data storage Archives

The world’s first 200TB SSDs are coming in 2022 but you probably can’t afford it

Apr 8, 2022 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

200TB SSDs are currently in development according to Nimbus Data CEO Thomas Isakovich, who told TechRadar that they’re actively working on a 200TB SSD to beat the world’s current largest capacity SSD record holder… themselves. Nimbus Data set the record in March 2018 with a massive 100TB ExaDrive Solid State Drive. At the time of that drive’s announcement, there was no word on price, but it later transpired to be $40,000.

Isakovich told TechRadar in an email exchange that they’re working on its successor to offer “even more capacity, performance and energy-efficiency than the ground-breaking 100TB, and expect to deliver this next-generation SSD in 2022”. I bet this one’ll cost a lot more than $40K because it’s not like Nimbus Data really has any competition at this level right now.

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Amazon, Google, SmugMug, Apple: what’s the best home for your photos?

Mar 22, 2022 by Jefferson Graham 1 Comment

When last we met, I pointed out the perils of using Apple’s iCloud Photos for photo backup for one simple reason: if you delete an image off your iPhone, Apple will in turn also delete it from iCloud*.

This time I’d like to go over the best alternative photo backup options for you in more detail, because like it or not, in today’s world, just like paying for food, shelter and taxes, if you snap photos on your smartphone or camera, you will be paying for online storage. And paying more in the coming years as well, as you snap more images.

There’s no such thing as free backup anymore.

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G-Technology Shuttle XL EV with Seagate IronWolf Pro overview

Apr 28, 2019 by Lee Herbet 2 Comments

The G-Technology Shuttle XL EV is a beast of a RAID array and has the storage and speed to deal with just about anything you can throw at it. Or so they say.

As anyone who has read any of my articles before, you would know that as a video producer, I need lots and lots of fast storage. And if you haven’t read any of my stuff before, well, just assume that as a video producer, I need lots and lots of fast storage. ;)

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GoPro Plus now offers unlimited storage for your photos and videos

Jan 30, 2019 by Dunja Djudjic Leave a Comment

GoPro Plus subscription service offers additional benefits to its users. Starting from 30 January 2019, all subscribers will have unlimited cloud storage space for videos and photos, instead of the 35-hour limit they had so far.

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The world’s largest SSD now holds 100TB of data

Mar 23, 2018 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

The storage space race never seems to end. With ever-increasing storage demands on both consumers and storage facilities, it’s not surprising. We’re creating more digital content than ever before. Whether it’s text, photos or videos. Now, Nimbus Data have beaten out Seagate’s 60TB proof-of-concept SSD and completely annihilated Samsung’s recent 30TB SSD announcement.

Aimed more at data centres than home users, Nimbus Data has announced the ExaDrive, which holds a ridiculous 100TB of data. Unlike the 2.5″ Samsung, the ExaDrive comes in a 3.5″ SATA form factor to make it fit better with server and rack size standards. The company says that the ExaDrive DC100 is “optimized for capacity and efficiency”.

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Western Digital are using microwave tech to develop 40TB+ hard drives

Oct 13, 2017 by John Aldred 3 Comments

I think I’m going to stop listening to anybody who says that hard drives are dead and SSD is the only future of storage. Don’t get me wrong, I love SSDs. They’re fantastic for when you need really rapid access to data. They’re great as a system drive for your operating system and software.

When it comes to pure storage, though, they still can’t really hold a candle to hard drives for capacity. Well, not unless you want to spend an absolute fortune. Western Digital have just announced a new “breakthrough” technology in hard drive storage. Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording. They say that it will allow them to create hard drives 40TB and larger.

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Storage price per GB keeps dropping – unless you use 6TB drives

Jul 28, 2017 by John Aldred Leave a Comment

It’s insane to think that hard drive space has gone from around $500,000 to as low as $0.03 per gigabyte in the last 36 years. It has, though. But that drop in price is slowing down. It has to. Even as recently as 8 years ago, drives were hitting under $0.10 per GB.

Backblaze recently had a look into just how hard drive prices have changed over the years, and they turned up something quite fascinating. One would expect that the larger the drive, the lower the per gigabyte cost. But it turns out that’s not quite happening in the real world.

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This hack will get you 24TB RAID 5 storage for under $800

Jul 27, 2017 by John Aldred 25 Comments

There’s a sale going on at BestBuy at the moment on WD easystore 8TB External USB 3.0 hard drives. A massive discount which drops the price from $299.99 to $159.99. “What’s the big deal, though?” I hear you ask. “They’re just external USB drives”. Well, yes, but those USB boxes contain Western Digital RED (NAS) SATA drives which normally also cost $299.

It’s easy to open up the cases and pull out the bare drives to use internally. And if getting 8TB storage drives at half price wasn’t enough, the drives contained within these enclosures have double the regular cache. 256MB vs 128MB. With four of these, in a USB3 RAID enclosure, you’ve got 24TB RAID 5 for under $800.

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HEIF/HEVC are Apple’s image formats that could save you up to 50% storage space

Jun 14, 2017 by Dunja Djudjic 3 Comments

As the number of photos we take grows, the more space we need for storage. Apple has launched HEIF and HEVC, formats that could save you up to 50% of storage for photos and videos. They’ve launched it for the camera in iOS 11, and it’s supposed to replace JPEG and allow you to shoot twice as much photos without compromising the image quality.

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