Re: question about storage

[Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com>]

Ron Johnson put forth on 2/19/2011 6:06 PM:
> On 02/19/2011 05:29 PM, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>> Jim Green put forth on 2/18/2011 10:36 PM:
>>> Hello!
>>> I have a laptop with 120G harddrive, 2x320G external harddrive,  I
>>> don't have a desktop.
>>>
>>> Now I am doing something serious storing some huge historical data to
>>> mysql database and want to have some better storage solution(I hate
>>> the two external harddrives I bought 4 years ago, need to power them
>>> on individually and connect with laptop each time I need to use data
>>> in them).
>>>
>>> I have two options
>>> 1, buy a desktop with 4x2T harddrives and use lvm on raid1, I need the
>>> redundancy of data.
>>
>> Why 4*2TB drives?  Unless this is a MythTV server that's total overkill,
>> and more than you need to spend.
> 
> Christ on a stick, dude, what part of "storing some huge historical data
> to mysql database" don't you understand?

IIRC, the OP said he's currently "storing some huge historical data to
mysql database" on a combination of his internal laptop drive and two
320GB external USB drives.  Let's see, that's

320 + 320 + 250?? = 890 GB _IF_ they're full, which they probably
aren't, and he's probably holding duplicated copies on the 320 GB drives
for redundancy.  So 2 TB mirrored, 1 TB net, would fit his needs, easily.

To put this into perspective, Walmart's entire retail point of sale
database isn't even 1 TB large.  SKU#, short description, price, for a
few hundred thousand products, is nowhere near 1 TB.  Notes I said point
of sale, not online.  The space required for their online products is
much larger, obviously, due to pictures and expanded product
descriptions, etc.  The POS database is as painfully small as they can
make it.

A Terabyte is a lot of space.  It seems many many people, Ron included,
allow their perspectives to be unduly skewed when the price of size and
speed decline so rapidly, allowing them to purchase what 10 years ago
cost $1 million dollars for $100 today.  Hit the way-back machine and
check prices on 1TB disk arrays in the year 2000--roughly $1 million a
pop.  Back then Ron would have said "Christ on a stick, dude, you'll
_never_ fill that 1TB array up!"

-- 
Stan