One possible reason HDDs are so inexpensive

[Cagey]

I just found an interesting bit of data this morning, relative to something else I was reading.

YouTube: 35 hours of video uploaded every minute

by Don Reisinger | November 11, 2010 8:39 AM PST

Just in case you had any doubts that YouTube was still growing, the folks over at Google have unleashed some stats to prove it.

According to a company blog post yesterday, YouTube users upload about 35 hours of video to the site every minute. That means that about 50,400 hours are added every day. In comparison, that figures was 24 hours of video every minute back in March.

Continue reading...

Is that astounding, or what? How many HDDs has Google got to be buying annually? When you consider how many the government has to be buying as well to record all the phone calls and other traffic passing on the 'net all the time, Seagate and Western Digital could probably both justify their existence on those two customers alone. I mean, talk about economies of scale - they've gotta be making millions of drives per year just for them. It's no wonder they're so cheap.

 

[Danuda]

Don't forget replacing the ones that go bad.

 

[Cagey]

Not just that, which is less substantial than one might imagine at the outset, there's the issue of backing it all up. That doubles the number right off the bat.

I did a little math addressing this issue on another site...

35 hours per minute is 35x60 minutes (2100 minutes) per minute. A minute's worth of low-res video = roughly 4MB, so 2100 minutes times 4MB is 8400MB of data per minute, which translates into 504GB/hr (8400x60). Over the course of a year, that works out to over 4 exabytes (8760x504 or hours/year times GB/hr). That's huge! Even if they buy 1TB drives, they'd have to buy (and have spinning) roughly 4 million drives/yr. And don't forget that's all gotta be backed up somewhere.

Then, think about how much data the gummint is stashing. I suspect it's substantially more. Then consider Yahoo!, Microsoft, Dell, HP, et al. It's no wonder HDDs are so cheap. They've got to reproduce like insects!

 

[ORCRiST]

I just found an interesting bit of data this morning, relative to something else I was reading.

YouTube: 35 hours of video uploaded every minute

by Don Reisinger | November 11, 2010 8:39 AM PST

Just in case you had any doubts that YouTube was still growing, the folks over at Google have unleashed some stats to prove it.

According to a company blog post yesterday, YouTube users upload about 35 hours of video to the site every minute. That means that about 50,400 hours are added every day. In comparison, that figures was 24 hours of video every minute back in March.

Continue reading...

Is that astounding, or what? How many HDDs has Google got to be buying annually? When you consider how many the government has to be buying as well to record all the phone calls and other traffic passing on the 'net all the time, Seagate and Western Digital could probably both justify their existence on those two customers alone. I mean, talk about economies of scale - they've gotta be making millions of drives per year just for them. It's no wonder they're so cheap.

Very true, just remember Cagey... compression is your friend!    I wonder how many hours they can squeeze on to a 3TB drive...?

(On a side note, I really need to move over to an SSD... I thought about upgrading my 10K RAID0 array to SAS 15K RAID, but that just seems
like a waste of money now....)

 

[kboman]

Ye gods. Seeing stuff like this written out for you really makes the hair on your neck stand on end!

 

[Panthur]

What's even more amazing is that not content with being able to provide 720p and 1080p video (which carries a pretty big data rate, i.e. large files), youtube are starting to roll out up to 4k capability (4096 x 2160) which is the same resolution as the source captured by very high end cinematography cameras, a standard which is only very recently making it's way into cinema projectors (IMAX is 2k). What's the source data rate I hear you ask... 1.35Gb/s. I'm not sure how much they compress that etc etc, but it's still as impressive as hell.

Here's one. You'll need to change the resolution setting to 'Original'
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0m1XmvBey8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
It's comes with a warning. Buffering ;-)
Also, unless you've got some uber monitor, you'll be compressing it down yourself to fit your screen res.

 

[bigguspickus]

Hard drives? The internet is a cloud, dummy.

 

[bagman67]

<why_when_i_was_a_lad>

I remember being a lad of but 22 am 1989, working at my friend's dad's computer store in Las Vegas, and I had to make a delivery up to the nuclear test site of one each 600MB (thats MEGABYTES) hard drive weighing about 10 pounds.  I picked up a check for $7,000 from the gov't contractor who needed it.

How times have changed.

</why_when_i_was_a_lad>

Bagman

 

[Cagey]

Very true, just remember Cagey... compression is your friend!    I wonder how many hours they can squeeze on to a 3TB drive...?

(On a side note, I really need to move over to an SSD... I thought about upgrading my 10K RAID0 array to SAS 15K RAID, but that just seems
like a waste of money now....)

I know about compression, but you don't necessarily want to compress everything, and there are limits to how far you can squeeze things even if you do.

As for SSDs, I'd highly recommend just a moderate-sized unit to stash your OS and applications on - the difference in performance is dramatic. Never mind putting them in a RAID of any type; there's no point. Keep HDDs around for stashing your media and data files.

 

[Cagey]

Hard drives? The internet is a cloud, dummy.

Is that right? Well, thanks for sharing.

 

[Jusatele]

this is so funny, I can remember 15 or 16 years ago paying $200 plus for a 2 mega byte drive and I was seriously upgrading my 386, now I would not touch a laptop with out 160 gigs
another funny thing is I still have a desk top PC, it is a real powerhouse with a 3 head monitor system, I use it for  photography and doing internet site work. but my laptop has a more powerful Cp and is what I carry around, But now with the droid, I am about to accept this will be my last laptop, and just use the droid for that kind of stuff.

 

[Cagey]

<why_when_i_was_a_lad>

I remember being a lad of but 22 am 1989, working at my friend's dad's computer store in Las Vegas, and I had to make a delivery up to the nuclear test site of one each 600MB (thats MEGABYTES) hard drive weighing about 10 pounds.  I picked up a check for $7,000 from the gov't contractor who needed it.

How times have changed.

</why_when_i_was_a_lad>

Bagman

That's pretty pricey, even in 1989. But, those were probably some special drives, given the environment and duty.

My first HDD was earlier than that - 1985 - but it was only 10MB and only cost $600. People thought I was nuts. "Whaddaya gonna do with 10 million bytes of storage?" It was an embarassment of riches. Now I've got more cache than that on right on the CPU die <grin>

 

[Jusatele]

maybe it was earlier than that, it was for a 386

 

[nexrex]

Yeah, that is pretty crazy. I did some consulting work for one of our major Telco's (Telstra) in Australia about 10 years ago. I remember on of their I,T guys telling me that they had about 100 Terabytes of client data spread out across their nationwide server network. Back then that was massive. Now everyone has Terabyte drives in their desktop PC's    ???

 

[bigguspickus]

I know, I've got 4 2TB drives in my video editing machine.

Hard drives? The internet is a cloud, dummy.

Is that right? Well, thanks for sharing.

Yes, the internet is a cloud. Just look at this diagram.

You are now fully briefed on our nation's network topography. You're welcome.

 

[Mor Paul]

GUYS, I LIVE IN THE LOCAL SERVICE PROVIDER. HOLY. CRAP.

 

[bigguspickus]

I hope those giant gray cylinders aren't too much of an inconvenience when you need to go somewhere.

Just be thankful you don't live under the oppression of a teleworker's torso.

 

[Jusatele]

have you been reading about the cloud technology that microsoft is going to develop?

 

[baskruit]

this is so funny, I can remember 15 or 16 years ago paying $200 plus for a 2 mega byte drive and I was seriously upgrading my 386.

I'm pretty sure you mean 2 gigabytes.

 

[exaN]

Moore's law b*tch!