Mail Your Hard Drive to Amazon

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This is such a simple idea, you have to wonder why everyone isn't doing this. There is even a handy pricing calculator to help you figure out how much it will cost to do your drive.

Ship your device along with its interface connectors, and power supply to AWS. When your package arrives, it will be processed and securely transferred to an AWS data center, where your device will be attached to an AWS Import/Export station. After the data load completes, the device will be returned to you.
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Not a good idea for ANY type of sensitive data.

What would stop people from stealing shipped drives to rip off information?

I can see huge data breaches happening because of this.
 
Forgot to add one thing.

You better already have a mirror image backup of whatever you ar shipping.

Otherwise what would happen if your drive was damaged in shipping?
 
cyclone3d said:
Forgot to add one thing.

You better already have a mirror image backup of whatever you ar shipping.

Otherwise what would happen if your drive was damaged in shipping?
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Great point, indeed I worked for a company that did this on site for this reason.
 
In a way, it could be safer. You would have to physically intercept the data instead of grabbing it through the network.
 
If you are using it for backup the solution is simple, just create an encrypted file container.
 
With all these bandwidth caps I think Amazon simple was reading one of those articles about how it'd be cheaper and faster to buy a 1TB HD and mail it then use your connection, and boom an industry was born!
 
Great idea. With many ISPs capping total data transfer, and almost all US ISPs having horrific upload speeds mailing in a 2TB drive will be both cheaper and faster than transferring it online.

AT&T charges $10/50gb or 20 cents/gb on their U-verse service. That's $400 to transfer a 2TB drive. Mailing it to amazon in an external enclosure? Maybe $20.

At my ISP's blistering 768k upload, it would take me ~250 days to upload that same 2TB drive to amazon. Shipping there and back? Even if it's horrible, a month.
 
I wonder how paranoid Government people get when FedEx comes to pick up the "special" envelopes... Oh noes teh milk man stoled my pie recipeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Seriously, mailing drives is no big deal.
 
The Healthcare software company I recently worked for does something similar all the time. There are HIPAA constraints you need to keep in mind when doing so, but otherwise it has not yet been a problem in years.
 
We mail a drive between our 2 offices all the time. Faster than trying to copy the data over a 10mb internet connection.
 
This isn't new, they have been doing this since day one.

This is done for a few reasons, 1) they charge per MB that you transfer to the cloud. so you would be paying a lot upfront to get everything setup. 2) speed of copying large amounts of data. if you want to copy TB of data to your new hosted system it is much faster to box everything up, send it to them, have them copy the data from the device and then send it back to you.

I agree it isn't a very secure method, but i don't consider your data stored on a cloud very secure either.
 
This sounds like a neat idea. Unfortunately I will never be able to use it, since every package I mail ends up being impaled by multiple sharp objects, just before they are dragged behind a truck driving through a hurricane.
 
Exavior said:
I agree it isn't a very secure method, but i don't consider your data stored on a cloud very secure either.
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If security is the primary concern ship it registered mail and you'll be fine.

Also, is that quote written correctly? Ship the hard drive AND the power supply? Wtf?
 
TwistedAegis said:
If security is the primary concern ship it registered mail and you'll be fine.

Also, is that quote written correctly? Ship the hard drive AND the power supply? Wtf?
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Although I see where you're headed with that, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume he's referring to external drives which usually have their own (sometimes proprietary) power adapters. If you're mailing just a drive, I'm sure they have some kinda slot they just drop it in for all the connections (see the numerous desktop connector devices).
 
Read the specs. Max power draw: 2Kw. 8U rack, 50lbs So you can ship them a monster eSATA rackmount array to ingest for you.

This is not a service for some dudes worrying about their ISP uplaod caps. Sheesh.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Also, is that quote written correctly? Ship the hard drive AND the power supply? Wtf?
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Yea, that was my thought as well. If not written accurately they need to change the wording so people do not ship a power supply.
 
TwistedAegis said:
If security is the primary concern ship it registered mail and you'll be fine.

Also, is that quote written correctly? Ship the hard drive AND the power supply? Wtf?
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mcravenufo said:
Yea, that was my thought as well. If not written accurately they need to change the wording so people do not ship a power supply.
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That is correct. You are not sending them your SATA drive out of your computer. This is meant for companies to send an entire raid array. They aren't going to keep everything around for every device, so you need to send that power suppies for your raid array. As i stated above this is meant for companies where mail is faster than the uplink.

Lets assume that you a OC3 for your office and perfect conditions, if you need to transfer 5TB (which is a very small amount for a company) of data to Amazon you are looking at 3 Days 6 Hours 33 Minutes 16.2 Seconds. Bring that up to 10 or 20 and you are looking at 7 - 14 days. That isn't reasonable for when you are trying to get your servers up and running. So instead of waiting a week or two in order to transmit your data to your new server, you send them the array and they copy it to the new clould hosted server for you.

Turns out i was incorrect about the charges, that is only for data going out of their network, not in. So the only draw of this is the transfer time, not the cost.

ianken said:
Read the specs. Max power draw: 2Kw. 8U rack, 50lbs So you can ship them a monster eSATA rackmount array to ingest for you.

This is not a service for some dudes worrying about their ISP uplaod caps. Sheesh.
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Exactly, this is for multi terrabyte+ raid arrays.
 
If security is a concern then encrypt your data.

Furthermore, you're not shipping them the primary source, but a copy. If you are shipping them the primary source you need to be beaten to death.
 
Here we go from the Amazon sites itself

If loading your data over the Internet would take a week or more, you should consider using AWS Import/Export.
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So that is when you choice to do this, when the amount of data you need to upload will take more than a week. they even give you a nice table to show you at what type of connection speed you would ant to consider using the mail in option instead of uploading it.
 
cyclone3d said:
Not a good idea for ANY type of sensitive data.

What would stop people from stealing shipped drives to rip off information?

I can see huge data breaches happening because of this.
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Its not like the packages are left on amazons doorstep for them to be swiped by some thief. Think for a second on how it could be stolen, It would have to be a package handler, delivery person or someone at amazon. Its very unlikely the drive would be stolen.

Once you get past the paranoia and realize the absurdity of thinking someones going to be stealing random HDDs to steal your sensitive infos it becomes pretty apparent that its safe.

If you are that paranoid how do you upload anything on the web with any sort of confidence?
 
Kueller said:
Great idea. With many ISPs capping total data transfer, and almost all US ISPs having horrific upload speeds mailing in a 2TB drive will be both cheaper and faster than transferring it online.

AT&T charges $10/50gb or 20 cents/gb on their U-verse service. That's $400 to transfer a 2TB drive. Mailing it to amazon in an external enclosure? Maybe $20.

At my ISP's blistering 768k upload, it would take me ~250 days to upload that same 2TB drive to amazon. Shipping there and back? Even if it's horrible, a month.
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Apparently you didn't read the article.

There is a base fee of $80 per device + an hourly fee for time spent for copying the data.
 
Disposed said:
Its not like the packages are left on amazons doorstep for them to be swiped by some thief. Think for a second on how it could be stolen, It would have to be a package handler, delivery person or someone at amazon. Its very unlikely the drive would be stolen.

Once you get past the paranoia and realize the absurdity of thinking someones going to be stealing random HDDs to steal your sensitive infos it becomes pretty apparent that its safe.

If you are that paranoid how do you upload anything on the web with any sort of confidence?
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Haven't ever had anything go missing in shipment have you?

I've had stuff go missing.

I also know of stuff that was marked as delivered when it wasn't, only to then a few days later show in route, then say it is missing, then later show up.

Also its not a hard drive that you are sending them.
 
Disposed said:
Its not like the packages are left on amazons doorstep for them to be swiped by some thief. Think for a second on how it could be stolen, It would have to be a package handler, delivery person or someone at amazon. Its very unlikely the drive would be stolen.

Once you get past the paranoia and realize the absurdity of thinking someones going to be stealing random HDDs to steal your sensitive infos it becomes pretty apparent that its safe.

If you are that paranoid how do you upload anything on the web with any sort of confidence?
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I generally don't "upload' any personal info on the web. Now buying stuff online and paying my bills online.. sure.. at least they have a "secure" and "encrypted" connection and i have been lucky thus far to not have any fraudulant charges show up.
There have been a few times where I received new cards and letters from companies due to a possible security breach though.

As for trusting people that I do not personally know having physical access to computers and/or storage devices with my personal data on them... no way. This should be especially true for businesses, especially if they have trade secret type documents on them. If not, then you are just asking for trouble.. no matter "how unlikely" it is to happen.

And for that matter, they wouldn't even have to physically steal the drives.. they could just copy the data off and sell it or use it for their own purposes.

Paranoid.. you betcha. I know a few people who have had their credit card info stolen as well as accounts for different stuff hacked. I NEVER save passwords for anything on my computer.

You want my passwords.. you are gonna haveta physically break into my house and find them.

I was one of the people who had their g-mail accounts compromised a while back and had a bunch of SPAM sent out through it. I still think it was somebody at google. I ended up deleting all my contacts as well as changing my password to something absurdely long... as if it shouldn't have been long enough before.
 
I'd rather just upload it over an encrypted connection... and *I* should be the one that owns the private key, not the service provider.
 
cyclone3d said:
Apparently you didn't read the article.

There is a base fee of $80 per device + an hourly fee for time spent for copying the data.
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Of course not, I never read the articles because they never link directly to articles. $80+$2.50/hr is still less than $400 though.
 
Having fedex loose a dozen cisco 6509 units that were configured and tested by us before being sent to our remote, I have no faith in shipping anything with information on it.
 
Lebowski said:
Having fedex loose a dozen cisco 6509 units that were configured and tested by us before being sent to our remote, I have no faith in shipping anything with information on it.
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I call bullshit, that never happen. Do you think that Fed Ex would still be in business if they ever lost a package :rolleyes:

That sucks, but yeah, you can't trust any service to not lose your package. They won't even promise you that they won't lose it.
 
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