Reply to: New 1.5 Terabyte hard drive

[Sysman]

SKA uses over 100 TB during index build process.

640 Terabytes should be enough for anybody
Sysman 2009

[RichardCranium]

It occurs to me that with these levels of storage, maybe the file system/OS should be keeping every version of every file ever.

That's what we said when The Management treated us to a £5,000 20Mb external drive for our main development machine.

[AtW]

just can't decide how to partition it.

FFS have 3TB in total at home now. I reckon 2025 to hit the petabyte mark.

SKA uses over 100 TB during index build process.

[Sysman]

I think that Sun's ZFS has some kind of snapshot facility and there is something for Linux called timevault? Don't know if that is what you were thinking about.

I've just started playing with Apple's Time Machine, According to the marketing fluff:

Time Machine works with your Mac and an external hard drive. Just connect the drive and assign it to Time Machine and you’re a step closer to enjoying peace of mind. Time Machine will automatically back up your entire Mac, including system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents. But what makes Time Machine different from other backup applications is that it not only keeps a spare copy of every file, it remembers how your system looked on a given day — so you can revisit your Mac as it appeared in the past.

For the Windows folks, what's the state of Windows Home Server two years on?

[lilelvis2000]

Good point, and it looks like I have hardware RAID 1 support too.

It occurs to me that with these levels of storage, maybe the file system/OS should be keeping every version of every file ever. That'd be a great feature to have built into the OS (or maybe it is already and I haven't noticed).

I think that Sun's ZFS has some kind of snapshot facility and there is something for Linux called timevault? Don't know if that is what you were thinking about.

[Platypus]

It occurs to me that with these levels of storage, maybe the file system/OS should be keeping every version of every file ever. That'd be a great feature to have built into the OS (or maybe it is already and I haven't noticed).

OpenVMS is the operating system for you then, sir.

[VectraMan]

Might as well go for more than one and make sure you have backups. How long does it take to backup that sort of capacity on a reasonably specified home/office system?

Good point, and it looks like I have hardware RAID 1 support too.

It occurs to me that with these levels of storage, maybe the file system/OS should be keeping every version of every file ever. That'd be a great feature to have built into the OS (or maybe it is already and I haven't noticed).

[Sysman]

I've been looking at hard disks (because I thought the one in my desktop might be dying). £60 for 7200 rpm 1TB drive - it's barely worth the effort buying less than 1TB.

Might as well go for more than one and make sure you have backups. How long does it take to backup that sort of capacity on a reasonably specified home/office system?

[Sysman]

That would have been in Computing and/or Computer Weekly somewhere between 1984 and 1987. I remember being the only one in the office who knew what the 'Tera-' (and peta and femto) prefix meant.

It was the total of the capacity of all their disk drives and all their reel-to-reel magnetic tape drives.

Going back a little further to about 1980 there was another large company* putting their mainframe hardware spec and disk capacity into job adverts. "Come and work for us, we've got lots of disk space" did have a certain appeal when you spent a lot of time fighting for the stuff.

* Hambro Life (Later Allied Dunbar) were doing this, but there was another one with a household name which escapes me at the moment.

[RichardCranium]

Wow. You must be really old.

..

I've been looking at hard disks (because I thought the one in my desktop might be dying). £60 for 7200 rpm 1TB drive - it's barely worth the effort buying less than 1TB.

When I last sought a replacement 10Gb drive for my laptop, I had to make do with a 120Gb drive instead as it was the smallest the shop could find out the back.

My weakness is that if I have the disk space, I use it ... but then you need to back it up somehow...

[VectraMan]

That would have been in Computing and/or Computer Weekly somewhere between 1984 and 1987. I remember being the only one in the office who knew what the 'Tera-' (and peta and femto) prefix meant.

It was the total of the capacity of all their disk drives and all their reel-to-reel magnetic tape drives.

Wow. You must be really old.

Barclays still don't have anything available on online banking more going back more than a couple of months, something that hasn't changed despite storage now being riduclously cheap. I don't understand why I can't access all my accounts going back to the dawn of time, or at least since the start of internet banking. The amount of data required must be piddly compared to a single video file for example.

I've been looking at hard disks (because I thought the one in my desktop might be dying). £60 for 7200 rpm 1TB drive - it's barely worth the effort buying less than 1TB.

[RichardCranium]

Out of curiosity when was that?

That would have been in Computing and/or Computer Weekly somewhere between 1984 and 1987. I remember being the only one in the office who knew what the 'Tera-' (and peta and femto) prefix meant.

It was the total of the capacity of all their disk drives and all their reel-to-reel magnetic tape drives.

[NickFitz]

I remember the story in the trade press where NatWest boasted they had one terabyte online (i.e. available on tape) making them the no 1 in the UK for online storage.

Out of curiosity when was that?

Last week, judging by the way they deal with my account

[Sysman]

I remember the story in the trade press where NatWest boasted they had one terabyte online (i.e. available on tape) making them the no 1 in the UK for online storage.

Out of curiosity when was that?

[SuperZ]

I remember the story in the trade press where NatWest boasted they had one terabyte online (i.e. available on tape) making them the no 1 in the UK for online storage.

I've just realised: 'online' has changed meaning. We would have said "wired" back in the day instead of online.


Partitioning: what did you buy the drive for? Backing up your other 1.5Tb of disks? Have it mirror their capacities.

Problem with huge drives is backing the data up on the buggers. I tend to run with a small OS drive and have two larger same sized data storage drives mirrored. Lost a few hard disks in the past and although mirrored drives are not the cheapest backup method, it is at least hassle free and done at the hardware level. if the OS drive dies I`ll just buy another and build the OS from scratch happy to know at least my data is safe