the shard size is currently being tested in the beta phase, among other configurations. The end users will be able to request the level of redundancy they prefer, however, I the chunk size would not be a user defined option in order to assure network efficiency and data privacy.

Exerpt from the Storj whitepaper:

"We define a standardized shard size as a byte multiple such as 8 MB or 32 MB. These are kept at pre-set sizes to dissuade any attempt to determine what is being stored. Sharding also allows large files to be more manageable as they are distributed throughout the network..."
 
You can find out more about the details of chunking on Storj in the whitepaper´s chapter 2 here: http://storj.io/storj.pdf

If you bought 10K sjcx at the exchanges (rate 0.00015669), you'll need to cough up about 1.5669 BTC.

Only time will tell and I am still holding on to my SJCX.

I believe the rewards are determined by how much hardware you have to offer.The more hardware you have to offer the more you will earn.

I think if the cost is a little more than current storage services, there will still be a market for this service although much smaller. If this network can provide a cheaper option then this service will take over. Even if the cost of having storage on this network is significantly higher than other services there will still be a small group of users who will continue to use this and since this is an open source and community hosted network it can adapt over time to potentially reduce cost by possibly reducing the amount of redundancy or improving the algorithm in another way to make it more efficient.

Yes, that's true, most general public (users) won't think too about decentralization and privacy.  But security and costs are the 2 factors that are going to drive people to start using storj(Metadisk).

May there is the possiblility that in the further development a drivespacehoster is able to offer his space only at a current timeframe of a day? That meens during a fixed frame there will be no heartneat check and he does not loose his contracts. So his PC dont have to be running all night long. Probably the customer dont need access to his data all night long?

If you are talking about the transfer speed of the data via USB2 you shouldn't have a problem unless you have a very high speed internet connection.
Usually data transfers are as fast as our home internet bandwidht, thus you may use also a laptop disk to farm.
But you should leave your system on day and night, if you close your computer every night you will loose the contract of the stored data in your disk, thus no storj for you

So... I am kicking myself right now for not jumping on board with Storj during the initial crowdsale. I feel like I'm just playing catch up. So... I'm setting up a driveshare machine and working to accumulate 10,000 SJCX really quick. I'm considering tinkering with one of the Synology NAS's to use it as a Storj device. I saw a mention of it but no one seems to have followed up on the development yet. I extracted their firmware and it looks pretty doable, but I've yet to buy a device yet.