[HN Gopher] Improving storage efficiency in Magic Pocket, Dropbo...
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       Improving storage efficiency in Magic Pocket, Dropbox's immutable
       blob store
        
       Author : laluser
       Score  : 55 points
       Date   : 2026-04-03 20:56 UTC (5 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (dropbox.tech)
 (TXT) w3m dump (dropbox.tech)
        
       | znnajdla wrote:
       | All this talk about a tool that isn't open source?
        
         | hrimfaxi wrote:
         | You've never seen like google engineering talks?
        
       | jeffbee wrote:
       | The immutability of extents is dictated by their SMR hardware, I
       | believe.
        
         | Retr0id wrote:
         | I don't know the full picture behind their decision-making but
         | immutability is much easier to reason about in a distributed
         | system, in general.
        
           | jeffbee wrote:
           | That's true. Every system has some quantum of storage that
           | must be handled as a unit, whether that is a logical block
           | that can only be discarded entirely or whatever. But I think
           | the relatively gigantic immutable extents discussed here are
           | somewhat unusual.
        
       | nopurpose wrote:
       | > Last year, we rolled out a new service that changed how data is
       | placed across Magic Pocket. The change reduced write
       | amplification for background writes, so each write triggered
       | fewer backend storage operations. But it also had an unintended
       | side effect: fragmentation increased, pushing storage overhead
       | higher. Most of that growth came from a small number of severely
       | under-filled volumes that consumed a disproportionate share of
       | raw capacity
       | 
       | Me thinking big corps with huge infrastructure bills meticulously
       | model changes like that using the production data they have, so
       | that exact change in all the metrics they care about is known
       | upfront. Turned out they are like me: deploy and see what breaks.
        
       | hs86 wrote:
       | Google recently increased storage from 2 TB to 5 TB on their $20
       | AI plan, while Dropbox is still stuck at 2 or 3 TB for their
       | $12/$20 plans.
       | 
       | They moved from 1 TB to 2 TB in mid-2019, and I wonder if they
       | ever plan to pass on any of the gains from the past seven years
       | of technological advancements, or if those gains are simply being
       | captured on their side while we keep paying the same.
        
         | timmmmmmay wrote:
         | are these "technological advancements" in storage in the room
         | with us right now? because I'm looking at today's price per TB
         | and it's higher than it was in 2020
        
           | kingleopold wrote:
           | did you calculate it with real inflation adjusted price? not
           | the BS numbers in financial media, FED etc. Since 2020
           | unlimited printer, inflation is not few %.
        
             | dcrazy wrote:
             | What authoritative number did you have in mind, oh economic
             | sage?
        
         | microtonal wrote:
         | Aside from bad pricing and us wanting to move our data to
         | servers owned by a European company, the thing that that
         | bothered me the most as a (former) paying customer was the
         | constant upsell pushes. Every time I'd log in to the web
         | interface they would show ads in the web interface (including
         | pop up dialogs) to try to move me to another plan.
         | 
         | I'm already paying 20 Euro per month. Leave me alone.
         | 
         | Good riddance.
        
       | bluedino wrote:
       | Does Amazon ever publish similar articles about S3?
        
         | huntaub wrote:
         | I don't think there's much for Amazon to gain from publishing
         | these sorts of internal details. Amazon's services are used by
         | developers who are looking to tightly optimize their usage. If
         | Amazon were to publish detailed internal information, it's
         | likely that folks would start optimizing applications based on
         | internal details that have the potential to change over time.
         | 
         | Secondly, I think that a lot of companies publish these "tech
         | blogs" as a way to boost recruiting (look at the cool stuff
         | that we're doing, don't you want to join us?). Amazon, of
         | course, doesn't have a recruiting problem. If you want to work
         | on the largest-scale systems, it's already a top destination
         | for you.
        
       | dangus wrote:
       | It's a shame that such fantastic engineering work is buried
       | behind a product with so many annoyances dictated by the
       | marketing/revenue teams.
       | 
       | I wish Dropbox would make some kind of "classic edition" that
       | removed annoyances from their desktop client.
       | 
       | Until then, I'm using Filen. It's fine, I have some qualms with
       | it but it runs on every platform including Linux, it's
       | affordable, and end to end encrypted.
        
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       (page generated 2026-04-09 17:01 UTC)