Almost out of storage
Way, way back in the technology time machine - Christmas 2004, to be precise, I set up a Promise VTrak 15200 with 15 400gb drives for my digital media home. 4.8 Terabytes (RAID 50 with a hot spare) seemed like an infinite amount of storage. Given what it cost, it freakin' well BETTER be infinite was my thinking at the time. Fast forward almost 3 years now, and I'm down to 480GB. My infinite storage space has vanished - I'm hoarding media files on my media center PCs because there is no space on my darned server. I have a ton of DVDs to archive still and I'm outta luck. I have to spend time cleaning out old crap off my storage array. I am almost out of storage on my 'infinite' storage device - how did that happen?!
When terabyte drives were announced, I figured that was the milestone to upgrade my storage world. But having had a double drive failure in my RAID 50 config (and as luck would have it, one drive failed in one RAID 5 stripe and one failed in the other) and having sat around biting my nails for a day and a half hoping the rebuild would finish before another drive failed, I was unwilling to move to terabyte drives (with 3+ day rebuilds once they were full) until RAID 6 was available. RAID 6 in hardware is the ultimate in coolness for large drives - 2 parity drives instead of 1, so you can sustain 2 drive failures and keep on ticking.
Tonight I did my monthly troll of Promise's web site to see if they had a 15+ drive RAID 6 appliance available, and sure enough, they did - the M610p is out, with 16 hot swap slots and support for RAID 6 and the Hitachi terabyte drive. And with the terabyte drives being only $329 from ZipZoomFly (a great price), the 17 drives I'd need (16 + a spare) would cost a mere $5,593. So with the M610p around $4000, all I need is $9,600 laying around to have 13TB of storage (2 drives for parity + a hot spare - never leave home without a hot spare in your storage array).
So it looks like I'm just gonna be almost out of storage for the forseeable future. Sigh. I hate waiting. 
Comments
And I thought convincing my wife that we needed the new 24 inch iMac over the 20 inch was hard...
Posted by: Stefan | September 17, 2007 10:43 PM
There's a fellow over in MS Reasearch who has been videotaping his whole life as research into making hard drives be his memory and storage system. Ask him how he does it?
And, really, you don't need to keep the DVD rips of "My Best Friend's Wedding," "Pretty Woman," and "Private Benjamin."
(do you?)
Posted by: vmarks | September 18, 2007 11:46 AM
Hey Stefan - yes indeedy, it is going to be one hell of a sell... my 10th wedding anniversary is coming up next August, maybe this is a good anniversary gift? :-)
And vmarks - dude - don't you go dissin' Goldie Hawn in Private Benjamin! :-)
Posted by: Craig | September 18, 2007 9:16 PM
The formula still works!
Free storage = Total storage * 0.9
Posted by: Enrique García | September 19, 2007 11:32 AM
Storage as an anniversary gift? You better mean from me to you and not the other way around. That would be too much like when Homer bought Marge a bowling ball with his name on it! And what is this thing you have for Goldie Hawn?
Posted by: The Wife | September 20, 2007 9:13 AM
Ummmmm.... No comment??!?!?
:-)
Posted by: Craig | September 20, 2007 10:19 PM
Craig,
Your wife can cite when Homer gave Marge a bowling ball.
There's nothing really left to say. It's per-diddly-erfect.
Posted by: vmarks | September 23, 2007 7:42 PM
vmarks - I agree. It is pretty much per-diddly-erfect. Except for the crap about Goldie Hawn. :-)
Hi-diddley-ho, neighbor!
Posted by: Craig | September 26, 2007 12:58 AM