"It's only 50 terabytes. How hard can it be?"
Hard enough that we've seen organisations lose weeks of productivity, blow through project deadlines, and get hit by egress charges they never budgeted for. 50TB sits in an awkward sweet spot: not so large that everyone immediately agrees physical transport is the answer, but large enough that an internet upload will make your life miserable.
Here are your actual options for any cloud provider, not just Azure.
Why 50TB is the tipping point
At smaller volumes (5-10TB) most organisations can get away with an internet upload. It takes a few days, network impact is manageable, nobody notices.
At 100TB and above, most people accept that physical transport or a provider appliance is the only sane approach.
But 50TB is where the arguments start. Someone in the room will say "we've got a 1 Gig connection, it'll be fine." Technically, they aren't wrong. Technically.
Here's what 50TB looks like across different connection speeds:
| Connection speed | Theoretical time | Realistic time (with overhead) |
|---|---|---|
| 100 Mbps | 46 days | 7+ weeks |
| 500 Mbps | 9 days | ~12 days |
| 1 Gbps | 4.6 days | ~6 days |
| 10 Gbps | 11 hours | ~14 hours |
Those realistic numbers account for TCP overhead, packet retransmissions, and the fact that you never sustain 100% throughput on a real network. They also assume you're dedicating your entire connection to the transfer. Which brings us to the real problem.
The network saturation problem
Uploading 50TB at full speed for nearly a week means your internet connection is saturated the entire time. Every video call stutters. Every SaaS application crawls. VPN users start raising tickets. Your IT team starts fielding complaints.
So you throttle the upload to 50% to keep the business running. Now that six-day transfer takes twelve. Throttle to 25%? Nearly a month.
A "quick upload" quietly becomes a multi-week project that affects everyone in the building.
Your three options
Option 1: Internet upload
The simplest approach. Point your data at the cloud and wait.
Pros: No third parties, no logistics, start immediately. Cons: Network saturated for days or weeks, transfer failures mean restarting, no chain of custody.
Best for: Organisations with 10Gbps+ connectivity and genuine flexibility on timing.
Option 2: Provider appliances
Every major cloud provider offers a physical device you can order, fill with data, and ship back:
| Provider | Device | Capacity | Typical round trip |
|---|---|---|---|
| Azure | Data Box | 100TB | 2-3 weeks |
| AWS | Snowball Edge | 80TB | 2-3 weeks |
| GCP | Transfer Appliance | 300TB | 2-3 weeks |
The process is similar across all three: order the device, wait for delivery, copy your data, ship it back, wait for the upload to complete on their end.
Pros: No network impact, provider-supported, good for planned migrations. Cons: 2-3 week minimum timeline, you manage the device yourself, locked to one cloud provider, shipping delays happen.
Best for: Planned migrations with three or more weeks of runway and no urgency.
Option 3: Physical transport (Data Shuttle)
We bring enterprise-grade portable storage to your site, copy your data locally at NVMe speeds, transport it to our data centre, and upload via our 10Gbit+ connection. The whole process takes 24-48 hours.
Pros: Done in days not weeks, white-glove service, works with any destination, chain of custody documentation. Cons: Requires physical access to your site, UK-based service.
Best for: Anything time-sensitive, or when you're moving between clouds or data centres.
The egress gotcha nobody warns you about
Here's the part that catches people out, and it applies regardless of which transfer method you choose.
Ingress is free. Uploading data into Azure, AWS, or GCP costs nothing in bandwidth charges. Every cloud provider wants to make it easy to get data in. That's the easy part.
Egress is not free. Downloading data from the cloud, or transferring it between regions, costs real money. At 50TB, that money adds up fast.
| Provider | Egress cost (first 10TB/month) | 50TB egress cost (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| Azure | ~£0.07/GB | ~£3,500 |
| AWS | ~£0.07/GB | ~£3,500 |
| GCP | ~£0.09/GB | ~£4,500 |
Downloading your own 50TB from any major cloud provider costs roughly three and a half thousand pounds in bandwidth charges. GCP is higher.
This catches organisations in several scenarios:
Cloud-to-cloud migration. Moving from AWS to Azure? You pay AWS egress charges to get the data out, even if Azure ingress is free.
Multi-cloud architectures. If your data platform sits in Azure but your application layer is in AWS, every data transfer between them incurs egress. At scale, this bleeds money quietly every month.
Cross-region transfers. Even within the same cloud provider, moving data between regions costs money. Azure UK South to Azure East US isn't free. Cheaper than full egress, but it still adds up at 50TB.
Disaster recovery testing. Regularly pulling backup data from the cloud to verify recoverability? Those egress charges appear on every bill.
We've seen organisations plan a cloud migration, budget carefully for compute and storage, then get hit with a four-figure egress bill they never anticipated. One of the most common and most avoidable mistakes in cloud planning.
What we do about it: Before any transfer, we calculate the full cost (including egress) and make sure you know exactly what to expect. No surprises on next month's bill.
When physical transport beats everything
For 50TB specifically, physical transport makes sense when:
- Urgency matters. You need the data moved in days, not weeks. A provider appliance takes 2-3 weeks. An internet upload could take longer. We do it in 24-48 hours.
- Your network can't take the strain. If sustained uploading for a week isn't practical, it isn't practical. No amount of scheduling it "out of hours" changes the maths if your overnight window is only six hours.
- You're moving between clouds or data centres. No provider appliance handles both ends. We're cloud-agnostic, so we'll upload to wherever you need.
- Compliance requires chain of custody. Regulated industries need to document exactly who handled the data and when. Our Data Shuttle service includes full chain of custody documentation, encrypted transport, and auditable handover at every stage.
- You want it done and off your plate. Managing a Data Box or Snowball for three weeks is work. Someone has to receive it, set it up, monitor the copy, repackage it, arrange collection, and track the upload. With Data Shuttle, we handle everything.
How Data Shuttle works
- Scope. You tell us how much data, where it is, and where it needs to go. Fixed quote within 24 hours.
- On-site copy. We arrive with enterprise-grade portable NVMe storage and 10Gbit switching, then copy locally at maximum speed.
- Secure transport. Encrypted storage, documented chain of custody, secure transport to our Thames Valley data centre.
- Upload to destination. Azure, AWS, GCP, another data centre — we upload via our 10Gbit+ connection to wherever your data needs to be.
- Verify. Checksums verified, data integrity confirmed, job done.
The key difference: we're not tied to a single cloud provider. The destination is your choice.
Making the decision
Upload it yourself if you have 10Gbps+ bandwidth to spare, genuinely flexible timing, and the data is going to one cloud provider you're already set up with.
Order a provider appliance if you have 3+ weeks, you're comfortable managing the device, and the data is going to that specific provider's cloud.
Use Data Shuttle if time matters, your network can't sustain weeks of uploading, you're moving between providers or data centres, or you simply want someone else to handle the logistics.
Whatever you choose, calculate egress costs first. That step alone could save you thousands.
Need to move 50TB or more? We'll give you a free quote and calculate the full cost (including any egress charges) so there are no surprises. Get in touch and we'll have numbers back within 24 hours.