Is there a "disk space" analogue to Folding@Home?

February 7, 2009 2:55 PM

Is there an "extra disk space" analogue to the projects to which one can volunteer their extra bandwidth or computing power? Like, instead of Folding@Home using my processor, is there something that will use my disk space (for a good cause)?
posted by philomathoholic to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Do you also have bandwidth to burn? Download some linux distros and seed them on a torrent network.
posted by chrisamiller at 3:22 PM on February 7

I suppose it depends on how you define "for a good cause", but The Freenet Project is "A Distributed Anonymous Information Storage and Retrieval System." Basically, the idea is to provide a resource by which the free flow of information cannot be squelched. Kind of like WikiLeaks meets usenet, but with total encryption and no central point for failure.

Alas, word 'round the net is that it's also used by shadier types for kiddie porn. Kind of a shame, really.
posted by TheNewWazoo at 3:26 PM on February 7

some libraries use LOCKSS -
lots of copies keeps stuff safe.
sounds like what you want.
posted by roue at 3:46 PM on February 7

Cleversafe is an open source distributed storage application that finally hit its 1.0 release late last year. It isn't the kind of project you're asking about but it's the kind of software that such a project would use so it's probably a good place to start looking.
posted by XMLicious at 4:05 PM on February 7 [1 favorite has favorites]

There's probably not an organized solution for this. Instead, try finding some software or data projects you approve of that you can seed, nth ChrisAMiller's idea.

Wikipedia For Schools is a pretty good cause. Takes up 3GB of space, and you can seed it as long as you and your ISP are willing.

Also try seeding Ubuntu and/or Edubuntu, which provide a good OS for free. And if there's any document you really value and think will help mankind, find a torrent of it, and seed it as long as you can. Most torrent clients have queued seeding, and allow for rotation, so you can find a lot of files that you think people will want and seed indefinitely. Textbooks come to mind as a good option, although some of them will violate copyright laws, so that may negate the "good" aspect, depending on how you see IP.

If you don't have the bandwidth, I don't really have any ideas. If you live in a dorm or someplace with a big network, you could offer your extra disk space to someone as a favor, although that isn't essentially doing them a favor.

I think many places are scared to do this, as they're worried the data would be modified or lost, although redundancy and checksums would help. Still, for it to be useful, it would offer more data storage than the institution has access to, meaning it would need to break the files into parts and make sure enough copies of those parts stay around. A specialized bit torrent client could do this and try to minimize bandwidth by only asking a "node" to download new stuff when it becomes extremely irrelevant and try to divide the download evenly among all nodes. Still, I have trouble imagining what philanthropic project would need an extreme amount of storage, since storage is relatively cheap these days, as is the security and redundancy of that data.
posted by mccarty.tim at 4:19 PM on February 7

Since there have been a few good ideas given (thanks!), I thought I'd pop in and say a few words.

TheNewWazoo: I'd forgotten about freenet. I'll definitely be re-checking them out, thanks.

mccarty.tim: Those certainly sound like torrents I'd be interested in seeding, but I'd want to somehow make it automatic. Like, when a new version is put out, I'd want my computer to remove the old stuff and start seeding the new stuff. Is the best way to do this via rss somehow?
posted by philomathoholic at 4:41 PM on February 7

roue: That does sound like what I want, but it also sounds like I'd have to be "a library" and ask permission from each publisher if I could mirror their stuff, which isn't going to happen. Thanks though.
posted by philomathoholic at 4:44 PM on February 7

FWIW, a terabyte drive sells for $90 these days over at newegg- storage is pretty abundant and pretty cheap- 10 cents a gigabyte... Perhaps you have another resource you can volunteer? Bandwidth? Your time?
posted by jenkinsEar at 7:20 PM on February 7

WRT LOCKSS, I don't think you need to be a library to participate. There are levels of participation which require joinging their association, but if you just want to share your disk I think they'd be happy to have it. My understanding is that content from remote sources is stored encrypted. You'd have a hard time accessing it if if wasn't yours.
posted by roue at 7:49 PM on February 7

Taking a second look at lockss, it seems I was wrong about having to be a library. It sounds like a very interesting project.
posted by philomathoholic at 12:16 AM on February 8