

NSA data volumes in terms of STASI filing cabinets - woodpanel
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fapps.opendatacity.de%2Fstasi-vs-nsa%2F

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PavlovsCat
More direct link:

[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=ht...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fapps.opendatacity.de%2Fstasi-
vs-nsa%2F)

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mtrimpe
Too bad they used the reported 5 zettabytes number which is probably the
amount of data _processed_ , not stored.

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acqq
Exactly, the storage capacity must be lower. If the data center uses 65 MW and
a single hard disk with all overheads 5W, there can be at most 13 million of
hard disks there resulting in the maximum capacity of the order of exabyte,
not zettabyte, or for the given example, at least 100 times less.

That gives "only" an order of (17e4/0.019) ~ 10 million times bigger area for
the file cabinets than the Stasi files, or the square 3000 times bigger in
every direction compared to the Stasi one.

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jbit
While I agree that they likely store much less data than five zettabytes, your
assumption that all their storage is on constantly spinning hard disks seems
flawed.

(Tape libraries and various other offline/nearline storage solutions would be
viable for most of their data)

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acqq
Which other solutions do you suggest? Interestingly, tape libraries have also
capacity limitations.

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kimlelly
The only upside is a great title:

"Against the NSA, the Stasi data is a flying shit"

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martron
Looking at the German, I think the intended translation is "fly shit" or "shit
of a fly".

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woodpanel
yes, a "Fliegenschiss" is "fly shit" ... another nice word google doesn't now
how to translate is "Sammelwut"

it's like a collecting data spree

