Large Datasets: FileDrive

Filecoin currently offers over 18 EiB of decentralized storage thanks to a strong community of Storage Providers, developers, and ecosystem partners that make part of its island economy. All of their work is aimed at building the best possible decentralized alternative for users of server-based cloud storage services.

Individuals and enterprise clients alike are looking for a cost-effective way to store a growing amount of data safely, persistently, and with easy retrievability. Let’s take a look at how Filecoin is meeting this need.

FileDrive’s Data

FileDrive is a service provider that helps publishers leverage Filecoin’s storage market by facilitating its use for large datasets. So far it has stored around 10 PiB of data through the Filecoin Slingshot Competition and Filecoin Plus.

This information consists of curated public datasets of meaningful data in scientific research, all of which stands to benefit greatly from the network’s capacity to ensure content persistence. Some of it includes:

Encyclopedia of DNA Elements: An international collaboration of research groups funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)
3000 Rice Genomes Project: An international effort to sequence the genomes of 3,024 rice varieties from 89 countries.
Landsat 8: Multispectral time-series satellite imagery of all land on Earth since 2013.
Genome Ark: Genomic information for the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP) and other related projects.

For more information on FileDrive’s datasets visit https://datasets.filedrive.io.

FileDrive’s Use of Filecoin

In 2019, FileDrive started research on Filecoin and IPFS for decentralized data storage. The team was already looking for solutions to current problems in centralized storage such as privacy, security, and ownership of data. It quickly realized the benefits of using Filecoin as an incentive layer that ensured the persistence of important information on top of IPFS’ capabilities for content-addressability.

More so, as an open-source storage marketplace, the Filecoin ecosystem counts on an important number of tools developed by its community as well as programs that make it easier for clients like FileDrive to participate in the network. Web3.Storage and NFT.Storage provide convenient ways to use Filecoin for everyday data storage while programs such as FIL+ help find Filecoin SPs with rich data onboarding experience and high-quality service.

The Filecoin network has been able to meet FileDrive’s large data storage needs with a combination of a large amount of available Storage Power and efficient tools developed by an engaged community. FileDrive has even developed its own tools that help facilitate network operations for larger dataset clients like itself:

Filejoy: A lightweight IPFS node for quicker conversion of raw data to DAG.
Go-DS-Cluster: Storage for PiB-level DAG data.
Go-Graphsplit A tool for splitting the large datasets into graph slices fit for making deals in the Filecoin Network.

To learn more about FileDrive follow the project on Twitter, read more on Medium or contribute on GitHub.