Cheapest way of hosting a large file for downloading

[lukesterboy]

I have a 55GB file that i want to upload to a server where i can give people the link and then them be able to download it. My budget is around £15/$20 a month. I would prefer a 1Gbps port but 100Mbps is fine. I'd imagine i will be using about 10TB of transfer a month maybe less so either a unmetered or high bandwidth connection is best. What would be the best way for me to do this? Would it be just storing it on a service such as Google drive and paying for a bigger drive space? I plan to upload other large files in the future so 200GB+ of space will be required sooner rather than later. Or would the other best way to be to buy a cheap dedicated server or vps? Any recommendations and thanks for your help.

 

Luke.

[lookpuppy]

Whats the file

[Theguywhobea]

You could always check out AWS and see what their prices would be like.

[lukesterboy]

6 minutes ago, Fruitsnacc said:

Whats the file

Its a various FL Studio files.

[lukesterboy]

7 minutes ago, Theguywhobea said:

You could always check out AWS and see what their prices would be like.

The storage is cheap but its the transfer that costs.

[jmack]

6 minutes ago, Theguywhobea said:

You could always check out AWS and see what their prices would be like.

Way way way too much with AWS. Your looking at $500+/month for that kind of bandwidth. 

 

There is a useful calculator on this page:

https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage-pricing.html

 

10TB of data transfer is not a small amount, so even most 'unlimited bandwidth' hosts are going to have issues or some small print in the TOS that will flag the server.

 

Look for a cloud hosting provider that offers the smallest per gb bandwidth cost.

 

 

[lukesterboy]

1 minute ago, jmack said:

Way way way too much with AWS. Your looking at $500+/month for that kind of bandwidth. 

 

There is a useful calculator on this page:

https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage-pricing.html

 

10TB of data transfer is not a small amount, so even most 'unlimited bandwidth' hosts are going to have issues or some small print in the TOS that will flag the server.

 

Look for a cloud hosting provider that offers the smallest per gb bandwidth cost.

 

 

Yeah it is very expensive. What would be considered a small amount, i could always try a smaller amount such as what, 3TB? I really don't know how much will be downloaded but just wanted to go with like 10TB to cover my self.

[ProjectBox153]

Google Drive has good speeds and cost $20/year (USD) for 100GB of storage.

[flaminarrowz]

On 1/10/2018 at 12:00 PM, Jamiec1130 said:

Google Drive has good speeds and cost $20/year (USD) for 100GB of storage.

I would be in favor of this, but there seems to be an undisclosed limit bandwidth for google drive. I've seen files flagged before and have the "24 hour" limit reached notification.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16856102/google-drive-limit-number-of-download

 

They also disabled the "host" link option to bypass the limit.

Quote

It looks like that this limitation can be avoided if you use the following URL pattern:

https://googledrive.com/host/file-id

https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2015/08/deprecating-web-hosting-support-in.html?visit_id=1-636514098874874324-2565236236&hl=en&rd=1

 

 

I found these guys https://www.bhost.net/

10TB is a lot of bandwidth, YMMV but the terms and conditions don't say anything about "excessive use" or file hosting (https://www.bhost.net/terms/).

Who knows? Just a shot in the dark.

 

*I have no affiliation with bhost.net and those aren't referral links.

[jkirkcaldy]

Could you not look into a seedbox and host the file on there for people to download as a torrent? Or a lot of seedboxes come with some sort of ftp server build in so people could download it from the ftp?

 

a lot of seedboxes have "unlimited" bandwidth and a high speed connection to the internet, and come with around 500GB to start with. they are around the £10 per month price range depending on what offers you can find.

[mariushm]

Ideally, you would make a torrent and use the server to seed the torrent.

But you could also server them through http  or ftp , it's your dedicated server after all ... the torrent helps if multiple download at the same time, as people would start downloading parts of the file from other people downloading your files.

 

Your best option would be to rent  a dedicated server from a company that offers some older hardware at a discount.

 

OVH has a cheap / budget dedicated servers brands called Kimsufi / SoYouStart but I'm not sure if they accept people from any country, you'd have to check.

Here's the page : https://www.kimsufi.com/en/servers.xml

They have some cheap Intel Atom machines with 4 GB of memory and 100 mbps unmetered for as low as 5 euro a month, but they're hard to get.

Cheapest is still cheap, at around 13-15 euro a month, for example : 13 euro plus vat for  Intel  ATOM N28002c/4t 1.86GHz 4GB DDR3 1066MHzSoftRaid  2x2TB 100 Mbps

I'd go for this though, Intel  Xeon E3-1225v2 4c/4t 3.2GHz 16GB DDR3 1333MHz SoftRaid  3x2TB 100 Mbps €17.99 ex. VAT

 

Hetzner.de  has a "Server auction" page where they offer older hardware at discount : https://www.hetzner.com/sb

For example, there's now a 28 euro per month server with the specs :

Intel Core i7-3770, 2x 3 TB , 16 GB ram  , unlimited bandwidth - I think it's 1 gbps port, and they may throttle connections once you exceed 10 TB but not sure. Used to be like that years ago. 

Also, you may have to find someone to set up linux and a web server /ftp  for you as these really cheap ones are delivered with just a "Rescue system" and you can install the OS via remote connection.

 

Leaseweb has some basic servers starting from around 37$ a month (if you commit to a 1 year contract, and $50 setup fee)  :  https://www.leaseweb.com/dedicated-servers/instant-delivery

You get 2 TB of disk space, 10 TB of bandwidth, and you can upgrade to more for some monthly fee.

 

You can also check forums like WebHostingTalk, companies post offers from time to time in the proper section :

 

For example Psychz Network advertises dedicated servers starting from 29$ a month : https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1763264

E3-1230 v2  16GB RAM  1TB Hard Drive     Server Also Includes:  1Gbps Switch Port   1Gbps Unmetered Bandwidth  /30 Private VLAN  20Gbps DDoS Mitigation
IPMI (Remote Administration)  $29/Month (while supplies last)

... and there's a 24$ version with 100 TB bandwidth instead of unlimited gigabit (around 330 TB a month)

 

 

[sn3ll_]

Digitalocean droplets

 

Free 1TB a month 

then

$0.01/GB 1TB = $10

 

Digitalocean Free 1TB and $10 per TB