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Terabyte Storage Solutions?

Posted by Cliff on from the large-arrays-of-fat-disks dept.

DeMechman asks: "As many on Slashdot may know, storage is one thing which you can never have enough of. Given the current situation with CD/DVD rot (Personally I can attest to a 10% attrition rate) hard drives in a RAID configuration seem to be a better and more economical solution. If you own more than fifty CD/DVDs, it can be a daunting task to find a file. I am wondering if anyone has found a hardware solution that can inexpensively be set up to handle 10 or more 250GB HDDs in a RAID configuration. Primarily, has any case manufacturer tackled this niche market yet?"

7 of 574 comments (clear)

  1. Daaaamn! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Try deleting some stuff! It's free!

  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. Re:Terabyte Storage by Achmed · · Score: 5, Funny

    > Anyone have any ideas on how to back up 1TB in a home environment? i.e., not $3000 tape drives & $200 tapes

    Ummm, yeah, it'll cost you ~$600. make another one and make a copy occasionally...

    Sorry, couldn't resist...

  4. Re:Not exactly what you're looking for.. by Gilmoure · · Score: 2, Funny

    You can RAID USB floppy drives or keychain drives with OSX. Might take a few keychain drives to get up to 1TB, though

    --
    I drank what? -- Socrates
  5. Re:What's "inexpensively"? by coolgeek · · Score: 5, Funny

    Controller $500
    Drives $150 each
    Case $150

    Redundant Power Supply for RAID Array.....priceless

    --

    cat /dev/null >sig
  6. "Erica from Simpli"... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    ...I think I love you. You hold the serial ATA cables to my heart. :-)

  7. LEGO(tm)-ROM by Mad+Bad+Rabbit · · Score: 4, Funny

    Or, if you want really durable read-only storage (i.e. lasting a few hundred years without maintenance), you could use the little 1x1 LEGO blocks as bits.

    • You could pack a single byte into two 1x1 blocks, using void plus seven colors (red/green/blue/white/black/grey/yellow); and also use double-sided format, so a 1KB LEGO-ROM would fit neatly on two 32x32 green baseplates glued back-to-back. (about 26 cm on a side)
    • A 16KB LEGO-ROM would then be roughly 1 meter on a side. If these were stacked on roll-out shelves, say 3cm apart, you could fit 1MB of LEGO storage in a 1m x 1m x 2m cage.
    • A typical office building should easily have space on a floor for 1024 such cages, or 1 GB of LEGO storage; and the building itself would act as a 16 gigabyte LEGO-ROM.

    Therefore, a mere eight-by-eight city block area could store a full 1 terabyte of LEGO-ROM, with no worrying about DVD rot or head crashes (although access speeds would leave something to be desired).

    --
    >;k