Google drive price drop

Pyro Boy · 13-03-2014 7:38pm #1

Google have reduced the cost of their monthly storage plans quite a bit. Seems like a good deal compared to the competition.

http://googleblog.blogspot.ie/2014/03/save-more-with-google-drive.html?m=1

We've lowered the price of our monthly storage plans to $1.99 for 100GB (previously $4.99), $9.99 for 1TB (previously $49.99), and $99.99 for 10TB, with even more storage available if you need it.

AlanS181824 · 13-03-2014 8:04pm

Pyro Boy wrote: »

Google have reduced the cost of their monthly storage plans quite a bit. Seems like a good deal compared to the competition.

http://googleblog.blogspot.ie/2014/03/save-more-with-google-drive.html?m=1

We've lowered the price of our monthly storage plans to $1.99 for 100GB (previously $4.99), $9.99 for 1TB (previously $49.99), and $99.99 for 10TB, with even more storage available if you need it.

So with VAT for 100GB it comes to 2.45$ or €1.76 a month! That is a great price.

Only for the fact I already have 75GB and only use 10GB I would be upgrading again. Thanks!

TheDriver · 13-03-2014 8:08pm

How are their terms and conditions re privacy etc? Good price though

lemon_remon · 13-03-2014 8:16pm

TheDriver wrote: »

How are their terms and conditions re privacy etc? Good price though

Nothing worse than search, Android, Gmail or Youtube. If you use any of those services their isn't really an excuse to not use Drive. You've already sold your soul...

ecomac · 13-03-2014 8:19pm

I can't understand why anyone would entrust his personal data/information to the company that is mad about spying everything and everybody. And even decide to PAY for that! There is so many cheaper and better options.

- smiple ARM-based linux server (the best and most flexible option)
- NAS with remote access
- router with remote access
- Pogoplug (the easiest option)

lemon_remon · 13-03-2014 8:29pm

ecomac wrote: »

I can't understand why anyone would entrust his personal data/information to the company that is mad about spying everything and everybody. And even decide to PAY for that! There is so many cheaper and better options.

- smiple ARM-based linux server (the best and most flexible option)
- NAS with remote access
- router with remote access
- Pogoplug (the easiest option)

Your data is safer with Google than it is with any of these options. Can you imagine if everyone went this route? Most people can barely use a computer for simple functions never mind maintaining a secure home server. Instead of having Google "steal" your information it would be available to anyone with the know-how.

Panda_Turtle · 13-03-2014 8:36pm

ecomac wrote: »

I can't understand why anyone would entrust his personal data/information to the company that is mad about spying everything and everybody. And even decide to PAY for that! There is so many cheaper and better options.

- smiple ARM-based linux server (the best and most flexible option)
- NAS with remote access
- router with remote access
- Pogoplug (the easiest option)

I`d hazard a guess that 99% of the people in the world would not have a clue what you are talking about in the four options above!

ecomac · 13-03-2014 8:41pm

lemon_remon wrote: »

Your data is safer with Google than it is with any of these options.

Yes - in the meaning you won't loose your data, but NO in any other way. Your personal data is not personal anymore. It will be alalysed and backed up forever. Even if you decide to delete it, it will still stay there.

lemon_remon wrote: »

Can you imagine if everyone went this route?

Yes. There is (almost) no broadband usage limits anymore and upload rates up to 20Mbits with new fibre broadband. And it is simple, but if you are real computer noob - get plug an play Pogoplug or someone taht will do this for you.

Anyhow - this is only my humble opinion. I'm not going to stop you to share your personal information with anyone. Feel free to do so if you like. This is/was your personal information afterall

TheDriver · 13-03-2014 8:41pm

More like 99.999%. Pogoplug sounds more like a sex toy....

Oat23 · 13-03-2014 8:43pm

I'm no genius and I have a NAS set up with a 2TB drive in it. I just put the hard drive in and turned it on. Not rocket science. It is easy to set up remote access too.

Don't understand why anyone would pay a fee per month for a company to host their stuff to be honest. Especially not with google anyway.

long_b · 13-03-2014 8:47pm

ecomac wrote: »

- Pogoplug (the easiest option)

THE greatest pile of sh**e I've ever had the misfortune to plug in to a socket.

Kingkong · 13-03-2014 8:49pm

Be careful, I upgraded before and had 100Gbs but after a while I didnt need it anymore so cancelled.

What I didnt know is it would resetmy storage limit back to the default amount so all those extra GB I picked up from speical offers e.g google docs app etc.. were gone.

ecomac · 13-03-2014 8:50pm

long_b wrote: »

THE greatest pile of sh**e I've ever had the misfortune to plug in to a socket.

Still better than google drive.

Corkfeen · 13-03-2014 9:04pm

ecomac wrote: »

Still better than google drive.

I'm pretty fine with using Google Drive. Can share data if I need to and there's nothing that the NSA would get much particular use out of on my account. I have plenty of hard drives backing stuff up. Backing up online results in a far lower chance of data loss.

Kenny Logins · 13-03-2014 9:24pm

ecomac wrote: »

Yes - in the meaning you won't loose your data, but NO in any other way. Your personal data is not personal anymore. It will be alalysed and backed up forever. Even if you decide to delete it, it will still stay there.

Yes. There is (almost) no broadband usage limits anymore and upload rates up to 20Mbits with new fibre broadband. And it is simple, but if you are real computer noob - get plug an play Pogoplug or someone taht will do this for you.

Anyhow - this is only my humble opinion. I'm not going to stop you to share your personal information with anyone. Feel free to do so if you like. This is/was your personal information afterall

All they are interested in is serving adverts, they don't go through your **** looking for gossip.

webels · 13-03-2014 9:40pm

ecomac wrote: »

I can't understand why anyone would entrust his personal data/information to the company that is mad about spying everything and everybody. And even decide to PAY for that! There is so many cheaper and better options.

- smiple ARM-based linux server (the best and most flexible option)
- NAS with remote access
- router with remote access
- Pogoplug (the easiest option)

Where are you keeping those storage options. Have you considered fire or flood? All decent options but all on site storage. Saying all that I do agree with taking great care sharing personal data.

ecomac · 13-03-2014 10:02pm

webels wrote: »

Have you considered fire or flood?

In that case the lost data would be the least of my worries.

webels · 13-03-2014 10:41pm

ecomac wrote: »

In that case the lost data would be the least of my worries.

Who is the house Insurance with in that case though if the documents are damaged/destroyed. Although many insurance companies send email confirmation. Just saying.

biebiebie · 13-03-2014 10:43pm

ecomac wrote: »

In that case the lost data would be the least of my worries.

Very true.
But if it was backed up off site then it wouldn't be a worry (or potential loss) to begin with.

If you don't care about losing what is on your nas etc then fair enough no need to consider remote backup.

However if you value family photos and videos then remote backup is not something that should be ignored.

It's a good price reduction / bargain nonetheless.

ThisRegard · 13-03-2014 10:50pm

Oat23 wrote: »

I'm no genius and I have a NAS set up with a 2TB drive in it. I just put the hard drive in and turned it on. Not rocket science. It is easy to set up remote access too.

Don't understand why anyone would pay a fee per month for a company to host their stuff to be honest. Especially not with google anyway.

Genuine question, how easy is it to access your NAS from outside your network?
Big selling point for Google drive is easy cloud access.

moodrater · 13-03-2014 10:57pm

If you're going to be a cheapskate at least keep a disk/nas box in a relatives house. I send drives off for data recovery all the time for people that thought they didn't have anything important. The last one cost €360 to recover a single excel file for revenue.

BionicRasher · 14-03-2014 12:23am

Good bargain. Handy for storing backups of photos and video and non private documents.
I also find it great for sharing docs and calendars etc between people like club members for example

I have a legacy package of 20gb for the princely sum of $5 per year and I have the additional 15gb from Gmail etc but it's starting to get full so maybe this is a way of getting people like me off the really cheap older plans

Oat23 · 14-03-2014 12:28am

ThisRegard wrote: »

Genuine question, how easy is it to access your NAS from outside your network?
Big selling point for Google drive is easy cloud access.

Simple.

Turn on UPNP on your router. Login to the admin panel of the NAS (mine is a ZyXEL NSA310) and go to the UPnP Port Mapping section under network. Tick to activate the FTP/HTTP over WAN and select the wan port. Done.

Type your home IP into your browser from wherever you are followed by ':' and the port you choose. Done.

I started downloading a file from home so you can see the speed I get (from germany).

professore · 14-03-2014 12:34am

Oat23 wrote: »

I'm no genius and I have a NAS set up with a 2TB drive in it. I just put the hard drive in and turned it on. Not rocket science. It is easy to set up remote access too.

Don't understand why anyone would pay a fee per month for a company to host their stuff to be honest. Especially not with google anyway.

You'll understand when your NAS self destructs in a year down the road and you end up paying a data recovery company a small fortune to get past it's proprietary storage system.

http://www.artiss.co.uk/2012/09/zyxel-nsa310-nas-and-issues-with-the-latest-firmware

If you must do it yourself, use backuppc on Linux - a great piece of software.

long_b · 14-03-2014 12:36am

Oat23 wrote: »

.
.

Type your home IP into your browser from wherever you are followed by ':' and the port you choose. Done.
]

Excuse my ignorance but isn't that assuming you've got a static IP from your ISP?

AlanS181824 · 14-03-2014 12:46am

I upload a lot to Google Drive and I don't worry about Privacy at all. I trust Google with my data and even if someone did get hold of everything which they can't all they see would be pictures of my dog and Selfies of me and my girlfriend! Oh and some school stuff.

Oat23 · 14-03-2014 12:57am

professore wrote: »

You'll understand when your NAS self destructs in a year down the road and you end up paying a data recovery company a small fortune to get past it's proprietary storage system.

http://www.artiss.co.uk/2012/09/zyxel-nsa310-nas-and-issues-with-the-latest-firmware

If you must do it yourself, use backuppc on Linux - a great piece of software.

Looks like it would be best if I don't do any FW upgrades then? I never have. If it aint broke..
Everything important is available on my work drives. My family pics are always backed up to a separate SD card and stored in my safe. I have them on my NAS for remote access though. So if it fails all I will really lose is about 1.5TB of TV shows/movies. I'll get over it.

long_b wrote: »

Excuse my ignorance but isn't that assuming you've got a static IP from your ISP?

I guess. My IP has always been static with Eircom/UPC. There is always the free no-ip.org though if you have a dynamic IP.

Alanstrainor · 14-03-2014 1:09am

long_b wrote: »

Excuse my ignorance but isn't that assuming you've got a static IP from your ISP?

True. Most ISPs do not provide static IP addresses as standard, there is usually a fee for this.

Dyndns would solve this issue, if you had some sort of box to constantly update your external IP. I have a raspberry pi that does it.

But to be honest, if you just want to backup photos and the likes, just pay for the google drive, all this tinfoil hat stuff doesn't apply to most. Your holiday pics are of no use to anyone but you.

And if you do have a problem with storing them on googles servers, just put them in an encrypted volume. Done.

JDxtra · 14-03-2014 9:44am

It's a bargain compared to the previous price of it. Dropbox had always been over priced - now in comparison it looks ridiculous.

jester77 · 14-03-2014 9:54am

Nice. I've a NAS at home with 15TB of storage and a few backups for the real important stuff. If anything ever went wrong I would have a lot of manual work to get things restored. I had been looking at elephant for remote storage, it is easy to sync it to my NAS but the prices were putting me off. These drive plans are great value, I'll probably take advantage of them and create my own rsync script.

JTMan · 14-03-2014 10:08am

Pyro Boy wrote: »

Google have reduced the cost of their monthly storage plans quite a bit. Seems like a good deal compared to the competition.

http://googleblog.blogspot.ie/2014/03/save-more-with-google-drive.html?m=1

We've lowered the price of our monthly storage plans to $1.99 for 100GB (previously $4.99), $9.99 for 1TB (previously $49.99), and $99.99 for 10TB, with even more storage available if you need it.

It is worth pointing out that Google previously charged per year, then they hiked the prices and storage limits when they changed to charging per month, now they have reduced the prices per month. However, the new prices annualised are more expensive for certain data ranges than the original prices they are just easier on the eye when quoted as monthly prices. Anyway, the new prices are good value.

BionicRasher · 14-03-2014 10:18am

Fungus wrote: »

It is worth pointing out that Google previously charged per year, then they hiked the prices and storage limits when they changed to charging per month, now they have reduced the prices per month. However, the new prices annualised are more expensive for certain data ranges than the original prices they are just easier on the eye when quoted as monthly prices. Anyway, the new prices are good value.

Not true in all cases.

I have a Legacy plan for 20GB @ $5.00 per year = .25c per GB per year
I can now get 100GB @ $1.99 per month = $23.88 per year = .2388c per GB per year

keithclancy · 14-03-2014 10:49am

Part funded by the NSA .... of course it will be cheaper

keithclancy · 14-03-2014 10:52am

Alanstrainor wrote: »

True. Most ISPs do not provide static IP addresses as standard, there is usually a fee for this.

Dyndns would solve this issue, if you had some sort of box to constantly update your external IP. I have a raspberry pi that does it.

But to be honest, if you just want to backup photos and the likes, just pay for the google drive, all this tinfoil hat stuff doesn't apply to most. Your holiday pics are of no use to anyone but you.

And if you do have a problem with storing them on googles servers, just put them in an encrypted volume. Done.

Most NAS units will update a Dynamic DNS service itself anyway.

Quite a few routers also.

Anything really important I just keep on DVD and stick it somewhere.

loyatemu · 14-03-2014 12:26pm

if you pay for 100GB is that in addition to your free 15GB? They could use a 500GB option - big gap between 100GB and 1TB.

As others have mentioned anyone who has data they really want to keep should ensure they have an off-site backup, even if this is just an extra portable drive kept in your desk at work.

_Kaiser_ · 14-03-2014 12:35pm

I keep everything on a DELL Workstation that I've setup as a server running multiple Hyper-V VMs for different tasks. The machine itself is using RAID 5 and rock-solid, but external/offsite storage would appeal except no-one has 500GB+ of Word docs or photos....

zl1whqvjs75cdy · 14-03-2014 12:38pm

What happens if you decide to stop paying Google for whatever reason. Do they give you time to get your data off or just delete/NSA storage it all.

dubmick · 14-03-2014 12:45pm

Funniest bargain alert thread in a while…imagine trying to explain an NAS server and a pogoplug to elder relations

Jet Black · 14-03-2014 1:00pm

I had 50gb for $2.49. Changed to this and its 125gb for $1.99. I used an address in Alaska so there is no tax iirc. Handy to upload and share pictures with people as I don't have Facebook.

jester77 · 14-03-2014 1:50pm

Jet Black wrote: »

I had 50gb for $2.49. Changed to this and its 125gb for $1.99. I used an address in Alaska so there is no tax iirc. Handy to upload and share pictures with people as I don't have Facebook.

Facebook is free

How are you getting away with an Alaskan address, do they not cross check against your billing address?

DesperateDan · 14-03-2014 1:51pm

It's a real shame that Google Drive is so sh!t compared to DropBox. Slow, resource hungry, and often crashes for me.

jester77 · 14-03-2014 1:55pm

DesperateDan wrote: »

It's a real shame that Google Drive is so sh!t compared to DropBox. Slow, resource hungry, and often crashes for me.

I've never experienced a single crash. Maybe the issue is elsewhere?

Drive is using 56Mb of mem and dropbox 36Mb. Not that much more to say it's resource hungry.

Kenny Logins · 14-03-2014 1:56pm

jester77 wrote: »

Facebook is free

How are you getting away with an Alaskan address, do they not cross check against your billing address?

I foolishly changed my Wallet address to US just to apply a $25 Play gift voucher I was given, and can't switch back now because I still have a balance ($0.00) (BTW it wasn't easy to spend $25 on the nose).

Have US play store now on my desktop, tablet and phone.

Dman001 · 14-03-2014 1:56pm

Google can scan my stuff all they want, all they'll discover is I'm the most boring sod on the planet!

Seriously though, I can see people's reservations about putting some content on Drive. But it's good to see people being aware of what they are signing up to, and the potential of this content seen by unwanted eyes!

The biggest benefit for me with Drive, over a NAS drive/server is the accessibility of Google Drive. They've an App for almost all devices and a tight ecosystem with GMail/Chrome. It's just not as User Friendly going down the Server/NAS route.

DesperateDan · 14-03-2014 3:22pm

jester77 wrote: »

I've never experienced a single crash. Maybe the issue is elsewhere?

Drive is using 56Mb of mem and dropbox 36Mb. Not that much more to say it's resource hungry.

I have an i7-3930k processor and 150mb broadband.

Google Drive takes between 45 seconds - 1 minute just to sign in. It takes me roughly four times as long to sync docs - I have watched files take more than 5 mins to sync on someone's computer where DB instantaneously syncs. In-fact it's usually faster for me to upload and email a file rather than use Drive to share it.

And on many occasions the syncing fails for no reason. DB for me has never once failed to sync anything and launches in a fraction of the time. I'm only forced to use Drive because someone on my team doesn't have a large DB account

Also for me idle DB is using 57mb and Drive is using over 175 :pac:

keith_d99 · 14-03-2014 3:52pm

There was a Box.com bargain alert a while back ... 50gb for free.
App and site are nice.
For anybody backing up video ... you can upload as much as you like to YouTube and mark videos private

cruhoortwunk · 14-03-2014 4:12pm

Anyone worried about NSA or privacy, take a look at this software that encrypts your data before uploading it. Free for personal use.
https://www.boxcryptor.com/en/google-drive

bk · 14-03-2014 4:22pm

Kaiser2000 wrote: »

I keep everything on a DELL Workstation that I've setup as a server running multiple Hyper-V VMs for different tasks. The machine itself is using RAID 5 and rock-solid, but external/offsite storage would appeal except no-one has 500GB+ of Word docs or photos....

Well you would be surprised how much photo and video data a half decent camera will generate.

I have 500GB+ of photos and video from my RX100 and older Canon S95, top quality pocket sized cameras, but not DSLR's and using JPEG and not RAW.

Two problems with your Dell workstation:

1) Cool, but far too geeky for the majority of people to set up and maintain.

2) It is probably a power hug.

BTW I'm running a QNAP NAS with 4 x 2TB HDD in Raid 5 giving me 6TB of usable space which I'm starting to run out of!! Interestingly one of the drives failed this week, so it has already paid for itself.

The ultimate geeky NAS setup would be a PC with lots of disks running Solaris ZFS. I'd love to do it, but the power draw of such a beast would be painful!!

Shiny · 14-03-2014 4:38pm

I upgraded to the 1TB option. I'm partially aware of the privacy issues and could set up a server if I really wanted but I simply couldn't be bothered to be honest.

My main priority is to use it as another backup destination for my photos which are hovering at around 190GB at the moment. I couldn't care less if they are indexed, looked at, mined etc... they are already on Flickr but I would find that harder to access than google drive if I needed to download everything at once.

My documents on the other hand I'm slightly concerned about those being indexed so I make encrypted backups of my dropbox and will put those up on google drive in addition to the photos. Whether that encryption is pointless given that they aren't encrypted in dropbox is another story...:(

StaticNoise · 14-03-2014 4:45pm

Kenny Logins wrote: »

I foolishly changed my Wallet address to US just to apply a $25 Play gift voucher I was given, and can't switch back now because I still have a balance ($0.00) (BTW it wasn't easy to spend $25 on the nose).

Have US play store now on my desktop, tablet and phone.

I have the same problem. However, as far as I know, it is being rectified in the next few months. It's a silly issue. I've have had five calls to Google about it.

However, if you change your country in the general Google settings, you are good to go.

johnmcdnl · 14-03-2014 5:56pm

Panda_Turtle wrote: »

I`d hazard a guess that 99% of the people in the world would not have a clue what you are talking about in the four options above!

I consider myself an absolute computer geek and I've never heard of pogoplug.
Also none of those options really suit if you need your files on the go which drive does offer.

Google drive price drop

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