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Amazon To Offer Sneakernet Services: Data Upload By Mail

Posted by timothy on from the those-are-some-big-sneakers dept.

blueshift_1 writes: If you have 50TB of data that you'd like to put on the S3 cloud, Amazon is releasing Snowball. It's basically a large grey box full of hard drives that Amazon will mail to you. Simply upload your files and mail it back — they will upload it for you. For $200 + shipping, it's at a pretty reasonable price point if you're tired of hosting your data and want to try and push that to AWS. ("Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." -Tanenbaum, Andrew S.)

94 comments

  1. It's been available for a while by Pete+(big-pete) · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's nice they've got an official box and all, but the service to send disks to Amazon has been there for a while (as a beta program).

    Here is a blog post from 2009 explaining the service.

    Of course, a nice official controlled and encrytped box is a far tidier way of doing things!

    -- Pete.

    --
    Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
    1. Re:It's been available for a while by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 1

      send disks to Amazon

      Oh, and those disks make a detour to the NSA on their way to Amazon. Very convenient, indeed.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    2. Re:It's been available for a while by willworkforbeer · · Score: 3, Funny

      Oh, and those disks make a detour to the NSA on their way to Amazon. Very convenient, indeed.

      It was the shipping via Black Helicopter Express that gave it away.

      --
      Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
    3. Re:It's been available for a while by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      It's the Black Drone Express. Dropping a box of hard drives in the front yard gave it away.

    4. Re:It's been available for a while by danceswithtrees · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Even without the detour, what are the security ramifications of connecting a foreign device to your network? Its from Amazon, they have an image to protect, but what if they get hacked or the packaged gets switched/tampered with en route? The device can silently start making its way around your network collecting data you didn't want to upload.

      I'll take off my aluminum Faraday beanie cap now.

    5. Re:It's been available for a while by hawguy · · Score: 1

      send disks to Amazon

      Oh, and those disks make a detour to the NSA on their way to Amazon. Very convenient, indeed.

      Why bother slurping data off discrete disks in transit when the NSA can just access the data when it's on AWS's servers?

    6. Re:It's been available for a while by hawguy · · Score: 1

      Even without the detour, what are the security ramifications of connecting a foreign device to your network? Its from Amazon, they have an image to protect, but what if they get hacked or the packaged gets switched/tampered with en route? The device can silently start making its way around your network collecting data you didn't want to upload.

      I'll take off my aluminum Faraday beanie cap now.

      If you plug a foreign device into a port that has unfettered access to your network, you'll get what you deserve.

    7. Re:It's been available for a while by davester666 · · Score: 2

      And then there is the opposite problem. This could make an excellent entry vector to Amazon's cloud service that may not be as protected as 'normal' uploading via the Internet.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    8. Re:It's been available for a while by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're connected to the internet and this is what you're worried about? Wow.

    9. Re:It's been available for a while by Wolfrider · · Score: 1

      --This. If I were shipping Terabytes of valuable company data, I think it should rather be PHYSICALLY COURIERED to the destination by at least two people that are highly paid AND trustable (and maybe continuously filmed and stopping points logged, as well.)

      --I absolutely do not understand why anyone would throw ~50TB of data in the back of a UPS or Fedex truck and trust blindly that things would somehow end up going well.

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
  2. Theft waiting to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    The boxes in which these hard drives ship will be obvious that they're from Amazon. It's an invitation to thieves to steal the boxes and the data on the hard drives. I can't understand why ANYONE would ship data of any value in this manner.

    1. Re:Theft waiting to happen by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

      Encrypt it?

      Why would you store valuable data in plain text on a cloud service?

    2. Re:Theft waiting to happen by hawguy · · Score: 5, Informative

      The boxes in which these hard drives ship will be obvious that they're from Amazon. It's an invitation to thieves to steal the boxes and the data on the hard drives. I can't understand why ANYONE would ship data of any value in this manner.

      The data is encrypted by the tool that copies data to the device. It doesn't seem like it would take too many thefts before UPS/FedEx roots out their thieving employees.

    3. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Drakonblayde · · Score: 1

      The boxes in which these hard drives ship will be obvious that they're from Amazon. It's an invitation to thieves to steal the boxes and the data on the hard drives. I can't understand why ANYONE would ship data of any value in this manner.

      It's not like their shipping you bare OEM drives with some air puffs. The box is a self contained appliance. I'd be very surprised if the copy to the drives in the box didn't leave the data encrypted, it'd be foolish of Amazon to do it any other way

    4. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Drakonblayde · · Score: 3, Informative

      And yes, excerpted directly from the service web page found at https://aws.amazon.com/importe...

      'Once it arrives, attach the appliance to your local network, download and run the Snowball client to establish a connection, and then use the client to select the file directories that you want to transfer to the appliance. The client will then encrypt and transfer the files to the appliance at high speed.'

      So unless the client is absolute crap, it's a pretty good solution

    5. Re:Theft waiting to happen by CSMoran · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can't understand [...]

      And that should be your cue not to post, and think for a moment. If you have sensitive data, you use encryption.

      --
      Every end has half a stick.
    6. Re:Theft waiting to happen by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      Unless they really screw up the encryption(in which case the value of some of the data being transported might be worthwhile); these things seem like they'd actually be pretty dubious theft options. Even new, 50TB worth of consumer grade disk(I assume that Amazon is using some redundancy; but probably isn't splurging on SAS or fancy-enterprise-SATA for disks that will spend most of their life with Fedex, not actually spinning) isn't actually all that valuable(4TB drives are ~$150 retail, 6TB ~$250) and 'used' is not a happy word when trying to sell a hard drive. Plus it's essentially certain that Amazon has every serial number, MAC address, etc. of every component in the box on record, so you are SOL if anyone ever checks.

      It also wouldn't be too surprising if the case has some level of active anti-theft reporting. Given that sub-$100 cellphones have GPS, a cell modem, one or more accelerometers, and are built on SoCs with enough GPIO to connect a bunch of tamper switches/sensors to; it wouldn't be particularly impractical for the box to report its location, integrity, orientation, and vibration levels every 30 seconds for the entire trip. Not impossible to defeat; but you'd need to nab it in an area of no service and silence it(by force or RF-blocking container) before moving it elsewhere.

      I'd certainly encrypt my data carefully before consigning it to either the post or the internet; but I'd be surprised if hitting these boxes would be a good risk/reward for postal employees(though I know I'd like a look at what is inside, a nice rugged network attached storage module is likely to be a neat piece of gear).

    7. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Alain+Williams · · Score: 0

      download and run the Snowball client. Has anybody done this ? I suspect that it is a MS Windows executable, does it run under Wine ?

    8. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Rainbow+Nerds · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are versions for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Amazon supports the Snowball Client for Ubuntu 12+ and RHEL 6+, but no doubt it can run on other systems. https://aws.amazon.com/importexport/tools/

      Also, as per this link, they're working on chain-of-custody tracking using GPS. Amazon has already considered the possibility of theft and it doesn't seem likely to be an issue.

      --
      M-I-Z
      kU still sucks!
    9. Re:Theft waiting to happen by dave420 · · Score: 2

      Stop raining on everyone's parade! It's obviously an NSA operation, the software only works with Windows ME or Vista, and every time someone uses it an "SJW" is born.

    10. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      The presence of backdoor keys for NSA warrant free decryption seems a given. But that would seem to be a given for all major cloud storage services, so it may not even be needed for the Snowball device itself. And there are quite a few situations where local bandwidth costs or data center replication would justify transferring this material to Amazon: their AWS S3 storage has proven far more reliable, and scalable, than many local storage solutions.

    11. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even if you don't have sensitive data you should consider encrypting, as it means encrypted data looks less "interesting" if it's the norm.

    12. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly. If it needs to be encrypted, one should encrypt it locally and then copy it to the Amazon box (which will encrypt again, but not really needed).

      Once the data is copied to the cloud, it will be encrypted based on the original offline encryption done on the local box.

      Otherwise, if it will be stored in clear text in the S3 cloud, you really don't need to bother encrypting it in transit via FedEx/UPS. If you are afraid of data tampering, then again, the data should be encrypted at rest in the cloud still.

    13. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Admiral_Grinder · · Score: 1

      The shipping companies deal with thousands of Amazon boxes a day and they all pretty much look alike. The box they ship it in is probably going to be less decorated than their usual boxes. The only way the driver knows it is special is that it is addressed to a business and he throws his back out picking the damn thing up (come on, at 50TB that is still a good number of harddrives + appliance). But considering that you can get drives in bulk shipped, it will be just another day on the job.

      Business is the primary customer, so it isn't like it will be dropped off on the porch and left.

    14. Re:Theft waiting to happen by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      'Once it arrives, attach the appliance to your local network, download and run the Snowball client to establish a connection, and then use the client to select the file directories that you want to transfer to the appliance. The client will then encrypt and transfer the files to the appliance at high speed.'

      So unless the client is absolute crap, it's a pretty good solution

      Anyone see this as a way to infiltrate a network?

      I mean, the only way to get data into and out of it is a 10gE connection, to which you need to use a client to connect to it. So it's entirely possible for the OS that's running on it (presumably it's just an x86 based PC with a lot of disk) to surreptitiously monitor, scan and potentially plant malware on your network. Sure, SOME people will do data precautions and firewalling, but considering the PC running the client needs access to the data AND access to the snowball, it seems like most people would probably just hook it up to a spare network port.

      While I'm sure Amazon probably wants to ensure those things are clean, I'm not so sure if anything can be implanted in them along the way...

    15. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Muad'Dave · · Score: 1

      I can't wait for a Synology plugin app that supports this. I'd much rather have my NAS push the data to the snowball than have it traverse the network twice.

      --
      Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
    16. Re:Theft waiting to happen by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      Read the article, there is no box involved, it's a big plastic things with a kindle on the side that acts as the shipping label.

      --
      Cheap storage VM.
    17. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because data have value doesn't mean they're secret. In my work, we deal with many terabytes of imagery data for the surface of the Earth, and sometimes when we need to move a lot of it to another data center, we copy it to hard drives and ship them (and the reverse is also true, that sometimes people ship us hard drives). The data themselves are freely available to the public for download, but it can be easier and faster to ship than to transfer over the net.

    18. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Apk made you eat your words again Dave420 hahahahaha http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

    19. Re:Theft waiting to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hahahahaha! Apk made you eat your words again Dave420 http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

  3. A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Drakonblayde · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the beginning, networking was developed so that folks wouldn't have to shuttle data back and forth via locomotion.

    Now, we have so much data and fast bandwidth is so expensive, that transferring data to another site physically is actually a consideration.

    1. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      Now, we have so much data and fast bandwidth is so expensive, that transferring data to another site physically is actually a consideration.

      Was there ever a time this wasn't true?

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    2. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by infolation · · Score: 2

      No matter how much bandwidth there is, people will always want to move more data than there is bandwidth.

      To use the time-honoured car analogy, no matter how many roads the government builds, there will always be enough cars to jam them up.

    3. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      For sufficiently latency-insensitive operations I don't think that it has every really gone away; but my impression(based on hazy memory and anecdote, though I'd welcome anyone with actual numbers) is that, unless you live in an atypically favored location, the delta between the storage you can afford and what the ISP will sell you, much less at a price you can stomach, has actually increased over time, thanks to HDDs massively upping their game while ISPs have improved; but rather more slowly(especially on upload).

    4. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No matter how much bandwidth there is, people will always want to move more data than there is bandwidth.

      Third law of data transfer dynamics?

    5. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No matter how much bandwidth there is, people will always want to move more data than there is bandwidth.
        To use the time-honoured car analogy, no matter how many roads the government builds, there will always be enough cars to jam them up.

      Bandwidth is so cheap there would be no problem uploading TBs worth of data to the cloud.
      The only tiny problem is ------------ you guessed it those fucking RIAA/MPAA type criminals leasing you the lines. Happy ol' cable companies. For these bastards (I can't find a worse word to qualify them) a 1Mb/s line is 0.9 Mb/s line too fast. And the rest well they'll nickel and dime you to death. Hence we're back to square one : physically sending and receiving harddrives as the most cost efficient solution to the problem.

    6. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 2
      At the opposite end of the scale, I have been unable to persuade any of my pigeons to take off with an LTO tape attached to their legs.

      Has anyone else succeeded with this?

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    7. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Funny

      At the opposite end of the scale, I have been unable to persuade any of my pigeons to take off with an LTO tape attached to their legs.

      Has anyone else succeeded with this?

      Try disguising it as a coconut. Works better with swallows, however.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    8. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Drakonblayde · · Score: 1

      Now, we have so much data and fast bandwidth is so expensive, that transferring data to another site physically is actually a consideration.

      Was there ever a time this wasn't true?

      Sure there was. I remember a time when having physical media was a big deal. One, because storage was still an issue, Two because downloading crap took a long time. It you had physical media, it was faster to install from CD than to download and run an executable. Then storage caught up, and bandwidth increased. To the point where I haven't actually used physical media in quite a long time. Need to install an ISO? Flash a thumb drive and boot. I'm actually pretty happy I don't have stacks of game boxes I need to keep track of anymore for my PC games. The DVD and BluRay collection? Ripped to the NAS, served up to the Roku, the cases in storage in the basement, not taking up space in my living room.

      However, with storage getting big and cheap, data tends to grow to accomodate available disk space. Consumer bandwidth, on the other hand, has not grown in kind.

      Case in point - I have close to 12TB of used space on my NAS. It's a RAID6, so I can sustain some drive loss, but I've learned the hard way that RAID is not a back up. Now, given that Amazon has Unlimited Cloud storage for 60 bucks a year, I'd like to take them up on it and use it to backup my NAS. Problem is the fastest Internet I can get in my area without paying construction fees to get a fiber run and then paying a ridiculous amount of money each month for the bandwidth is 5mbps upstream. When I calculated that out, it would take ~300 days just to do the initial backup assuming I ran my upstream at full load 24/7. Right now, I'm relegating backup duties to a bunch of external drives instead, and seriously considering building out a second NAS just to backup the first one. Still doesn't solve my problem of having a secure offsite backup in case the house burns down, shit gets stolen, etc.

      So in some regards, I've managed to nix physical media needs, but that unfortunately has created a situation where physical media is needed for other things, and it's solely because of the lack of bandwidth.

    9. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by cdrudge · · Score: 2

      To the point where I haven't actually used physical media in quite a long time. Need to install an ISO? Flash a thumb drive and boot.

      So you haven't used physical media, but you used physical media (a flash drive) to install software onto another physical media (presumably a hard/solid state drive).

      You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

    10. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by dave420 · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately the standard isn't quite there yet.

    11. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."

      That's from Andrew Tannenbaum, one of the main authors of Minix, the direct ancestor of UNIX, in his book on computer networks. It was a _very_ good book, and I recommend its latest edition to my younger colleagues today. It was first printed in 1981, and I certainly remember occassionally using that kind of solution in the 1980's myself. And physical media transport is still a useful solution today: the external disk or box of disks can be taken offsite and archived for recovery, and to prevent accidental deletion by poorly configured backup systems. Keeping your archival storage away from the possible fat fingers of your current storage maintainers is priceless protection, as is having a secondary backup system not vulnerable to the software or identical hardware failures of your primary backup system.

    12. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      My ISP has been stagnant for years while hard drives just keep getting bigger and bigger. This is especially true for uploads.

      I think my ISP increased upload speeds once in ten years.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    13. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bandwidth isn't expensive at all. Don't pretend that your shitty US ISPs are the average.

    14. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by unencode200x · · Score: 1

      This. I've had 15/2 for almost 7 years. They *just* started offering 50/5 here it's getting installed today. With about 20 devices (iDevices for kids, laptops, TVs, FireTVs, GoogleTVs, etc.), it's about time. On the business side that same 15/2 used to cost $60/mp. Now it costs $299/mo. I think Time Warner Cable Business Class is trying to fatten up their bottom line before the Charter deal goes through.

      --

      Chance favors the prepared mind.
      Perfect is the enemy of good.
    15. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by yodleboy · · Score: 1

      oh my... i'm starting to feel guilty complaining about my 75/75 for $60 a month. looks like i'm getting a good deal.

    16. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No matter how much bandwidth there is, people will always want to move more data more cheaply.

    17. Re: A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      MINIX is not an ancestor of UNIX. It is a pedagogical UNIX workalike originally included as a toy OS that accompanied Tanenbaum's Operating Systems textbook.

      Historically it is a predecessor of Linux, because Linus Torcalds was a minix user who was unsatisfied with it, so began making his own OS. It made perfect sense for minix not to "innovate" btw, because it was a pedagogical tool, never intended to be the broad sort of thing that Linux has grown to be.

      UNIX is (obviously) much older than minix or Linux.

    18. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by unencode200x · · Score: 1

      Wow, 75/75. What area are you in? I want to move! To be clear in case others wonder the $299/mo is if I was to "renew" my 15/2 business class service. For the 50/5 residential service it's about $50/mo.

      --

      Chance favors the prepared mind.
      Perfect is the enemy of good.
    19. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by RoccamOccam · · Score: 1

      That's odd. I always thought the quote was from the book "The Eudaemonic Pie" (the true story of the MIT group beating the casinos at roulette), in which there actually was a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. I suppose the author could have just reused the quote, but it seems like a pretty big coincidence.

    20. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by jabuzz · · Score: 1

      In the last ten years I have gone from 512/128kbps to 40/20Mbps, and with the application of a bit more cash I could go to 80/20Mbps tomorrow (or more likely at the start of the next month billing cycle in about weeks time). However I don't really feel the need for the extra download speed at the moment.

      According to my maths that is roughly an 80 times improvement in a decade. Wind the clock back another couple of years and I was on dial up at 56/33 kbps so another order of magnitude improvement.

      In that time time span there was several increases in the upload speed. First to 2Mbps then 8Mbps, then a switch to ADSL2, before a switch to VDSL2.

      If BT/Openreach are to believed in the next five to six years I will be able to get G.Fast for at least another order of magnitude improvement in speeds.

    21. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      So it takes a year to upload... The sooner you start, the sooner it's done. Then you just have to rsync the changes.

      --
      Cheap storage VM.
    22. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Phreakiture · · Score: 1

      Was there ever a time this wasn't true?

      Maybe five to ten years ago or so. I think that bandwidth shot up around then, which left us with a brief respite before people started demanding more data with the more bandwidth that they then had. At least, that's the way it seems to me. I was pretty happy with my bandwidth around then. I know that bandwidth has gone up since then, but that the demand for content has gone up more.

      That's just my perception, though. YMMV.

      At the same time, it seems like some things don't move or don't move much. Video seems to have settled in at around 4-8 Mbit/sec, which even works on some of the lower tiers of Internet service.

      That, however, naturally leads me to the next point: Most Internet access isn't symmetrical, and hasn't been since 33.6k modems. I bought the particular level of service I have because I mix audio and video as a side-gig, and I need the outbound bandwidth. This solution from Amazon provides just exactly that, just the latency is kind of high.

      --
      www.wavefront-av.com
    23. Re:A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by tepples · · Score: 1

      I think Drakonblayde meant "I haven't actually used physical media that I did not record myself in quite a long time."

    24. Re: A perfect example of why tech is cyclical.... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      Thank you very much for the correction. I confused "Minix" with "Multics", which is a UNIX ancestor and which I used a very long time ago in my career.

  4. And when you want to move your data out? by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do they load the box and send it back to you when you're moving to another service or returning to self-hosting?

    --
    If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
    1. Re:And when you want to move your data out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes.

    2. Re:And when you want to move your data out? by Drakonblayde · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, it's 200 bucks + 3 cents a gig if you want them to ship the data to you, which isn't terribly unreasonable

    3. Re:And when you want to move your data out? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Sure it is. You just have to add everything up and include all of the small bits that eventually add up to a level of TCO and performance that isn't terribly compelling.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    4. Re:And when you want to move your data out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Am I doing the math correctly? $1700 to export a full box of data?

    5. Re:And when you want to move your data out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, it's a lock in service. Pretty much nobody factored *that* into their "AWS is cheap" equation. Best part is there's no way out... you either pay the pay-as-you-go fee for the data, or you bite the bullet and pay the huge lump sum to get data out. There's no leaving it sit on a shelf gathering dust option.

      That may prompt more companies to start erasing old data though...

    6. Re:And when you want to move your data out? by Triklyn · · Score: 1

      can't you download it for free? and just cancel?

      upload may suck, but download is pretty fine for even the average citizen.

    7. Re:And when you want to move your data out? by hawguy · · Score: 1

      Yes, it's a lock in service. Pretty much nobody factored *that* into their "AWS is cheap" equation. Best part is there's no way out... you either pay the pay-as-you-go fee for the data, or you bite the bullet and pay the huge lump sum to get data out. There's no leaving it sit on a shelf gathering dust option.

      That may prompt more companies to start erasing old data though...

      If $1700 to export 50TB of data is too expensive for you, is that 50TB of data really all that valuable to you? It'll cost you $350/month just to keep it in Glacier, and you'd be hard pressed to store it yourself (with the same level of durability) for less than that.

  5. does it work in reverse? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I live in third world USA

  6. Snowball, because of Truecrypt meltdown by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The send your own disk service depended on using truecrypt. WIth no support for truecrypt due to the epic meltdown, plus the recently announced windows kernel driver bug in the windows version of truecrypt allowing people to own you, AWS has wanted to migrate away from using truecrypt containers. That, plus there's a rational limit to the size of devices you can send them by mail that normal people can purchase. Switching to their own portable appliance allows bigger capacities and controlling the security environment. Why amazon still hasn't put out new guidance regarding the disk service and truecrypt is pretty serious though. Not like they have great options for truecrypt compatible multiOS apps (Veracrypt patched, but CipherShed has gone silent)

  7. Not gonna happen by garryknight · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you have 50TB of data that you'd like to put on the S3 cloud, Amazon is releasing Snowball.

    I don't, therefore it isn't.

    --
    Garry Knight
    1. Re:Not gonna happen by dave420 · · Score: 2

      You heard him, Amazon! Garry Knight isn't interested, so just shut the whole operation down. Raze it to the ground! Salt the earth! Garry Knight has spoken!

    2. Re:Not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hence the IF statement.

    3. Re: Not gonna happen by garryknight · · Score: 1

      Dave must have missed that. Must be one of those humans ;-)

      --
      Garry Knight
    4. Re:Not gonna happen by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Tech sites review plenty of flops.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    5. Re:Not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you have 50TB of data that you'd like to put on the S3 cloud, Amazon is releasing Snowball.

      I don't, therefore it isn't.

      Somebody needs to retake Logic 101.

    6. Re:Not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, you've mixed up your logic a bit. It's not *entirely* your fault. The summary doesn't include the 'else' statement that goes along with the 'if' statement. But you *did* assume that there was no 'else' statement, so that's on you.

    7. Re:Not gonna happen by garryknight · · Score: 1

      Ok, I'll play. Show me the 'else'statement.

      --
      Garry Knight
    8. Re:Not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Biscuit conditional.

    9. Re:Not gonna happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We saw apk make you eat your words again Dave420 http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

  8. Just in time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Europe should mail its cultural treasures to Amazon lest they be destroyed by their new Arab overlords.

    1. Re:Just in time by dave420 · · Score: 2

      Chrisq? Is that you?

    2. Re:Just in time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      No, but we can all see apk made you eat your words again Dave420 http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

    3. Re:Just in time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, but we can all see apk made you eat your words again Dave420 http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

  9. upload files? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    did you seriously just call copying files to a hard drive 'upload'? *facepalm*

    1. Re:upload files? by hawguy · · Score: 1

      did you seriously just call copying files to a hard drive 'upload'? *facepalm*

      No, he called copying files to a NAS an "upload" - plug it in an upload your files to the device, seems like a reasonable use of the term. What do you call it?

  10. The name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Snowball"? That is juvenile and utterly disgusting.

    1. Re:The name by yodleboy · · Score: 1

      well... we know what YOU'VE been watching. I suspect there's a perfectly innocuous explanation for the name however.

    2. Re:The name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do? There is?

    3. Re:The name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you know for like the majority of people alive at this moment, snowball refers to something in relation to activities engaged in by children.

      snowball, 5 year olds.

      perfectly innocuous right?

    4. Re:The name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They initially wanted to call it load swap, but that got voted down.

  11. I did this in 1990s by peter303 · · Score: 1

    I got computer time to process a 200MB dataset. But the internet bandwidth was still measured in kilobaud then. So we loaded up a disk and flew to the computer. Multiply everything by a million 20 years later.

  12. Station Wagon by ISoldat53 · · Score: 1

    What's this station wagon you talk about?

  13. if i pay them the $200 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    do I have to give the box back and just keep the disks ? I dont have 50tb of data but no doubt my porn collection can expand to fill it.

  14. Can't wait by xombo · · Score: 1

    I can't wait for the price on this to come down. I did the calculation and to backup our DAS it will be almost $600, not to mention the cost of hosting it from that point forward in S3. The Kindle as a shipping label elicited a hearty guffaw, however.

  15. Re:if i pay them the $200 by Qzukk · · Score: 1

    I suspect after the first couple of people do that, it will become $200 + $5000 deposit to be credited to your AWS account when they get the thing back.

    --
    If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
  16. Metadata? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let us know when they add a method for bulk export/import of S3 files WITH their metadata.

  17. sneaker net by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For a long time at one of the US particle physics accelerators the highest bandwidth connection between the acquisition hardware and the analysis site was a graduate student pedaling a bike with a bunch of tapes in a handlebar basket. Latency was an issue -- especially if riding at night and running into (or being run into by) deer.

  18. The future is here! by Chelloveck · · Score: 2

    I just had Amazon sneakernet some movies to me. Instead of suffer that tedious streaming download I had them put the data on optical disks and mail them to me. When they get here I'll rip them to my hard drive and be all set! That's customer service you just can't get from Hulu. I expect this sort of download to really take off over the next few years.

    --
    Chelloveck
    I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.