What it costs to back up a home server to S3 Glacier Deep Archive

Backing up 2 TB of home-server data to S3 Standard costs about $47 a month at AWS’s list price. Switching the same backup to S3 Glacier Deep Archive brings it to about $2 a month, and a full restore costs roughly $52 more on top of the storage, plus AWS’s data transfer charge, which I didn’t price. That is the whole trade: storage gets around 23 times cheaper, and getting your files back takes 12 to 48 hours and a one-time fee. This post walks through the numbers, and through exactly what MyGround does when you turn the Deep Archive setting on.

All prices below are AWS list prices for US East (N. Virginia), read on 2026-10-29. Check the S3 pricing page before you rely on them, because AWS changes them and your region may differ.

What MyGround’s Deep Archive setting does#

MyGround backs up your apps with restic to any S3-compatible bucket. Since release v0.1.103 (October 2026) there is a checkbox in Settings, Backups: “Store backup data in S3 Glacier Deep Archive (AWS only)”. When it is on and the repository is an s3: one, the Rust code in src/backup.rs adds one option to every restic call:

-o s3.storage-class=DEEP_ARCHIVE

Restic then uploads only the packs that hold your files’ contents to Deep Archive. The small objects it must read on every backup (config, keys, snapshots, the index and folder listings) stay in S3 Standard, so nightly backups keep working without waiting for a thaw. The setting applies to new uploads only; data already in the bucket stays where it is.

For restores, MyGround adds RESTIC_FEATURES=s3-restore and three more options: s3.enable-restore=true, s3.restore-days=7 and s3.restore-timeout=48h. Restic’s experimental S3 restore feature asks AWS to thaw the archived packs, waits up to 48 hours, and keeps the thawed copies readable for 7 days. I read this in the source today; I haven’t done a 2 TB restore myself, so the timings in this post come from AWS’s documentation and MyGround’s own settings text, not from a stopwatch.

Do not add a lifecycle rule yourself#

The obvious way to archive a bucket is an S3 lifecycle rule that moves objects to Deep Archive after some days. With restic that breaks every backup. Restic keeps folder listings in the same data/ prefix as file contents, so a rule cannot tell them apart, and once it freezes a listing, restic fails with “The operation is not valid for the object’s storage class”. That is why MyGround lets restic choose the storage class per object instead, and why the settings page warns against a lifecycle rule in amber.

The numbers for 2 TB#

Take 2 TB of backed-up data, counted as 2,048 GB, and ignore request fees, which are small at restic’s pack sizes.

AWS’s price list gives the Standard rate ($0.023 for the first 50 TB) and both retrieval fees directly. The Deep Archive storage rate of $0.00099 per GB-month I could not pull from AWS’s machine-readable price file today. The price file does list the same $0.00099 for the Deep Archive tier of S3 Intelligent-Tiering, several price comparisons list it for Deep Archive itself, and MyGround’s settings page says “about $1/TB per month”, so I’m confident in it, but it is the one number here I didn’t read on AWS’s own pricing table.

Over a year, 2 TB in Standard costs about $565. The same data in Deep Archive costs about $24, and if you restore all of it once with the standard tier, $41 plus $11 for the temporary copy brings the year to about $76. Even one full restore a year leaves you well ahead.

I haven’t priced the data transfer out of AWS, which is billed separately when you download the thawed files, and I don’t know which retrieval tier restic picks, since MyGround doesn’t set one. Treat the restore figures as the lower bound for the standard tier.

Where Deep Archive is the wrong choice#

• Early deletion. Deep Archive has a minimum storage duration of 180 days. Delete or overwrite an object sooner and AWS charges the rest of the 180 days. Restic’s forget and prune rewrite packs, so a backup set that churns heavily pays for packs it removes early.
• Per-object overhead. For archived objects AWS adds 40 KB of metadata per object, 8 KB at Standard rates and 32 KB at the archive rate. Large restic packs make that negligible, but a repository full of tiny packs would not.
• Slow recovery. If your server dies and you need a database back before Monday, a 12 to 48 hour thaw is a real cost. Keep a second, local backup of what you can’t wait for; MyGround supports local and other remote destinations too.
• AWS only. The option does nothing for non-S3 repositories, and MyGround’s own text limits it to AWS. On other providers, compare their regular storage price with Standard S3 before assuming you need an archive tier at all.

How to turn it on#

1. Update MyGround to v0.1.103 or later and open Settings, then Backups.
2. Set an S3 destination that points at AWS (not a compatible third party).
3. Tick “Store backup data in S3 Glacier Deep Archive” and save.
4. Leave the bucket without any lifecycle rule to Glacier or Deep Archive.

Per-job overrides exist as well: a single app’s backup job can switch Deep Archive on or off regardless of the default, which suits a small, critical config volume next to a large media library.

FAQ#

How long does restoring from S3 Deep Archive take? AWS documents 12 to 48 hours for a standard retrieval before the data can be read; MyGround waits up to 48 hours.

Does turning it on move my existing backups? No. Only new uploads use the Deep Archive class.

Can I use my own lifecycle rule instead? Not with restic: it freezes objects restic reads on every backup, and backups fail.

Written and checked on 2026-10-29 against MyGround’s source (v0.1.103 onward) and AWS’s list prices.