3 ms·

Unfortunately for bulk data storage, spinning rust is currently the only viable option at the consumer level. For now, until ssds reach competitive prices at th

by esyir 6y ago

Unfortunately for bulk data storage, spinning rust is currently the only viable option at the consumer level. For now, until ssds reach competitive prices at the same scales, we're stuck with them.

yellowapple 6y ago
For how I typically lean for storage (RAID1 "cells" with each disk from a separate manufacturer, combined into either a RAID10 or a JBOD), and thus how I typically buy drives, SSD v. HDD is actually surprisingly close price-wise, especially when looking at 2.5" SATA or SAS (which is what I typically buy, both because 3.5" SSDs strangely don't exist and because I can stuff more of 'em into an enclosure; plus, quite a few servers don't even take 3.5" drives). For example, consider two different 2TB cell setups: - SSD: Crucial MX500 + Samsung 860 QVO = $473.73 on Newegg - HDD: WD Blue WD20SPZX + Toshiba L200 = $168.57 on Newegg On the one hand, the SSD cell is a whole 2.81× more expensive. On the other hand, the SSD cell is only 2.81× more expensive. This narrows to 2× in the case of a 1TB (well, technically 960GB in the SSD case) cell setup: - SSD: Crucial MX500 + Kingston A400 = $236.54 on Newegg (this is my typical setup for a RAID1) - HDD: WD Blue WD10SPZX + Toshiba L200 = $117.13 on Newegg Now, to be fair, this is excluding Seagate, which is stupidly cheap and would widen that gap (and historically I've bought Seagate strictly as a secondary for these sorts of "cells", but given my bad experiences with Seagate I'm inclined to ignore them and go with WD+Toshiba if possible for a given target size). It's also excluding 3.5" drives (and therefore notably excluding WD Reds entirely), which doesn't help for a 1TB cell (Seagate Cheetah NS + WD Red = $118.75) or a 2TB cell (Seagate IronWolf + WD Red = $167.74), but does help for bigger cell sizes that wouldn't be possible with 2.5" at all without major sacrifices in vendor redundancy and price (for example, a 4TB cell w/ Toshiba N300 + WD Red = $225.91, v. Samsung 860 QVO v. WD Blue = $1049.17 - even higher if I wanted to keep Kingston in the mix - or two of the above 2TB cells for only slightly cheaper). On the other hand, this is including 5400 RPM drives; if I required 7200 RPM (as most NAS drives are) then the 1TB cell cost jumps up to $134.98 (WD Black + Seagate BarraCuda), and if I needed 10k RPM or SAS then I'd probably be springing for a WD XE WD9001BKHG + Toshiba AL13SEB900, which would bring the cell cost up even higher to $164.75 (while also losing 100GB of capacity), or even higher to $186.38 if I wanted to swap the WD for a Seagate Savvio ST9900705SS and have that 64MB of cache on both sides of the mirror (thus bringing the cost difference to a mere 1.27×). I'm also artificially keeping out a whole swath of SSD manufacturers in the above figures; never heard of "Team Group" or "Goldenfir", but if I had zero qualms about reliability I could put together a 1TB cell with those for $182.98 (on par w/ the 10k RPM cell), or for a 2TB cell I could go with a Crucial BX500 + Patriot P200 for $399.98. ---- That all being to say: SSDs are a lot cheaper nowadays than they were even a couple years ago, and at typical consumer scales they're plenty viable; "good enough" capacity, while also having better performance and lower power consumption.
- esyir 6y ago
  So this sort of works if you use those numbers, but for the more hoardy sort of us, we're using completely different scales and prices, especially since the relationship between HDD price and size is distinctly sub-linear as compared to the super-linear SSD price scaling. Let's bump this up a notch. WD RED 8 TB drives are 213 now on newegg (base price). Two of those quadruple the SSD storage for the same price. You're now reaching 4x prices. If you go the data hoarder approach and shuck 8TB drives, that drops it to 290 for to 8 TB drives, putting you at 60% of the cost for 4 times the storage.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    4× prices is still well within the same order of magnitude. I'd say that's reasonable, especially since you get better performance and reliability out of the deal. And that does require 3.5" drives (once you go to 2.5" that 4× gap shrinks to 2.7× for 5400RPM or 2.1× for 7200RPM+ when going by pure price/GB; per PCPartPicker, a 2TB 5400RPM Toshiba MQ04ABD200 is at 3.5¢/GB and a 7200RPM 1TB Seagate Constellation.2 is at 4.6¢/GB, while a Crucial BX500 is at 9.5¢/GB, all three of these being the cheapest per GB in their respective groups). And I know the inevitable response to that is 'well real data hoarders are fine with 3.5" drives and/or 5400RPM', but "real" data hoarders also might appreciate being able to saturate their gigabit Internet connections with the data they're hoarding, or being able to hoard that data more compactly and quietly (I can cram 16 2.5-inchers in a 2U SuperChassis and still have room for a 5.25" drive, or 24 without) and without having to worry nearly as much about vibration or heat killing the drives (and thus the data on 'em). ---- Speaking of a 5.25" drive, if price/GB is really all-important, it seems like tape would be the ideal option, no? A bit high of an upfront cost (an HP EH957A LTO Ultrium 5 tape drive runs for $801.15 on Newegg, though there are some much cheaper used LTO 5s on eBay), but at $18 per 1.5TB cartridge (going with the IBM one) it's hard to beat that 1.2¢/GB. As soon as you cross the 176TB mark (if not earlier; my napkin math is equating 9TB of tapes to a shucked drive), tapes would be cheaper per GB even factoring in that brand-new drive (for retail Reds, the crossover point would be 64TB). They say tape's dead, but it looks like it's still got an edge there, even with older tech. A tiered SSD + LTO 5 approach seems like it'd be the best of both worlds (at least until SSDs finally get around to closing the gap), and I'm kinda tempted to spring for one in my next home build, even if it'd be highly impractical for my needs (I can at least leave a slot open for one). You could also go with newer tech for even better absolute capacity and performance (but the cost of drives hampers the economics of it a bit, unfortunately; by my math, $3952.52 for the cheapest LTO 7 drive on Newegg + $61.30 per 6TB cartridge would push that crossover point to 264TB v. retail Reds or 504TB v. shucked - that'd be a lot of data to hoard for LTO 7 to be worth it unless you can find a screamin' deal on a drive on eBay, though I wouldn't wanna shuck 63 drives, either, lol). Going the other direction, LTO 2 has lower up-front costs, but the media kills any economic benefit (worse price/GB than hard drives). LTO 5 seems like the sweet spot there, for now at least. Of course, this is going a fair bit beyond "consumer grade", but I do know of quite a few serious data hoarders who've stuck with tape for this exact reason.

by esyir 6y ago

Unfortunately for bulk data storage, spinning rust is currently the only viable option at the consumer level. For now, until ssds reach competitive prices at the same scales, we're stuck with them.

yellowapple 6y ago

For how I typically lean for storage (RAID1 "cells" with each disk from a separate manufacturer, combined into either a RAID10 or a JBOD), and thus how I typically buy drives, SSD v. HDD is actually surprisingly close price-wise, especially when looking at 2.5" SATA or SAS (which is what I typically buy, both because 3.5" SSDs strangely don't exist and because I can stuff more of 'em into an enclosure; plus, quite a few servers don't even take 3.5" drives). For example, consider two different 2TB cell setups: - SSD: Crucial MX500 + Samsung 860 QVO = $473.73 on Newegg - HDD: WD Blue WD20SPZX + Toshiba L200 = $168.57 on Newegg On the one hand, the SSD cell is a whole 2.81× more expensive. On the other hand, the SSD cell is only 2.81× more expensive. This narrows to 2× in the case of a 1TB (well, technically 960GB in the SSD case) cell setup: - SSD: Crucial MX500 + Kingston A400 = $236.54 on Newegg (this is my typical setup for a RAID1) - HDD: WD Blue WD10SPZX + Toshiba L200 = $117.13 on Newegg Now, to be fair, this is excluding Seagate, which is stupidly cheap and would widen that gap (and historically I've bought Seagate strictly as a secondary for these sorts of "cells", but given my bad experiences with Seagate I'm inclined to ignore them and go with WD+Toshiba if possible for a given target size). It's also excluding 3.5" drives (and therefore notably excluding WD Reds entirely), which doesn't help for a 1TB cell (Seagate Cheetah NS + WD Red = $118.75) or a 2TB cell (Seagate IronWolf + WD Red = $167.74), but does help for bigger cell sizes that wouldn't be possible with 2.5" at all without major sacrifices in vendor redundancy and price (for example, a 4TB cell w/ Toshiba N300 + WD Red = $225.91, v. Samsung 860 QVO v. WD Blue = $1049.17 - even higher if I wanted to keep Kingston in the mix - or two of the above 2TB cells for only slightly cheaper). On the other hand, this is including 5400 RPM drives; if I required 7200 RPM (as most NAS drives are) then the 1TB cell cost jumps up to $134.98 (WD Black + Seagate BarraCuda), and if I needed 10k RPM or SAS then I'd probably be springing for a WD XE WD9001BKHG + Toshiba AL13SEB900, which would bring the cell cost up even higher to $164.75 (while also losing 100GB of capacity), or even higher to $186.38 if I wanted to swap the WD for a Seagate Savvio ST9900705SS and have that 64MB of cache on both sides of the mirror (thus bringing the cost difference to a mere 1.27×). I'm also artificially keeping out a whole swath of SSD manufacturers in the above figures; never heard of "Team Group" or "Goldenfir", but if I had zero qualms about reliability I could put together a 1TB cell with those for $182.98 (on par w/ the 10k RPM cell), or for a 2TB cell I could go with a Crucial BX500 + Patriot P200 for $399.98. ---- That all being to say: SSDs are a lot cheaper nowadays than they were even a couple years ago, and at typical consumer scales they're plenty viable; "good enough" capacity, while also having better performance and lower power consumption.

esyir 6y ago
So this sort of works if you use those numbers, but for the more hoardy sort of us, we're using completely different scales and prices, especially since the relationship between HDD price and size is distinctly sub-linear as compared to the super-linear SSD price scaling. Let's bump this up a notch. WD RED 8 TB drives are 213 now on newegg (base price). Two of those quadruple the SSD storage for the same price. You're now reaching 4x prices. If you go the data hoarder approach and shuck 8TB drives, that drops it to 290 for to 8 TB drives, putting you at 60% of the cost for 4 times the storage.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  4× prices is still well within the same order of magnitude. I'd say that's reasonable, especially since you get better performance and reliability out of the deal. And that does require 3.5" drives (once you go to 2.5" that 4× gap shrinks to 2.7× for 5400RPM or 2.1× for 7200RPM+ when going by pure price/GB; per PCPartPicker, a 2TB 5400RPM Toshiba MQ04ABD200 is at 3.5¢/GB and a 7200RPM 1TB Seagate Constellation.2 is at 4.6¢/GB, while a Crucial BX500 is at 9.5¢/GB, all three of these being the cheapest per GB in their respective groups). And I know the inevitable response to that is 'well real data hoarders are fine with 3.5" drives and/or 5400RPM', but "real" data hoarders also might appreciate being able to saturate their gigabit Internet connections with the data they're hoarding, or being able to hoard that data more compactly and quietly (I can cram 16 2.5-inchers in a 2U SuperChassis and still have room for a 5.25" drive, or 24 without) and without having to worry nearly as much about vibration or heat killing the drives (and thus the data on 'em). ---- Speaking of a 5.25" drive, if price/GB is really all-important, it seems like tape would be the ideal option, no? A bit high of an upfront cost (an HP EH957A LTO Ultrium 5 tape drive runs for $801.15 on Newegg, though there are some much cheaper used LTO 5s on eBay), but at $18 per 1.5TB cartridge (going with the IBM one) it's hard to beat that 1.2¢/GB. As soon as you cross the 176TB mark (if not earlier; my napkin math is equating 9TB of tapes to a shucked drive), tapes would be cheaper per GB even factoring in that brand-new drive (for retail Reds, the crossover point would be 64TB). They say tape's dead, but it looks like it's still got an edge there, even with older tech. A tiered SSD + LTO 5 approach seems like it'd be the best of both worlds (at least until SSDs finally get around to closing the gap), and I'm kinda tempted to spring for one in my next home build, even if it'd be highly impractical for my needs (I can at least leave a slot open for one). You could also go with newer tech for even better absolute capacity and performance (but the cost of drives hampers the economics of it a bit, unfortunately; by my math, $3952.52 for the cheapest LTO 7 drive on Newegg + $61.30 per 6TB cartridge would push that crossover point to 264TB v. retail Reds or 504TB v. shucked - that'd be a lot of data to hoard for LTO 7 to be worth it unless you can find a screamin' deal on a drive on eBay, though I wouldn't wanna shuck 63 drives, either, lol). Going the other direction, LTO 2 has lower up-front costs, but the media kills any economic benefit (worse price/GB than hard drives). LTO 5 seems like the sweet spot there, for now at least. Of course, this is going a fair bit beyond "consumer grade", but I do know of quite a few serious data hoarders who've stuck with tape for this exact reason.