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Bulk Data Storage For The Common Man?
Vigyaan writes "Lately, I have been looking into different bulk data storage options available to a common man. My work
depends on generating, storing and analyzing a
large amount of data -- averaging about 1 TB per
month. I would like to have a storage system which is automated, fast, reliable
and most importantly does not cost the price of an
eye. Right now, I have a 4 node Linux cluster with
10 large hard disks (total capacity 1.6 TB); data storage roughly costs
about $0.60/GB (excluding the cost of PC
hardware). But long term storage is painful -- DVDs
cost about $0.10-$0.15/GB but takes too much human time
and leaving data on hard disks makes me nervous
because of possible failures. RAID is a possibility, but it increases the cost significantly. I was wondering, if
Slashdot readers have any recommendations for a
cheap automated way to store and retrieve data."
I'll send you a couple.
http://www.fsckin.com/
Floppy disks.
PRINTSCREEN should do the trick.
Logic, macros, and more
Short of launching his own space probe, the only way for this guy to consume a TB a month of storage is a serious porn habit. Just post your 'content' on Edonkey and it will be available when you 'need' it. You likely only watch them once anyway.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
I got a couple of drawers of old floppy disks. $10 takes 'em. Plenty of bulk.
The Sony "lifetime" warranty may still be good on them too!
You want it fast, cheap, reliable, easy, and now, eh? Good luck with that.... Sounds like a request from the PHB...
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
my data is worth over $100,000 a month
This 'data' doesnt happen to be a large collection of email addresses does it?
i am responsible for providing storage solutions for a mid-sized content creation company which, through version archiving, accumulates near 1-200 GB per day. they require access to their media backups on a rolling basis, so tapes are not an option.
i have found that a Teutonium cluster of 6.5 TB Spongedrives (either Cray or SecreTech are fine) fits the bill nicely. housed in a 15-unit rack server, the amoeba-shaped drives utilize BioLas technology to store data on 6-dimensional Moebius Cilia for a slick seek time of 0.00 ms.
a cluster costs about $45,000 USD but the price should come down in 2004 Q4 when SecreTech launches their new 40-platter blackholium SCSI's.
If I could make this sig kill you, I would.
echo 1tb.txt > /dev/lprn0
I use bioneural gel packs at a cost of $0.04 per teraquad. What is this hard drive of which you speak?
... and program it as a repeater.
It's about 90 minutes away, so at 250 Kbps that's over one terabit in storage on the way out there, and another terabit on the way back.
Worst-case access latency is about three hours, though. Maybe the hard disks are a better idea.
If you send your probe^H^H^H^H^H repeater to Alpha Centauri, you'll get more than 20,000 times the storage capacity.
Only on Slashdot would they start talking about huge storage arrays and title it "for the common man"
I choose b ... HEY! That's a trick question!
Meh.
I'm just curious, do you have any idea how much data 1 Terabyte is? Are you suggesting that he PRINT it?
Let's say for the sake of argument that all 256 bytes can be printed as a visibly distinguishable character, or that he's got 1TB of plaintext. Also assume you can fit 10,000 characters on a 8 1/2 by 11 page.
You can fit 10^4 bytes per page, and you need to print 10^12 bytes (I know, it's actually 2^120, but that needlessly complicates the math, so shush)
That means you will need 10^12 bytes / 10^4 bytes/page = 10^8 pages.
One hundred million pages. Assuming he has a good laser printer with infinite toner, let's say he can print 60 ppm or one page per second. It would take one hundred million seconds to print the data, which is 1157 days, or a little over 3 years.
Given that he generates 1TB per month, I think this backup plan would probably become the top agenda item of most of the anti-deforestation groups out there.
Random and weird software I've written.
I think you're absolutly right.
Tapes or cheap.
"here are no external firewire drives. There are (to my knowledge) no Firewire drives at all.
People take standard ATA/IDE drives and use an ATA/Firewire bridge to connect them up externally and bypass the extremely limited cable length of ATA."
Well that totally blows my point out of the water!
"Derp de derp."
I do believe that this is the first time I've ever seen the word Apple used in the same sentence as "reasonably priced".