Storage : S3 vs. Hard Drive

I looked at Amazon S3 service, but it is still expensive, especially if you plan to just "store" files and not often touch them. For example keeping 500GB would cost $90 per month. Compare to a 500GB Hard Drive that cost less than 60€ ! You may count about $10 per month for electric power, depending on your region.

So I planned to use the Open Source Java client : JetS3t, but abandoned it altogether.

Then I have to check for solutions to replicate the files to friends machines. It wouldn't make sense to me to use RAID mirror. Mirror won't protect against thieves or fire !