Fornax

2025: The cycle never ends

2024: Stressed out Phoenix

Hello lovely Patrons. Another year has passed, and it's time for another recap. Check out last year's recap as well. Once again a lot has happened this year. It was a busy (and pretty stressful) time for me.

Last year this graph looked like the start of an exponential growth phase. This tim...

New storage servers

Pixeldrain is moving to a new storage provider. We have a whole rack of storage servers. They're nearly ready. These servers will greatly improve pixeldrain's performance and stability. All together the servers weigh over 1100 KG! In total there will be 11 servers with 36 harddrives each. Each drive has a capacity of 24 TB, bringing the total to 9504 TB.

2024-11-12 15:31:44 +0000 UTC View Post

Rclone 1.68 just released with Pixeldrain Filesystem support

Hello Patrons,

Rclone just released a new version with Pixeldrain Filesystem support. It took a long time to get this change merged, but it's finally here. Now you can use Rclone with pixeldrain without having to compile your own executable.

For those who don't know what rclone is: It's a command-line program which can be used to sync data between local directories and cloud storage, or between different cloud storage providers. It requires some technical skill to use, but it's a ...

New account dashboard

Hello lovely patrons,

Pixeldrain now has a handy-dandy account dashboard. This dashboard replaces the old user page (which was filled with clutter and text) with a bunch of structured panels which you can use to see your account's status at a single glance. The dashboard contains more information in less space.

There is a new quick upload widget which you can use to upload files from your account page without navi...

Tokyo expansion

If you are on the Discord or following me on Mastodon/Twitter you might have already read about it, but pixeldrain now has three servers in Tokyo!

This took longer than expected. I already ordered these systems in November. First they had to be shipped from the USA to Tokyo which took a month. Then the network cards were out of stock which added another two weeks.

Then the connection between Europe and Asia went unstable due to an 2024-03-28 19:13:30 +0000 UTC View Post

Subscription updates

Hi people,

I have doubled the transfer cap for all Patreon plans. So Pro now has 4 TB, Persistence 8 TB, etc.

The file expiry time for free users has been extended to 120 days (4 months).

According to my stats only 3.8% of all used bandwidth is from subscribers. And that's while the subscribers pay for 100% of the bandwidth. So I thought it would only be fair to give you all a bigger slice of the pie.

The base price for Prepaid was also reduced from €2 per month to â...

Directories

That's right. The filesystem is here.. sort of. The tech is still experimental. It's a completely separate system from the files/albums that we have now.

Here is a guide to help you getting started: https://pixeldrain.com/filesystem 

Here are some important things to know:

• The filesystem is experime...
  2024-02-13 13:10:07 +0000 UTC View Post

A Discord community, believe it or not

Hello lovely supporters. I have set up a little Discord community for you with a few friends. Feel free to join and vibe with us.

There are channels for talking about anything and channels for talking in your native tongue. You might even catch me playing runescape or factorio from time to time.

The community also contains a support forum where you can ask questions and make suggestions.

Invite link: https://d...

Servers overloaded

The pixeldrain servers are overloaded currently. There is a huge traffic peak and my system was not equipped to handle it. I have ordered more capacity, but the datacenter where my servers are located does not deliver in the weekends, so it will be monday the earliest that I can install the new servers.

Meanwhile there is also a connection problem between one of the servers and the database, which means that one of the three servers that is working can't be used.

If you have troub...

2023: The year that pixeldrain became a business

Hi people. The end of the year is nigh and I wanted to do another little recap like I did last year.

I was just looking through the old post and, oh my, a lot has changed. This year has been crazy.

First of all, I quit my job this year. Pixeldrain used to be my little pet project that I worked on...

Why are my downloads suddenly so slow?

This week I started hearing from many customers that their download speed has suddenly dropped to around 30 KiB/s, well below what's acceptable. I spent some time investigating this and I have come to the conclusion that this is happening due to factors out of my control. I have some theories as to what's happening:

• Some internet providers have started noticing the amount of bandwidth that pixeldrain uses and are throttling connections to my servers to save on transit costs.
...
2023-10-27 18:07:14 +0000 UTC View Post

New prepaid subscription type for customers in Europe

Hi everyone,

The prepaid plan, which used to be exclusive to business users, is now available to everyone in the EU.

Why only the EU? Well, there's two reasons:

• I need to report taxes in each country where I do business. Normally Patreon does this for me, but because the prepaid plan does not use Patreon I need to do it manually. The EU's One Stop Shop system makes it easy to report taxes in 27 EU member states (sorry England, you brought this upon yourselves).
2023-09-19 14:35:31 +0000 UTC View Post

New feature! Upload files directly to your albums

You can now directly upload files to your albums on pixeldrain. Either drag-and-drop, click the upload button or press 'u' to start uploading. Pasting screenshots with CTRL + V is also an option. This also works on the file manager page.

Thank you for your support throughout 2022

This was a great year for pixeldrain. Here are some statistics:

• The number of Patreon subscribers increased from 207 to 1341
• Monthly earnings through Patreon increased from €598 to €3041
• 54 340 Terabytes of bandwidth was used (that's 54 Petabytes!)
• 101 160 700 files were viewed through the website
• 119 400 162 files were downloaded
• Total bandwidth capacity was upgraded from 20 Gbps to 50 Gbps
• Storage capacity was upgraded.. ...
  2022-12-31 15:14:21 +0000 UTC View Post

Price raise

Tomorrow I will be disabling new subscriptions for the Pro (€2) tier. The €4 tier (currently called Resolve) will be renamed to Pro. It will stay this way at least until the end of November.

For existing patrons nothing will change. The limits of your account will stay the same and the price of the subscription too. If you upgrade your subscription to €4 you won't be able to downgrade again.

Today I will be updating the website to reflect the changes. The benefits of the tie...

Would you pay for pixeldrain if it was more expensive?

This year my Patreon page has been growing incredibly fast. But expenses have been growing too. Now a few of my hosting providers have announced they are raising prices because of the electricity crisis in Europe. I would eventually like to work on pixeldrain full time but to do that the project would need to generate at least €2000 per month in profit.

With all that in mind I am considering making the €4 tier the cheapest tier. I want to keep the €2 around for people who are alre...

New settings page design

I have overhauled the user settings page to make it easier to navigate. Pages with much content have been split up in separate sub-pages. This should make it easier to find the configuration options that you need.

Increased file size limits

To  celebrate the deployment of pixeldrain's new storage system I have raised the file size limit from 10 GB to 20 GB for free users and from 20 GB to 50 GB for Pro subscribers. I have also raised file expiry from 30 days to  60 days!

The free download limit has been updated from 10 GB per day to 20 GB per week in order to accommodate the larger file sizes.

Subscription billing on Patreon

Patreon just released subscription billing. Here's the announcement post: https://blog.patreon.com/introducing-a-new-patron-billing-option

This means you are charged on the day you subscribed instead of always on the first day of the month. I often need to give refunds to people who subscribed at the end of the month and are charged again a few days later. This should fix that issue....

Erasure coding is live!

Here we go! The update I have been working on for the last two months is now running in production. Pixeldrain now uses Reed-Solomon encoding to store files. This encoding scheme has a lot of benefits over the way pixeldrain used to store files:

• Files are stored with a 8/4 data/parity ratio. This means that 4 disks would have to fail simultaneously before any data is lost (f...
  2022-09-26 14:10:13 +0000 UTC View Post

2022-08 Data loss postmortem

In the last week of July pixeldrain lost about 6% of all files it was storing due to a database crash. Here is what happened:

In the second week of July I went on a three week vacation. In the week before I left I had upgraded my ScyllaDB cluster from version 4.6 to 5.0. Unbeknownst to me this new version had a bug.

The database is divided up in shards, each shard runs on a single CPU core in a single server. The shards are responsible for a table and a commitlog. Tables are for d...

1000 Patrons!

Thank you all for your support. After 7 years of development my hobby project is finally turning into a profitable business. I'm still working hard on new updates, I have some big plans.

Right now I'm still working on cleaning up the data loss incident from a few weeks ago. There's a lot to fix in that regard, but I'm nearly there. When the next update is ready pixeldrain's storage system should be solid as a rock, and a bit faster too!

Some data loss due to database crash

Hi, one of the database servers crashed while I'm on vacation. I didn't have the tools with me to fix the issue immediately. Some files were lost due to inconsistencies in the database. If you are unable to download one of your files this is probably the reason. The data is not recoverable unfortunately. I will be removing the broken links next week when I return from Spain.

I would like to remind everyone that pixeldrain is only for sharing files, and that it's not a cloud storage plat...

Fixed a problem with subscriptions

Hi,

There was a problem with pixeldrain's mail server which caused the Patreon integration to fail. You were not able to upgrade your account to Pro in the last few days because of this. It has been fixed now.

If you subscribed and were unable to upgrade your pixeldrain account you can do that now by going to this page ( https://pixeldrain.com/user ) and clicking the 'Link Patreon subscription' button.

2022-06-20 09:04:28 +0000 UTC View Post

More sharing settings

Here I am again :-P

I have added some more advanced sharing settings for patrons with the Persistence tier or higher.

You can now add links to your top and bottom banners to point at your website, social feeds or wherever.

And it's also possible to limit which sites are allowed to embed your files. This helps prevent theft of your files and your bandwidth.

2022-05-03 17:07:34 +0000 UTC View Post

Improved subscription process

Hello,

I have made it easier to activate your subscription on pixeldrain. All you need to do now is click a button on your pixeldrain profile page and your account will be upgraded.

Clicking the button takes you to this page:

After clicking Allow your acc...

Patreon's billing cycle

Hi,

Patreon has a limitation that it can only charge subscriptions on the first day of the month. This means that if you just signed up yesterday you will be charged again today. Patreon is working on a fix for this, but it's not ready yet.

In the meantime I'll offer you this solution: If you signed up within the last 10 days of the month I will offer you a refund. You can message me here: https://www.patreon.com...

Removed storage limit for Pro and Resolve plans

Hello Patrons,

I have removed the storage limits for Pro and Resolve plans.

Have a nice day :-)

File viewer branding

Hello,

I have added branding options to the file viewer. Patrons with a supporter level of Persistence (€8) or higher get access to file viewer branding. You can use this to customize the look of your download pages. 

The file viewer colour theme, header image, background image and footer image are all customizable. Check it out here: 2022-02-08 10:39:45 +0000 UTC View Post