Home data storage.
Today we are going to talk about how much drive space you need at home.
Let me start with a story from when I was young. I convinced my parents (This was before I could even drive) to buy me a 100 meg hard drive for my computer. I was amazed at how much space there was on this thing and I never thought I would fill it up. (Of course I was limited to 56k bandwidth at the time aka dial-up.) Now I can take pictures and videos on my mobile phone that could fill up that old hard drive in a matter of seconds.
Fast forward many years and we create a lot of data. No really, a lot of freaking data. I want on a trip recently and took a lot of pictures and videos and in one weekend I created about 100 gigs of data. Now that is a lot of data and it was about 6 or 8 hours of HD video plus a lot of 10-12 mega pixel photos from a family vacation. But that is a lot of data. I am going to fill up my hard drives quick. The largest drive I currently have is a 3TB (TeraByte) or 3,000 gigabytes.
Now I don't shoot that much video every weekend, but that's a lot. That doesn't include daily pictures or videos I take or what my wife takes on her phone, or my son on his tablet. Now if you don't care about your pictures and videos, or you delete most of them if they aren't good, then you will probably last much longer between hard drives but I realize I'll probably fill up my current 3TB by the end of this year.
So what am I going to get and why?
Well, the first thing I would recommend you look at is the Backblaze blog. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-stats-q2-2017/
I am not endorsed by Backblaze I just happen to think they offer a good service at a good price but for the purpose of this post they publish a report on the reliability of Hard Drives.
Now there are different types of Hard drives. I like the Backblaze report because consumers like you and I can actually purchase the same drives Backblaze uses because a lot of them are non-commercial and it also gives you a sense of which manufacturers are more reliable.
Backblaze uses SATA 5400 and 7200 RPM 3.5 inch hard disk drives. I think mostly 5400 RPM because they aren't worried about performance as much as reliability.
Okay Hard disk primer: SSD (Solid State Drives and HD or Spinning Disk Hard Disk Drives).
SSD's are the FASTEST best performing hard drives you can get.
SSD: FASTEST, expensive, need to replace more often.
SSD's have a limited number of reads and writes to a disk before they become unusable due to the physics of the disk. This is typically 3-5 years for home users but is not based on time operating but actual reads and writes of data. Without going into details, you should change your SSD every 3-5 years. Make sure it is always backed up. (See posts about backup!)
HD: 5400 RPM, 7200 RPM and 10k (rare) 5400 RPM drives are typically long lasting and reliable because of low heat generation but are the slowest performing drives. 7200 RPM are the most common in computers and if you are doing gaming or graphics is really where you need to start. 5400 RPM's are good for backup drives, not working with files. 10k drives are fast for a spinning disk but not as fast as an SSD and they generated too much heat meaning they were prone to high failure rates. They have gone by the wayside with the advent of SSD's.
Now Hard drives come in all sizes and at the time of writing this article the "sweet spot" in terms of value for dollar seem to be 4TB and 6TB drives. That's a lot of space if you don't take video. You could store almost 1 million 12 MP pictures on a 4TB DRIVE.
Now, how much drive space do I need?
Do you take a million pictures a year? I just backed up 10 years of pictures and videos combined and it was around 30,000 files and took about 1.5 TB. That was several different digital cameras, and phones and video cameras. I expect to add about 2TB a year now because I am shooting a lot more videos and pictures as is my wife. My next drive is probably going to be a pair of 8tb drives mirrored for redundancy unless google fiber shows up in my neighborhood in which case I would use striped since I could then backup to the cloud quickly and cost effectively.)
You may need more or less depending on what you do and how you use your data, but pictures and videos are typically what are the most important to us.
If you are doing just photography regular Hard drives are fine. If you find yourself doing a lot of video editing SSD's will make your life a lot easier.
Thank you for reading.
Please follow this blog for more posts like this.
Let me start with a story from when I was young. I convinced my parents (This was before I could even drive) to buy me a 100 meg hard drive for my computer. I was amazed at how much space there was on this thing and I never thought I would fill it up. (Of course I was limited to 56k bandwidth at the time aka dial-up.) Now I can take pictures and videos on my mobile phone that could fill up that old hard drive in a matter of seconds.
Fast forward many years and we create a lot of data. No really, a lot of freaking data. I want on a trip recently and took a lot of pictures and videos and in one weekend I created about 100 gigs of data. Now that is a lot of data and it was about 6 or 8 hours of HD video plus a lot of 10-12 mega pixel photos from a family vacation. But that is a lot of data. I am going to fill up my hard drives quick. The largest drive I currently have is a 3TB (TeraByte) or 3,000 gigabytes.
Now I don't shoot that much video every weekend, but that's a lot. That doesn't include daily pictures or videos I take or what my wife takes on her phone, or my son on his tablet. Now if you don't care about your pictures and videos, or you delete most of them if they aren't good, then you will probably last much longer between hard drives but I realize I'll probably fill up my current 3TB by the end of this year.
So what am I going to get and why?
Well, the first thing I would recommend you look at is the Backblaze blog. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-failure-stats-q2-2017/
I am not endorsed by Backblaze I just happen to think they offer a good service at a good price but for the purpose of this post they publish a report on the reliability of Hard Drives.
Now there are different types of Hard drives. I like the Backblaze report because consumers like you and I can actually purchase the same drives Backblaze uses because a lot of them are non-commercial and it also gives you a sense of which manufacturers are more reliable.
Backblaze uses SATA 5400 and 7200 RPM 3.5 inch hard disk drives. I think mostly 5400 RPM because they aren't worried about performance as much as reliability.
Okay Hard disk primer: SSD (Solid State Drives and HD or Spinning Disk Hard Disk Drives).
SSD's are the FASTEST best performing hard drives you can get.
SSD: FASTEST, expensive, need to replace more often.
SSD's have a limited number of reads and writes to a disk before they become unusable due to the physics of the disk. This is typically 3-5 years for home users but is not based on time operating but actual reads and writes of data. Without going into details, you should change your SSD every 3-5 years. Make sure it is always backed up. (See posts about backup!)
HD: 5400 RPM, 7200 RPM and 10k (rare) 5400 RPM drives are typically long lasting and reliable because of low heat generation but are the slowest performing drives. 7200 RPM are the most common in computers and if you are doing gaming or graphics is really where you need to start. 5400 RPM's are good for backup drives, not working with files. 10k drives are fast for a spinning disk but not as fast as an SSD and they generated too much heat meaning they were prone to high failure rates. They have gone by the wayside with the advent of SSD's.
Now Hard drives come in all sizes and at the time of writing this article the "sweet spot" in terms of value for dollar seem to be 4TB and 6TB drives. That's a lot of space if you don't take video. You could store almost 1 million 12 MP pictures on a 4TB DRIVE.
Now, how much drive space do I need?
Do you take a million pictures a year? I just backed up 10 years of pictures and videos combined and it was around 30,000 files and took about 1.5 TB. That was several different digital cameras, and phones and video cameras. I expect to add about 2TB a year now because I am shooting a lot more videos and pictures as is my wife. My next drive is probably going to be a pair of 8tb drives mirrored for redundancy unless google fiber shows up in my neighborhood in which case I would use striped since I could then backup to the cloud quickly and cost effectively.)
You may need more or less depending on what you do and how you use your data, but pictures and videos are typically what are the most important to us.
If you are doing just photography regular Hard drives are fine. If you find yourself doing a lot of video editing SSD's will make your life a lot easier.
Thank you for reading.
Please follow this blog for more posts like this.
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