Sia hosts do not provide the same level of reliability. Part of this is quality of software, Storj storage node code is just so much better than Sia hosts. There seems to be some drama around that problem. Part is that the Sia network have different reliability standards, and with upload fees it reduces the incentive to provide reliable long-term storage.
Either that, or work on a way to use the uplink protocol in pure client-side in-browser Javascript, which would reduce the need for gateways. There are some problems needed to be solved to do the latter. I do not see this feature on the official roadmap though, I suspect there are enough customers satisfied with libuplink or gateways to fuel the development process already.
@BrightSilence has described his idea several times, one of them here. Held amounts were a recurring discussion topic for some time, so if you’re interested in some ideas, it might be worth spending some time browsing old posts.
If you are to migrate a whole disk to another, it’s better to copy the whole disk image, as opposed to copying file by file. This is because you perform a single sequential read over the whole drive capacity, and not tens of millions of small reads all around the drive. Copying a modern 18 TB drive this way would effectively take a bit less than two days, so well within allowed downtime.
Indeed. I mostly limited participation in discussions like that to correcting obvious ommissions in other people’s posts because of this lack of feedback. It would be nice, for example, to learn what economic model constraints are known to Storj, but missed by us SNOs in this discussion. On the other side, I understand that some of that knowledge may not be easy to share to keep competitive advantage. I also absolutely understand the fact that it is difficult to formulate any public statements, however positive they would be meant to be, without triggering some backlash. I’m therefore fine waiting for the first drafts of the whitepaper as mentioned in the Twitter space.
On the contrary, it makes sense as a way to reduce power usage. A single large drive will require less power than many small drives. And we are in an economy model thread, making this difference crucial for the topics under discussion.
Besides, a single large drive is now cheaper than many small drives (both in terms of per-unit cost, but also the bay capacity in a device they are mounted in). When consolidating a SNO may sell the older drives, recovering some costs.