Infinite Disk can be deployed at ultra low costs enabling individuals and communities to build up their crowd infrastructure without much financial and technical resources.
Existing Cloud Storages suffer from:
Single Point of Failure
The Cloud Provider itself.
Slow Performance
Remote data over slow network.
High Price
Besides data storage some charge for data traffic as well.
Application Restriction
Need to follow their way e.g. s3 to access data.
Commodity Storage Prices
Although Infinite Disk has been designed to make use of existing unused storage capacity, new storage capacity can also be added at an unprecedented low costs.
With Infinite Disk, YOU instead of the cloud providers, can take direct advantage of continuously improving computer hardware price performance ratios.
Sample prices of new disks in Australia (March 2022) with tax and delivery included:
Even in the unlikely case that the 4TB hard disk drive you bought dies immediately after the 3 years warranty period is finished, a 2TB storage is only AU$1.65 a month while an Apple iCloud 2TB storage is AU$14.99 a month.
Increasing the final storage price to AU$2.99 a month should cover all other costs e.g. extra storage overhead (40%) required in the crowd infrastructure to prevent data lost.
Besides the actual monetary savings discuss above, there is one benefit you get from Infinite Disk that no other storage service can give you - CONTROL.
Apple uses different encryption for different data, the MOST important personal data (e.g. contacts and mails) are NOT encrypted end-to-end:
Although some like Messages are encrypted end-to-end, the private key for that end-to-end encryption is backed up on iCloud Backup - invalidating the whole point of end-to-end backup.
Use of biometrics (e.g. Face ID, Touch ID) to provide access to end-to-end encryption is also problematic:
They are difficult if not impossible to change if stolen.
They can be obtain quickly by force - pushing you hand on to your phone or face in front of your phone.
Dropbox's major redundancy problem is it metadata being store in ONE site.
With Dropbox, data is lost when that ONE site goes down.
Infinite Disk uses "parity" instead of "copies" for data protection across multiple sites. For example, your data can be spread across SEVEN sites (4 sites with data and 3 sites with parities - 75% redundant data), data is lost only if FOUR sites are gone. Thus Infinite Disk needs less redundant data yet allows more sites to fail.
An Infinite Disk site is a computing location that has independent power, cooling, networking, security and ownership.
2017
Deleted files reappeared on users’ accounts. Supposedly this was caused by an error that didn’t remove some files, and when fixing it, a mistake led to these files being sent back to users. This means that some data from six years ago was never deleted and was vulnerable to a leak.
2014
There was criticism around employees having access to encryption keys, meaning they could look at anyone’s files.
2012
Severe data breach ended up revealing the emails and passwords of 68 million users.
2011
Due to an error in an update, anyone could access any Dropbox account with only the email address. There was a fix within four hours, but the update shouldn’t have gone live without testing.
4. Capacity
Dropbox maximum transfer is 250GB, Infinite Disk can use ANY solution immediately while the free bundled Send solution based on open sourced File Sender can send one terabyte files and counting ...
Backblaze stores each file as 20 shards data lost only if 4 or more shards fail. The problem is those 20 shards are all stored on ONE data centre.
So if something happens to that data centre, then your data could be destroyed or be made unavailable for a period of time.
An Infinite Disk site is a computing location that has independent power, cooling, networking, security and ownership.
Infinite Disk stores a copy on Campus for fast access without internet connection PLUS a copy on the Internet with "parity" protection across at least SEVEN sites.
If the Campus copy is not accessible then the Internet copy can be used. The Internet copy is distributed across multiple sites (from 7 to 35 sites) to increase data redundancy
Standard Internet Storage - SEVEN sites (3 parities - 75% redundant data)
Data Lost if FOUR sites gone.
Large Internet Storage - THIRTY-FIVE sites (3 parities - about 9% redundant data)
Data Lost if FOUR sites gone.
There are software providers that packages ZFS and offers it as their own software.
For example:
Instead of just passing on ZFS's benefits, these software packagers can add substantial value to their customers' businesses by introducing Infinite Disk to their offerings seamlessly.
The interface is still ZFS but with massive savings in costs and boosts in reliability.
Like every single Cloud provider out there with DECENTRALISATION claims, the whole service is CENTRALISED in them.
Cubbit itself is a single point of failure. If it is mismanaged or gone then your data . . .
Their software is closed source and speak to their servers under their control in a secret manner.
With Cubbit do you know where your data are being stored ? No ?
Cubbit owns your data, not you.
Can you control how much of your bandwidth it uses for other people's data ?
Cubbit controls your network, not you.
Can you control what software runs in the Cubbit hardware you paid for ?
Cubbit owns your hardware, not you.
Competitive Advantages
Parity Overhead
Cubbit uses a fixed 24 data chunks and 12 parity chunks - fixed 50% overhead
Infinite Disk has selectable parity overhead depending on application (using less storage in most cases):
4 data chunks and 3 parity chunks (75% overhead)
8 data chunks and 3 parity chunks (37.5% overhead) - default
16 data chunks and 3 parity chunks (18.75% overhead)
32 data chunks and 3 parity chunks (9.38% overhead)
Storage Reliability
Cubbit is going to lose you data if more than ⅓ of the disks storing your data are lost. Yet it is only going to start recovering your data when ⅓ is lost. So if it loses just 1 more disk while it is STILL recovering your data ?
Infinite Disk's novel adaptive redundancy is substantially cheaper and more reliable than the 24:12 erasure coding schemes used by Cubbit.
Proprietary Hardware
Cubbit proprietary hardware has a warranty of 4 years and after paying up front for it you are expected to start getting saving in how many years ?
Infinite Disk is a pure software implementation based on Disposable Nodes, there is no hardware lock-in. Create a new Node with just ONE COMMAND on billions of old and new computers, it is that easy!
With Infinite Disk you can turn any part of it on and off at will.
Internet Dependence
To access your data on Cubbit you need to be online and have access to Cubbit servers as well as at least 24 of the 36 sites storing your data chunks. No internet means No access.
Infinite Disk allows you to access your most recent data even when the internet at home or in office is cut. You can even tell it how much data you want to keep locally at home or in office.
4TB USB Hard Disk Drive - 3 year warranty - AU$119
16GB USB Flash Stick - 1 year warranty - AU$5.29