No you just restore your backups. How about instead of RAID you just buy a second hard drive and copy the contents of hard drive A to hard drive B every night?
Remember that you don't have to backup 1TB every month, just the changes to your files, which for most people are very minimal. You don't need to backup your entire collection of movies from thepiratebay, just important documents, photos, things that can't be replaced. And then you only need to upload every month the new important files, or ones that have changed. These deltas for most people are probably less than a gigabyte. Assuming a 1mb/s upload speed would take less than 3 hours _PER MONTH_ to upload. Now just schedule your backups to run nightly while you sleep and I think you'll be just fine.
"What happens when your offline backup company goes under?"
You start using a different one? Personally I have a colocated server where I keep encrypted backups along with a hard drive in an external enclosure attached via USB. I keep backups of all my important files in two locations. Now, if the online backup service went out of business and my house burnt down before I could find a new one, I'd be out of luck I suppose. I think I'm a little more likely to win the lottery though, so I'll take my chances. This also assumes that the backup service shuts down and cuts you off without any notice whatsoever.
Most home users don't NEED RAID. RAID is for performance and high-availability, do you need either of those things? No? Ok then guess what you don't need RAID.
Please explain to me how I can get 50,000 IOPS and 20TB of disk space for a SAN without RAID. Then explain how I maintain 99.999% uptime when I have a disk failure and have to restore everything from backup. Performance. Availability. That's it. That's the purpose of RAID. No one is saying RAID is a replacement for backups. RAID is for performance and availability.
You have clearly not worked in anything that anyone could possibly misconstrue as a medium-large scale "deployments".
The average daily commute distance is about 24 minutes over a distance of 16 miles in the United States (probably much higher than other countries, urban sprawl and all). The Model S has a range of 300 miles, which is very good. Assuming that it's even possible to trade range for power, I think they've struck an excellent balance between distance and power.
We also know hard drives have lifespan "concerns". What we don't know is which ones will die faster.
"If you knew a boat was prone to leaking, but were told the pump "should" be faster than the boat can sink, but it's never been confirmed, you;re telling me you'd get on board? Especially when the ticket on that boat is 3X more expensive?"
And the boat is 10x as fast? Sure, I already did. I have a 30GB OCZ Vertex and the performance difference is absolutely stunning. Although I have a nightly cronjob that just dd's my vertex to my larger mechanical drive, not sure how that works with your boat analogy. I guess it would be like having another big slower boat following you in case anything bad happens? Use your imagination.
"Hmm, interesting that they both performed exactly the same. I would have expected the HDD to be faster transfering sequential data, except they were probably both limited by the transfer rate of the older, generic USB drive you were using. Way to go, you've successfully benchmarked the transfer rate for a USB drive that you weren't even reviewing. "
I thought the same thing, and they should have pointed it out, but the point of the test was to see if the drives have value in real world scenarios. Spend a lot of time moving data from an external USB hard drive? Well, an SSD drive isn't going to help this situation at all. So misleading yes, definitely, but still a valid test I suppose.
Depends on which OCZ drive you are using. The Vertex and Agility series are the only ones that aren't terrible (well that and Summit but it's $$$$$$$$).
So use two drives like the rest of us. A 30 or 60GB SSD for OS/Apps and a big drive for large media files (movies, music, photos, etc). Or just wait for the price per gigabyte to continue to fall. Everyone will switch to SSDs it's just a matter of what price point they do it at.
$140 to speed up my workstation? Absolutely. Any other upgrades you know of for $140 that will give me similar real world results because I can afford it.
That only applies to _VERY_ expensive SLC based flash storage. MLC drives are still in the 10,000 (estimated) range. Of course there are tests that have shown MLC to be writable even beyond the 20,000 limit but no guarantees.
Incorrect. Don't buy anything other than Intel drives, Samsung drives, or any drive with the Indilinx Barefoot controller. You just want to avoid the JMICRON controllers like the plague.
Everything's relative, and let me tell you, for rotating disks - 7ms total seek is fucking phenomenal. Typically 7200rpm disks are looking at 12+ ms seek latencies.
"Not exactly. Putting Vista or Windows 7 on a quality SSD has big performance gains - but XP is light enough that a fast HDD will beat a fast SSD. An article I read a while back put the 640GB WD Caviars as the fastest boot drive for XP."
This is the dumbest thing I've ever read on the Internet.
I could link you to a dozen articles showing $140 OCZ Vertex destroying 10k RPM Velociraptors in every possibly test but you think a 640GB 7200RPM hard drive has any chance whatsoever? You're very misinformed.
"but even then, given the HIGHLY questionable reliability of SDD"
Why does everyone keep saying this? At least provide a link or something to back up these crazy claims.
I will agree with you, they are still very expensive. But don't you think by the time that the drives are only 50% more than HDD's all of these nebulous "reliability" concerns (baseless by the way) will be put to bed? I mean it's totally un-researched, unsubstantiated FUD being spread without any shred of evidence on actual failure rates.
But $150 for a 30GB OCZ Vertex for OS/Apps and then some big mechanical drives for storage makes the most sense to me. I think it all comes down to how much money you're willing to spend for performance.
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No you just restore your backups. How about instead of RAID you just buy a second hard drive and copy the contents of hard drive A to hard drive B every night?
Remember that you don't have to backup 1TB every month, just the changes to your files, which for most people are very minimal. You don't need to backup your entire collection of movies from thepiratebay, just important documents, photos, things that can't be replaced. And then you only need to upload every month the new important files, or ones that have changed. These deltas for most people are probably less than a gigabyte. Assuming a 1mb/s upload speed would take less than 3 hours _PER MONTH_ to upload. Now just schedule your backups to run nightly while you sleep and I think you'll be just fine.
"What happens when your offline backup company goes under?"
You start using a different one? Personally I have a colocated server where I keep encrypted backups along with a hard drive in an external enclosure attached via USB. I keep backups of all my important files in two locations. Now, if the online backup service went out of business and my house burnt down before I could find a new one, I'd be out of luck I suppose. I think I'm a little more likely to win the lottery though, so I'll take my chances. This also assumes that the backup service shuts down and cuts you off without any notice whatsoever.
Most home users don't NEED RAID. RAID is for performance and high-availability, do you need either of those things? No? Ok then guess what you don't need RAID.
"RAID is only marginally valuable."
Please explain to me how I can get 50,000 IOPS and 20TB of disk space for a SAN without RAID. Then explain how I maintain 99.999% uptime when I have a disk failure and have to restore everything from backup. Performance. Availability. That's it. That's the purpose of RAID. No one is saying RAID is a replacement for backups. RAID is for performance and availability.
You have clearly not worked in anything that anyone could possibly misconstrue as a medium-large scale "deployments".
The average daily commute distance is about 24 minutes over a distance of 16 miles in the United States (probably much higher than other countries, urban sprawl and all). The Model S has a range of 300 miles, which is very good. Assuming that it's even possible to trade range for power, I think they've struck an excellent balance between distance and power.
That's brutal, I pay somewhere between $0.06 and $0.07/kWh -- or less than 25% of what you pay. Your $23 charge is my $4.83 charge.
"The site doesn't say what the battery capacity is or the charging efficiency, which means that we can't tell how much it costs to drive for a mile."
It says it has a range of 300 miles and costs $4 to fully charge or 1.3 cents per mile. It's on the website, look under the "Technology" button/tab.
"We KNOW there are lifespan "concerns.""
We also know hard drives have lifespan "concerns". What we don't know is which ones will die faster.
"If you knew a boat was prone to leaking, but were told the pump "should" be faster than the boat can sink, but it's never been confirmed, you;re telling me you'd get on board? Especially when the ticket on that boat is 3X more expensive?"
And the boat is 10x as fast? Sure, I already did. I have a 30GB OCZ Vertex and the performance difference is absolutely stunning. Although I have a nightly cronjob that just dd's my vertex to my larger mechanical drive, not sure how that works with your boat analogy. I guess it would be like having another big slower boat following you in case anything bad happens? Use your imagination.
"Be happy to provide that as soon as we have reached 5+ year in the wild life spans of a sufficient sample size of SSDs. "
Exactly. So stop stating estimates as fact when we don't have evidence either way.
Still waiting for link to research paper on the analysis of drive failures instead of anecdotal evidence from one manufacturer.
"Hmm, interesting that they both performed exactly the same. I would have expected the HDD to be faster transfering sequential data, except they were probably both limited by the transfer rate of the older, generic USB drive you were using. Way to go, you've successfully benchmarked the transfer rate for a USB drive that you weren't even reviewing. "
I thought the same thing, and they should have pointed it out, but the point of the test was to see if the drives have value in real world scenarios. Spend a lot of time moving data from an external USB hard drive? Well, an SSD drive isn't going to help this situation at all. So misleading yes, definitely, but still a valid test I suppose.
Depends on which OCZ drive you are using. The Vertex and Agility series are the only ones that aren't terrible (well that and Summit but it's $$$$$$$$).
So use two drives like the rest of us. A 30 or 60GB SSD for OS/Apps and a big drive for large media files (movies, music, photos, etc). Or just wait for the price per gigabyte to continue to fall. Everyone will switch to SSDs it's just a matter of what price point they do it at.
$140 to speed up my workstation? Absolutely. Any other upgrades you know of for $140 that will give me similar real world results because I can afford it.
Actually newegg still sells them for $375.99.
That only applies to _VERY_ expensive SLC based flash storage. MLC drives are still in the 10,000 (estimated) range. Of course there are tests that have shown MLC to be writable even beyond the 20,000 limit but no guarantees.
It doesn't really matter either way, you just restore from your backup.
Jesus quit being a pussy and setup a cronjob/scheduled-task to backup your PC to rotating magnetic disks nightly. Fuck.
Incorrect. Don't buy anything other than Intel drives, Samsung drives, or any drive with the Indilinx Barefoot controller. You just want to avoid the JMICRON controllers like the plague.
For example, here's some OCZ Vertex benchmarks that might change your mind.
which is 2,500% slower than an SSD (2.58 vs 0.1)
Everything's relative, and let me tell you, for rotating disks - 7ms total seek is fucking phenomenal. Typically 7200rpm disks are looking at 12+ ms seek latencies.
"Not exactly. Putting Vista or Windows 7 on a quality SSD has big performance gains - but XP is light enough that a fast HDD will beat a fast SSD. An article I read a while back put the 640GB WD Caviars as the fastest boot drive for XP."
This is the dumbest thing I've ever read on the Internet.
I could link you to a dozen articles showing $140 OCZ Vertex destroying 10k RPM Velociraptors in every possibly test but you think a 640GB 7200RPM hard drive has any chance whatsoever? You're very misinformed.
"Another fun little tidbit - ALL SSD drives are currently in 2.5" format"
Not for long: OCZ Colossues 3.5" SSD
"Try getting 15k rpm hard drive in a 2.5" form factor - you won't."
Uhhh, try again. 15K RPM 2.5" SAS drives have been available for YEARS: HP 72GB 2.5" 15K RPM SAS
"but even then, given the HIGHLY questionable reliability of SDD"
Why does everyone keep saying this? At least provide a link or something to back up these crazy claims.
I will agree with you, they are still very expensive. But don't you think by the time that the drives are only 50% more than HDD's all of these nebulous "reliability" concerns (baseless by the way) will be put to bed? I mean it's totally un-researched, unsubstantiated FUD being spread without any shred of evidence on actual failure rates.
But $150 for a 30GB OCZ Vertex for OS/Apps and then some big mechanical drives for storage makes the most sense to me. I think it all comes down to how much money you're willing to spend for performance.