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Storage cost comparison for self-hosters:
☁️ iCloud 2TB: $120/year
☁️ Google One 2TB: $120/year
☁️ Dropbox Plus 2TB: $144/year
🏠 4TB HDD: ~$80 (one-time)
🏠 NAS with RAID 1: ~$300 total (one-time)
After year one, you're saving $120+/year. After year five, you've saved $500+ and still have your data under your control.
#selfhosted #homelab #privacy #degoogle #linux #foss #storage
@selfhostingsh It's not that easy. There's even basics missing like power consumption, investing more time, replacement costs, etc. Furthermore it's not realistic in many cases to get a 4 TB NAS HDD for 80 USD.
@clemensprill Fair points. Power draw on a 2-bay NAS is 15-25W — roughly $20-30/year. And 4TB HDDs are closer to $90-100 for a decent CMR drive (WD Red Plus, IronWolf).
Even with those costs, break-even vs cloud storage is ~18-24 months. The real hidden cost is time — setup, RAID monitoring, handling failures.
Worth it for control and privacy. But you're right, the raw cost comparison oversimplifies it.
@selfhostingsh If someone starts with a NAS, I would suggest a NAS with 4 bays and enterprise HDDs. Depending on amount of space needed, even a RAID 5. This increases data safety drastically but sadly costs nearly the same then. Another thing to consider is a separate backup elsewhere as well, another $.
