Storage Boxes

A storage box is dedicated storage -- large, inexpensive, network-connected. It runs the same open source PMSS platform as PM's seedbox fleet: Docker rootless, WireGuard, OpenVPN, rclone, and the media stack installer are all included.

You get a chunk of disk space in Pulsed Media's Finnish datacenters (Helsinki Lauttasaari and Kerava), accessible over SFTP, FTP/FTPS, SCP, rsync, WebDAV, HTTP/HTTPS, and SSHFS. No artificial protocol restrictions. SSH access at the user level. BorgBackup and Restic pre-installed. Bandwidth is unlimited.

A seedbox is optimized for active downloading -- fast storage, torrent client resources, racing-grade I/O. A storage box is optimized for keeping things -- large, affordable HDD space with the flexibility to do more if you need it.

What people use storage boxes for

Backup -- the core use case

The most common reason people get a storage box is backup. Specifically: offsite backup, following the 3-2-1 rule (3 copies, 2 media types, 1 offsite). A storage box handles the "1 offsite" leg cleanly.

BorgBackup and Restic are already installed. No compiling, no package manager fiddling, no sidecar service. The standard pattern is BorgBackup over SFTP: init a repo on the storage box, run borg create from your home server or workstation, and deduplication means second and subsequent backups are a fraction of the first. Over a fast European broadband connection, an initial 100 GB backup finishes in a few hours; daily incrementals with small changes typically complete in under 10 minutes.

Restic is equally well supported and has better multi-destination support if you're already using it elsewhere. Plain rsync works too, though without deduplication you'll pay for it in space over time.

For Synology NAS users, HyperBackup connects natively via SFTP or rsync. QNAP's Hybrid Backup Sync works the same way.

The RAID type matters here. M-series plans (M1000 Storage, M10G Storage 2.0) run RAID5, which means the array survives a single drive failure. V-series (V10G Storage) runs RAID0, which is faster but has no redundancy. For backups that are themselves protecting against data loss, most people prefer M-series for the added resilience.

Storage boxes include 25% burst quota (temporary headroom above your plan allocation), so a backup that runs slightly over one month won't fail mid-operation. The bonus disk also grows over time -- the longer you keep the account, the more space you accumulate.

Extending a home NAS or Synology offsite

If you already have a NAS at home, a storage box adds the geographical separation that local NAS-to-NAS replication can't provide. The NAS runs scheduled backups to the storage box via SFTP or rsync; the storage box holds your offsite copy. Fire and flood don't reach Finland.

Same-datacenter transfers between Pulsed Media servers run at 70-75 MB/s. External transfer speed from a home connection depends on your ISP, but 10-40 MB/s is typical for European users on decent broadband. Initial seeding a 2 TB NAS backup takes time; daily incrementals with BorgBackup or Restic are lightweight after that.

For Synology specifically: HyperBackup supports BorgBackup as a destination protocol and SFTP as a transport. Setup takes about 15 minutes. Encryption is handled client-side before anything leaves your network.

Seedbox archive -- keep everything you've downloaded

For anyone running a seedbox alongside a storage box: your seedbox downloads to fast NVMe or SSD storage, you build ratio, and then rclone (or rsync over SSH) automatically moves completed torrents to the storage box for long-term seeding. The seedbox stays lean and fast; the storage box holds the archive.

Many ratio-based private trackers reward long-term seeding with bonus points or increased download slots. If you delete old downloads to free space, you lose that seeding credit. Keeping old torrents alive on cheap HDD storage costs very little compared to the tracker standing you preserve.

rclone handles the movement between tiers well. You can configure it to move files older than a certain threshold, or move them after a ratio target is hit. The storage box appears to rclone as a standard SFTP destination.

The three-layer architecture that more serious seedbox users run: NVMe seedbox for active downloading and initial seeding, HDD storage box for cold seeding and archiving, and optionally a separate Jellyfin instance for streaming. rclone automates the tier transitions.

Media server backend

Jellyfin can serve media from a storage box, but the setup matters. External SSHFS mounts (from outside the datacenter) can disconnect under sustained load -- not reliable for active streaming. Run Jellyfin on a server in the same datacenter as the storage box, where internal transfers run at 70-75 MB/s.

On a Pulsed Media seedbox, install the media stack with install-media-stack.sh -- a one-command installer that sets up Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, SABnzbd, and Cloudplow per user. Media files live on the storage box; Jellyfin on the seedbox handles playback and CPU-only transcoding (no GPU). To run Jellyfin directly from a storage box, Docker rootless makes this possible.

For photo and video archives, Immich is a well-established self-hosted Google Photos alternative. RAW photo shoots from modern cameras run 50-200 GB. Run Immich on a VPS or seedbox with media stored on the storage box: the storage box handles the bulk, the application server handles the compute.

Self-hosted cloud storage alternative

Nextcloud on a VPS or small server, backed by a storage box for bulk storage, is a real alternative to Google One or Dropbox at scale. Storage box pricing runs 3-13x below cloud object storage (AWS S3, Backblaze B2, Wasabi) at the 4 TB tier and above, with unlimited egress and SSH access included.

WebDAV is the native protocol, and it works from Linux and macOS. Windows WebDAV has known performance problems -- the Windows WebDAV client throttles transfers significantly. For Windows users, rclone mounted as a drive, or WinSCP over SFTP, gives much better throughput.

For encryption, rclone has a crypt remote type that encrypts files before they leave your machine. Cryptomator is another option for client-side encryption without depending on rclone's implementation. The storage box stores the encrypted blobs; the keys never leave your control.

Docker rootless runs on all plans, so Nextcloud, Seafile, or similar applications can run directly on the storage box. See Docker on PMSS for port and access setup.

Developer and server backups

For production servers, VPSes, or development environments, a storage box is a clean backup destination. Nightly cron jobs dump MySQL or PostgreSQL databases, compress them, and ship them over rsync or BorgBackup to the storage box. Server configs, /etc, application state, Docker volumes -- anything you'd regret losing.

BorgBackup's deduplication is particularly valuable for database dumps, which often have large identical sections across daily snapshots. You can keep 30 days of database history in surprisingly little space.

No special agent or daemon to install on the source server. A cron entry and an SSH key is all it takes to get nightly backups running.

File sharing and distribution

For server-side sharing, WebDAV gives browser-accessible file access, and HTTP/HTTPS allows direct download links for large files -- useful for distributing builds, releases, or large datasets to team members or clients without uploading to a third-party service.

For public distribution of large files (ISOs, video, dataset releases), HTTP/HTTPS access means you can link directly to files on the storage box. Unlimited bandwidth means no transfer quotas during sudden download spikes.

Photography and video archiving

RAW files from modern cameras are large and accumulate fast. A 3-2-1 workflow with the storage box as the offsite leg: primary copy on local NAS or workstation, secondary copy on an external drive, offsite copy on the storage box via BorgBackup.

Immich can be configured to use the storage box as its library location. Upload is slower than local storage, but for archival rather than daily browsing the tradeoff is fine.

For video editors working with large project files, the storage box is cheap long-term archive after a project is delivered. Projects that are done but not ready to delete can sit on cheap HDD storage rather than consuming expensive local SSD.

Privacy and jurisdiction

The datacenters are in Finland. GDPR applies in full, and Finland has no US CLOUD Act jurisdiction -- data requests face EU legal process requirements.

Pulsed Media (legal entity: Magna Capax Finland Oy) has operated the Helsinki and Kerava datacenters since 2010. Owned hardware in owned datacenters, not rented cloud space.

For encrypted backups and archives, the jurisdiction adds a layer of comfort, but encryption is what actually protects your data. BorgBackup and Restic both encrypt locally before anything goes over the wire.

Storage box plans

Three storage box lines cover different network and redundancy requirements:

Plan	RAID	Network	Best for
M1000 Storage	RAID5	1 Gbps	Backup and archive workloads where redundancy matters
M10G Storage 2.0	RAID5	10 Gbps	Same RAID5 redundancy with higher burst throughput
V10G Storage	RAID0	10 Gbps	Maximum throughput; for users with redundancy elsewhere

All plans include BorgBackup and Restic pre-installed, SFTP/FTP/rsync/WebDAV/HTTP/SCP/SSHFS access, SSH user access, Docker rootless, WireGuard and OpenVPN, the media stack installer, automated service recovery watchdogs, 25% burst quota, and unlimited bandwidth. The 14-day money-back guarantee applies to all plans.

For current plans and pricing, see pulsedmedia.com/storage-boxes.

What you get

The same PMSS software stack as PM's seedbox fleet:

Backup tools: BorgBackup, Restic (pre-installed)
File access: SSH, SFTP, SCP, FTP, HTTPS downloads, WebDAV, SSHFS, rsync
File management: Web-based file manager, Rclone web UI
Media: Jellyfin installable via install-media-stack.sh
Containers: Docker rootless for running additional services
VPN: WireGuard and OpenVPN
Monitoring: Automated service recovery watchdogs

Bonus storage

PM allocates disk quota with 25% burst headroom. This is temporary -- it prevents backup operations from failing mid-run when you're slightly over quota. The bonus disk (permanent extra allocation) grows over time the longer you keep your account.

Infrastructure

Storage boxes run on the same infrastructure as PM's seedbox fleet:

Datacenter: Helsinki (Lauttasaari) and Kerava
Drives: 7200rpm HDDs in RAID arrays (RAID0 or RAID5 depending on product line)
Network: Own AS (AS203003), multiple IPv4 allocations
OS: Debian
Management: PMSS, open source on GitHub

For full datacenter details, see Pulsed Media Datacenters.

Getting started

Pick a plan at pulsedmedia.com/storage-boxes
After signup, you get an email with your server address, username, and password
Connect via SFTP, rsync, or any supported protocol
For BorgBackup: borg init --encryption=repokey ssh://user@server/./borg-repo
For Restic: restic -r sftp:user@server:/restic-repo init

For detailed access instructions, see Seedbox access via FTP, SSH and SFTP.