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After two incidents with the hard drives, the data of free STACK accounts can no longer be sufficiently secured.
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STACK is a cloud storage service from the Dutch web hosting company TransIP. Although the cloud service also offers paid subscriptions, with a free subscription you can already get up to 1TB of cloud storage space. Via an email and a message on the website TransIP informs all free users that it is no longer able to offer STACK services for free for an indefinite period. The statement is that ‘the data integrity of free STACK can no longer be guaranteed’.
Problems with hard drives
In concrete terms, the Dutch company refers to two incidents that happened in the months of September and October. Multiple hard drives malfunctioned simultaneously, causing data from free accounts to be lost. The STACK infrastructure is set up in such a way that a broken hard disk is automatically taken over by a spare disk. Data is distributed in such a way that it is restored in the event of a defect. The free accounts are not backed up, this is a service for which you have to pay extra.
According to TransIP, this way of working never caused any problems in the past, until disaster struck in September. A similar incident took place in October, albeit on a smaller scale. But valuable data was also lost then. The company apologizes to all users who have lost data due to the technical issues, and after a difficult consideration, it was decided to discontinue the free accounts because they no longer meet the quality requirements. That will happen in three months on February 10, 2021.
Accounts upgraden
Users with a free account therefore have some time to decide what to do. TransIP offers them three options. They can download any data from their storage space to keep it elsewhere. If they choose to stop STACK, all files will be deleted forever.
Users also have the option to upgrade their subscription to a paid plan so that they get extra storage space on top of a daily backup. The company has installed additional servers to expand the capacity of the cloud infrastructure. The transfer from free accounts to paying accounts could take longer due to the great crowds.
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