Computer Data Storage

grendel · August 21, 2020

I have just shut down my old workstation, it was new in 2008(ish), I have had it since 2011, and it has run continuously since, it was latterly used as a file server with a couple of large hard drives, due to running short on space, I have rationalised my storage with an additional 4Tb diskstation (2x 4Tb drives in a raid configuration for data protection) and another chance purchase of a 4 bay diskstation which will expand my storage further. my files are currently being ransferred to the diskstation from the old large format drives by the expedient of plugging them in as external drives into the usb ports of the diskstation and doing a direct transfer within the diskstation,
thus the old workstation is now redundant and has been switched off and the hard drives removed for transfer to the diskstation.

diskstations are network storage devices, and use a lot less power than a similar capacity of storage in a workstation 43W instead of a 500W workstation, I think I will soon have more storage capacity than my workplace (with 1000 + employees) but when downloading videos from the cameras you eat through storage in gigabite chunks (each 18 minute video is about 1 gb) and if I went to 4K video it would eat it even quicker.

Meantime · August 22, 2020

A couple of weeks ago we just finished installing a tape backup system for a German bank in their London data centre using the latest technology enterprise tape drives. Each tape is capable of holding up to 15TB. The tape library has a little over 7000 slots for holding tapes with dual robots to move them in or out of one of the 42 tape drives in the library. The library is currently 80% full of tapes. Makes you wonder just what information these companies store about you at times! They are due an additional upgrade to this library before the end of the year!

grendel · August 22, 2020

3 new 3Tb discs arrived today for the ebay diskstation to add to the one that arrived thursday, this should give me a further 6Tb data storage (with the raid configuration that is running).

ooh just had a short power cut

oldgregg · August 22, 2020

If you're storing video files, it might be worth at looking at how they are encoded as you can make HUGE gains in storage utilisation by re-encoding them into H264 or even H265 using Handbrake or something similar.

You will need decent hardware to play back H265, but sometimes it can make your files ten times smaller with no perceptible loss in quality.

I've been going through my old videos recently and while you'd expect 4K stuff to be the real culprit, it's surprising how poor the compression often is on 1080p video simply because older hardware lacked the computing power to compress the files efficiently.