this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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Data Hoarder

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We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.

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I have recently thought about burning some data to Blu-ray and therefore looked for some cheap blank discs. To my surprise, higher density Blu-rays seem to be much more expensive than lower density ones. In my country (Germany) for example, I could buy a 25 GB BD for 0,44€. A 100 GB BD would cost me 8,77€! At that price, it would be more efficient to store 100 GB on four 25 GB discs instead of one 100 GB disc (1,76€ vs. 8,77€). Sure, if it is one file I would have to split it first and combine it again when I want to access the data, but that effort seems to be worth it.

Why are high capacity Blu-rays so much more expensive, especially compared to HDDs or SSDs where the price per GB/TB usually drops with higher capacity?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If you're hoarding that much data and you need cold storage, you may want to have a look at tapes. LTO-5 and LTO-6 drives are quite cheap to come by and tapes are less expensive than discs on a per-GB basis.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, heard about tapes. Aren‘t the drives super expensive?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Have a look on ebay, there are some good deals to be had. You could probably get an LTO-5 for around $150-200, although you'll need a SAS controller and cabling, which could add an extra $50. So the initial cost is definitely higher, but once you're past that, it's much nicer to have large 1.5-2.5TB tapes than lots of discs.