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Backblaze B2 as a Windows Drive Letter for 5.5: S3 Storage on a Budget

Backblaze B2 is the cheapest S3-compatible object storage you can buy, with predictable pricing and a generous free tier (10 GB free forever). It speaks native S3, but for Windows clients that expect a drive letter, the S3 API is not exactly friendly. ScsDriver bridges that gap with a WebDAV adapter, and you can mount B2 as a Windows drive for $5.5 once.

Why Backblaze B2?

If you are storing backups, archives, or large media files, B2 is the price-to-capacity king. The first 10 GB is free, then it is $0.006/GB/month for storage and $0.01/GB for downloads. For a 1 TB archive that is $6/month for storage, plus bandwidth as you use it. Compared to AWS S3 at $23/TB/month, B2 is roughly a quarter of the price.

The catch: B2 is S3-only. Native Windows clients cannot just open a drive letter and explore. The S3 API expects a CLI or a custom app.

The ScsDriver Bridge

ScsDriver sits between your Windows machine and B2 with a WebDAV adapter. Mount B2 as B:, and Windows Explorer shows your buckets and files as if they were on a local disk. Drag-and-drop, rename, copy, paste, search — all the Windows file operations work.

For businesses that have terabytes of cold storage on B2, this is a major productivity win. Engineers can browse backups in Explorer instead of running aws-cli commands. Editors can pull raw footage directly from B2 without a custom downloader.

The Setup

  1. Sign up for a Backblaze account and create a B2 bucket.
  2. Generate an application key with read-write access to the bucket.
  3. Install ScsDriver from drive.scsoi.com.
  4. Point a new mount at the B2 WebDAV adapter URL.
  5. Pick a drive letter (B: for Backblaze) and mount.

After that, B: behaves like a regular drive. The transfer is encrypted in transit and at rest. Files are stored on B2's S3-compatible backend with the same 11 nines of durability that AWS S3 advertises.

The 5.5 Lifetime Deal

Same as every other WebDAV endpoint: $5.5 once, no subscription. Mount B2 as B:, Yandex Disk as Y:, Seafile as S:, MEGA as M:. One ScsDriver license covers them all.

For a small business that runs regular backups to B2, the cost of mounting it as a drive letter is less than the price of one month of B2 storage for a single bucket. The convenience of a drive letter is priceless by comparison.

B2 vs. AWS S3 vs. Wasabi

  • AWS S3: $23/TB/month. Industry standard, broadest feature set, but expensive.
  • Backblaze B2: $6/TB/month. S3-compatible, no API request fees for Class B transactions, no egress fees for the first 1x of storage per month.
  • Wasabi: $7/TB/month. S3-compatible, no egress fees at all, but minimum storage duration of 90 days.
  • Cloudflare R2: $15/TB/month, no egress fees. Newer, less proven.

For a small business doing backup or archive, B2 is the right pick. Mount it as B: with ScsDriver and your backups become browsable.

Bottom Line

B2 for cheap S3-compatible storage, ScsDriver for the drive letter, $5.5 once. Mount B:, browse your archives in Explorer, save $17/TB/month vs. AWS.

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