability to back up external drives and network drives
• Does not require backing up C drive

It does have some cons, but those are things I can live with.

For one, the desktop up is clunky, rather slow, and sometimes arbitrarily fails to back up certain files. The web interface is also slow and clunky. It's also relatively bare-bones and behaves a lot like a legacy backup app (many features that are real-time today are not in iDrive client, e.g. quota calculation). Not many customization features. Backup ETAs are ridiculously off-target. Having said that, these things might improve over time as the service gets more users and the development team grows.