I wasn't really trying to get into some sort of debate about storage technologies, just illustrating that the NSA does have a whole lot of data. Spinning disk

I wasn't really trying to get into some sort of debate about storage technologies, just illustrating that the NSA does have a whole lot of data. Spinning disk is cost competitive with tape robots these days, while offering much better access performance. There's a few different vendors that supply this sort of setup, or you can build your own backblaze style. The core idea is you build storage servers that can hold more disks than can be active at any given moment. Powering up a drive and doing a seek is a lot faster than a tape robot.