A while ago I hit the 420GB limit on my backup storage. I've been gradually reducing the mp3s that I've been backing up. HD 1080i videos of the kids sure take up a lot of space, and bluegrass backups just don't compete.
I'm going to soonish buy a 500G external drive. But I thought I'd compare the Cost/Benefit of S3. Let's assume 100G of files, approx 5 MG in size.
S3 (old and new pricing)
$.15/GB/month.
100GB = $15/month = $180/year
500GB drive: Atic sells for $222 CA, about $180 US.
$180 for 100G for 1 year vs $180 for 500G forever. Pretty clear to me.
The one nice thing about S3 is easy access to off-site storage. I definitely want offsite backups for the kids videos, but it's still way cheaper to just give my old 120 or 300 G drive to my brother.
While I agree that S3 is still not cheap for consumers when you get to large amounts of data, I'd argue (given 2 disk failures in the last year) that 'forever' is a bit optimistic.