Need to upload 16TB to cloud storage for PhD. How?

Johnatan56 said:
What's the conversion rate, about 3-4 seconds per minute? And then audio quality loss when transcoding. Plus, are you sure it's wav to begin with?
I would take advantage of @websquadza, it's a nice offer of them.

I'm not sure what format it's in, that's why I asked. Anyway, it also depends if the research requires the audio in its current format or if the slight loss of encoding in 256k (or 320k) MP3 / AAC is acceptable. Assuming the originals are in wav, converting to 256k mp3 should decrease the size by a factor of 10.
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Ask her to upload the data from any device on the SU network (Each faculty and the library have their own computer areas); all Google traffic is zero rated and the campus computers (the ones in the labs) have gigabit connections. Also, anyone with an SU user account has 50gb of OneDrive storage through Stellenbosch University's Office 365 subscription; OneDrive traffic is also zero rated.

Edit: Forgot to mention that she can create a team in Office 365 which gets unlimited storage.
 
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Thanks a lot guys!
She is going to contact the varsity IT guys and if necessary ask her advisor for a motivation.

Also, thanks a lot to @websquadza for their very generous offer, very awesome of you! DM'ed :-)
 
Fireball said:
Hi all

A friend of mine is doing her PhD at University of Stellenbosch. She has about 12TB of wildillife acoustic recordings used for analysis and study, which has taken many years to collect and save. I'm trying to help her come up with a solution to back up her data, because having irreplaceable data on stored on single drives is not a good backup strategy.

I know Google Drive offers unlimited storage for 10USD a month on their business package. That should be fine and reasonably priced.

The trouble comes in with the bandwidth to actually upload all that data. Neither of us has fiber (LTE only, ~8Mpbs, 50g cap per month).

I'm thinking about asking the IT guys at Stellenbosch varsity if they may be willing to allow her some storage on one of their file servers (12TB is a lot though), and then from there it can be uploaded to Google Drive using the University's gbps fibre line. Does that seem like a reasonable option? Uploading it on a normal residential line would take weeks or months.

Alternatively I guess there must be some data center that could perhaps be able to assist? But from what I've seen they're quite expensive. My friend's income is only the stipend she gets for her research, so affordability is a big problem.

I know I'm asking for champagne with a lemonade budget, but I really want to help her. I unfortunately have no ties or contacts at Stellenbosch varsity.

Do you fine folks maybe have any ideas? I could really use some input (or a favor I could perhaps repay somehow?)

Thank you for your time.
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So to throw in another alternative, why not just make a physical copy, i.e. a couple of 8TB external drives (like this maybe) and leave it at a trusted friend's place? Then the upload time and amount of data / bandwidth needed become trivial, just drive to your friends' place if you want to restore.
 
newby_investor said:
So to throw in another alternative, why not just make a physical copy, i.e. a couple of 8TB external drives (like this maybe) and leave it at a trusted friend's place? Then the upload time and amount of data / bandwidth needed become trivial, just drive to your friends' place if you want to restore.
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Thought about that, but unfortunately neither her nor I have the spare cash laying around for R7k worth of hard drives at the moment. Even secondhand we'd be looking at about R4k (and secondhand disks come with their own risks).
If money wasn't an option, I'd have suggested she go this route.
 
Fireball said:
Thought about that, but unfortunately neither her nor I have the spare cash laying around for R7k worth of hard drives at the moment. Even secondhand we'd be looking at about R4k (and secondhand disks come with their own risks).
If money wasn't an option, I'd have suggested she go this route.
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Fair point. But bear in mind that "renting" cloud storage will add up costs and might end up more expensive before you realise it. Uploading is not your only problem - downloading will be equally expensive should something happen and you need to restore from backups. Just something to bear in mind.

By far the cheapest cloud storage I know of is Amazon Glacier. A few US cents per gigabyte per month. Once you've solved your upload problem, I'd suggest giving that a check out. It's not cloud storage - so you can't work with the stuff in the cloud like you can in GDrive, but it's far cheaper.
 
Why not just drag the files into One Drive using a computer at the library?

Edit: or Google Drive.
 
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We have a 400mbps upload line at work. Would be happy to upload to a Google Drive if needed. Im in Cape Town CBD
 
websquadza said:
If she doesn't come right, we'd be happy to assist. Please drop me a DM and we can arrange to get the drives connected to one of our servers and uploading on a Gbps line.
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jezzad said:
We have a 400mbps upload line at work. Would be happy to upload to a Google Drive if needed. Im in Cape Town CBD
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Some seriously awesome folks on this forum! You guys are the best! If she doesn't come right with the Stellies IT guys, I'll let you know. Internet high five!
 
Out of curiosity, could you try converting a subset of the files to FLAC and posting the average compression ratio? It might just be worth it for the cost savings on backup storage.
 
@Fireball just checking how this panned out? Did your friend manage to get her files backed up into the cloud? Any tips and tricks for everyone else trying to upload large amounts of files to Google?
 
Fireball said:
Hi all

A friend of mine is doing her PhD at University of Stellenbosch. She has about 12TB of wildillife acoustic recordings used for analysis and study, which has taken many years to collect and save. I'm trying to help her come up with a solution to back up her data, because having irreplaceable data on stored on single drives is not a good backup strategy.

I know Google Drive offers unlimited storage for 10USD a month on their business package. That should be fine and reasonably priced.

The trouble comes in with the bandwidth to actually upload all that data. Neither of us has fiber (LTE only, ~8Mpbs, 50g cap per month).

I'm thinking about asking the IT guys at Stellenbosch varsity if they may be willing to allow her some storage on one of their file servers (12TB is a lot though), and then from there it can be uploaded to Google Drive using the University's gbps fibre line. Does that seem like a reasonable option? Uploading it on a normal residential line would take weeks or months.

Alternatively I guess there must be some data center that could perhaps be able to assist? But from what I've seen they're quite expensive. My friend's income is only the stipend she gets for her research, so affordability is a big problem.

I know I'm asking for champagne with a lemonade budget, but I really want to help her. I unfortunately have no ties or contacts at Stellenbosch varsity.

Do you fine folks maybe have any ideas? I could really use some input (or a favor I could perhaps repay somehow?)

Thank you for your time.
Click to expand...
Ask the Uni they will gladly upload it for her.
 
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