Migrating 100M+ Files from DigitalOcean Spaces to Backblaze B2
The Scenario
Section titled “The Scenario”A media company has 25TB of data spread across 120 million files in DigitalOcean Spaces. Monthly bill: roughly $500/month. They want to move everything to Backblaze B2 to cut costs and get more flexibility.
This is a real-world pattern we see a lot. Let’s walk through what it actually takes.
What It Costs
Section titled “What It Costs”| Item | Details | Estimated Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Blober License | One-time purchase | $39 |
| DigitalOcean Egress | ~24TB billable at $0.01/GiB (first 1TB free) | ~$240 |
| Backblaze Ingress | Free. Backblaze never charges for uploads | $0 |
| Backblaze API Calls | Uploads are free Class A calls, minor listing costs | ~$2 |
| Total | ~$281 |
After migrating, the monthly bill drops from ~$500 on DigitalOcean to ~$150 on Backblaze B2. The entire migration pays for itself in about two weeks.
About Egress Fees
Section titled “About Egress Fees”This is where it gets interesting. Backblaze actively wants people to switch to their platform and they back that up with real programs:
- Free egress up to 3x your average monthly storage on B2, which means once you’re on Backblaze, downloading your own data doesn’t cost extra in most scenarios.
- Unlimited free egress through CDN and compute partners like Cloudflare, Fastly, Bunny.net, and Vultr.
- Assisted data migration is listed as a standard B2 feature on their pricing page.
- Universal Data Migration is available for larger committed contracts (50TB+ on pay-as-you-go, or included with B2 Reserve annual plans).
Backblaze explains their philosophy well in this blog post: Cloud Egress Fees: What They Are and How to Reduce Them. The short version is that they believe egress fees are vendor lock-in, and they want to make switching easy.
Even if your dataset is under the 50TB threshold, it’s worth contacting their sales team. With a 25TB dataset and willingness to commit for 12 months, there’s a solid chance they’ll help reduce or cover the DigitalOcean egress fees to get you onboarded.
How Long Does It Take
Section titled “How Long Does It Take”Let’s be honest here. 25TB is a lot of data.
Every file needs its own set of API calls: list from the source, download, then upload to the destination. Each round-trip carries network latency regardless of file size. When you multiply that per-object overhead across 120 million files with 25TB of bandwidth on top, the aggregate time adds up fast.
For a client-side migration where data streams through your local machine, you’re looking at:
- Several weeks of continuous runtime depending on your connection speed and latency
- Your machine needs to stay on and connected the entire time
- If your ISP has a monthly data cap, 25TB will almost certainly exceed it
- 16GB+ RAM recommended for handling the file listing at this scale
This isn’t a Blober limitation. Any client-side tool (rclone, Cyberduck, whatever) will face the same physics. Data has to travel from DigitalOcean’s datacenter to your machine, then from your machine to Backblaze’s datacenter. That’s two full trips through your ISP.
The Smart Approach: Two Phases
Section titled “The Smart Approach: Two Phases”Phase 1: Let the Datacenters Do the Heavy Lifting
Section titled “Phase 1: Let the Datacenters Do the Heavy Lifting”Contact Backblaze’s sales team and ask about their assisted migration options. For datasets at this scale, they partner with migration services that can move data directly between datacenters at speeds your home connection can’t match. What takes weeks on a home connection can take hours on a datacenter link.
Reach out here: Backblaze Sales
Phase 2: Use Blober for Everything After
Section titled “Phase 2: Use Blober for Everything After”Once the initial bulk migration is done, Blober becomes your daily tool for managing files across providers. New uploads, folder syncs, log rotations, moving files between buckets, all handled from your desktop with no per-GB fees and no subscriptions. Your credentials stay on your machine and never touch a third-party server.
Monthly Cost Comparison (Post-Migration)
Section titled “Monthly Cost Comparison (Post-Migration)”| DigitalOcean Spaces | Backblaze B2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Storage (25TB) | ~$500/mo | ~$150/mo |
| Egress (3TB/mo) | ~$30/mo | Free (within 3x allowance) |
| Total | ~$530/mo | ~$150/mo |
| Annual | ~$6,360/yr | ~$1,800/yr |
That’s about $4,500 saved per year, every year.
Bottom Line
Section titled “Bottom Line”For large-scale one-time migrations, use Backblaze’s own migration programs. They want your business and they’ll often help you get there.
For everything after that, Blober gives you a one-time $39 license to manage, sync, and move files across any supported provider, with no recurring costs and no third party ever touching your credentials.