

Ask HN: What is cheapset method of data storage? - JacobEdelman

 What is cheapest message of data storage per gigabyte?
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penguat
That depends on what you expect to do with it, and how much you have.

To take some extremes: data you read and change very frequently might be
cheapest stored on RAM disks (backed by SSDs) - CPU time is heat and
electricity, and in a datacenter that can become very expensive.

a small amount of data you can afford to read very slowly if/when you need it
could be cheaply stored in Amazon's Glacier service.

Data where redundancy and ease of management are unimportant can be happily
stored on 2TB commodity hard drives which you can get readily for $40/TB.

If it's the right amount, time and place, there're freebie USB pendrives, at a
cost of ~$0/MB if you have one lying around.

So, what's your use case? That will lead you to your storage.

~~~
JacobEdelman
I saw Amazon's Glacier service but I'm interested to know if there is anything
cheaper. I don't need particularly fast reading or writing abilities, just the
ability to do it when needed.

~~~
shiftpgdn
How long will you be storing the data?

How important is the data?

What level of redundancy do you need?

How much data is there?

How frequently will you be writing new data into the storage set?

~~~
JacobEdelman
As long as the service can store my data with a less then 1% chance of loosing
it in a given year and allows me to access it at the rate of a few gigabytes
per month I'd be happy. I'd be storing anywhere from a few gigs to a few
terabytes.

~~~
shiftpgdn
I don't think you're going to get cheaper than Glacier. You could probably
colo an atom server with 2x 6TB drives fairly cheaply somewhere but then you'd
have to amortize the $8000~ cost of the server over how long you plan to keep
it running.

~~~
shiftpgdn
Meant to write $800, not $8000.

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dennybritz
Google Drive has become very cheap with essentially the same price per GB as
Amazon Glacier without the same limitations or transfer costs.

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roflchoppa
pen and paper

