Optical Storage Comparison

[peterb]

If you have the physical space, you can often use a pci-x card in a PC slot, it then works in 32 bit mode, the throughput drops, but its fine for LTO 2.

[watercooled]

But I imagine the lack of sustained throughput would be an issue for the likes of LTO 4, considering the tapes are linear access?

[peterb]

Yes. You end up getting 'shoe shining' where the tape stops to let the buffer fill, then rewinds to write the data (in simple terms - Google lot shoe shining for more details) which is bad for the drive. The drive needs to be fed data faster than it can write so it is never waiting for data, it just streams to it.

I use an Adaptec pci-e card with both LTO 2 and 4 drive which works well on a Linux server using DUMP.

(I think its an Adaptec 29320 low profile, I can check later if you wish)

[watercooled]

I've just had a quick look on Amazon and you can get 50 cakes of 25GB BD-R for ~£20 now. I remember when CD-Rs were that much!

I might consider getting a burner soon!

[virtuo]

I've just had a quick look on Amazon and you can get 50 cakes of 25GB BD-R for ~£20 now. I remember when CD-Rs were that much!

I might consider getting a burner soon!

I've been getting the Verbatim printables from Scan for a while now. Cheapest I can find them, usually around the £24-26 mark for a very high quality disc. Rated to 6x and have that hard coating Verbatim like putting on them.

[mikerr]

Blu ray drives down to £38 [USB3 BD drive @ ebay]
and 100GB BD discs now more readily available, I've added them in to the 3TB data test

25GB BDs
07/14: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £30 for a 50 pack - £72 - 2p/gig
08/15: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £20 for a 50 pack - £48 - 1.6p/gig

50GB BDs
12/13: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £118 for a 50 pack - £140 - 5p/gig
08/15: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £72 for a 50 pack - £86- 3p/gig

100GB BDs
08/15: 30 100GB BD-Rs @ £34 for 5 pack - £204 - 7p/gig

HDDs

07/15: 1 WD Caviar 3TB @ £77 each - £77 - 3p/gig

I have a few datasets that would fit nicely in 100GB - so the new BD discs are looking good to me.

[jim]

Update 7: (18 months later)

DVDs

12/09: 650 DVDs @ £21 for a 100 pack - £140 - 5p/gig
07/10: 650 DVDs @ £17 for a 100 pack - £110 - 4p/gig
12/10: 650 DVDs @ £17 for a 100 pack - £110 - 4p/gig
01/12: 650 DVDs @ £21 for a 100 pack - £140 - 5p/gig
11/12: 650 DVDs @ £18 for a 100 pack - £115 - 4p/gig
12/13: 650 DVDs @ £18 for a 100 pack - £115 - 4p/gig
07/14: 650 DVDs @ £19 for a 100 pack - £124 - 4p/gig

12/15: 650 DVDs @ £16 for a 100 pack - £100 - 3p/gig

DL DVDs

12/09: 360 DL-DVDs @ £25 for a 25 pack - £360 - 12p/gig
07/10: 360 DL-DVDs @ £22 for a 25 pack - £315 - 10p/gig
12/10: 360 DL-DVDs @ £18 for a 25 pack - £260 - 9p/gig
01/12: 360 DL-DVDs @ £22 for a 25 pack - £315 - 10p/gig
11/12: 360 DL-DVDs @ £22 for a 25 pack - £315 - 10p/gig
12/13: 360 DL-DVDs @ £20 for a 25 pack - £290 - 10p/gig
07/14: 360 DL-DVDs @ £20 for a 25 pack - £290 - 10p/gig

12/15: 360 DL-DVDs @ £19 for a 25 pack - £270 - 9p/gig

25GB BDs

12/09: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £110 for a 25 pack - £520 - 17p/gig
07/10: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £110 for a 25 pack - £520 - 17p/gig
12/10: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £100 for a 25 pack - £480 - 16p/gig
01/12: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £83 for a 25 pack - £400 - 13p/gig
11/12: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £32 for a 25 pack - £155 - 5p/gig
12/13: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £31 for a 50 pack - £75 - 3p/gig
07/14: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £30 for a 50 pack - £72 - 2p/gig

12/15: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £8 for a 25 pack - £38 - 1p/gig

50GB BDs

12/09: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £220 for a 25 pack - £520 - 17p/gig
07/10: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £220 for a 25 pack - £520 - 17p/gig
12/10: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £185 for a 25 pack - £445 - 15p/gig
01/12: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £185 for a 25 pack - £445 - 15p/gig
11/12: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £144 for a 50 pack - £175 - 6p/gig
12/13: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £118 for a 50 pack - £140 - 5p/gig
07/14: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £36 for a 10 pack - £216 - 7p/gig

12/15: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £15 for a 10 pack - £90 - 3p/gig

HDDs

12/09: 2 HD154UIs @ £75 each - £150 - 5p/gig
07/10: 2 HD154UIs @ £60 each - £120 - 4p/gig
12/10: 2 HD153WIs @ £52 each - £104 - 3p/gig
01/12: 1 Deskstar 5K3000 @ £155 each - £155 - 5p/gig
11/12: 1 Seagate ST3000 @ £100 each - £100 - 3p/gig
12/13: 1 Toshiba DT01ACA300 @ £76 each - £76 - 3p/gig
07/14: 1 Toshiba DT01ACA300 @ £75 each - £75 - 3p/gig

12/15: 1 Toshiba DT01ACA300 @ £66 each - £66 - 2p/gig

SSDs

12/09: 19 Intel 160GB SSDs @ £340 each - £6460 - 215p/gig
07/10: 19 Intel 160GB SSDs @ £340 each - £6460 - 215p/gig
12/10: 19 Intel 160GB SSDs @ £290 each - £5510 - 185p/gig
01/12: 12 Intel 250GB SSDs @ £395 each - £4740 - 158p/gig
11/12: 12 Intel 240GB SSDs @ £140 each - £1680 - 56p/gig
12/13: 3 Crucial 960GB SSDs @ £374 each - £1120 - 37p/gig
07/14: 6 Crucial 512GB SSDs @ £152 each - £912 - 30p/gig

12/15: 6 Crucial 480GB SSDs @ £105 each - £630 - 22p/gig

USBs

11/12: 23 Kingston 128GB USB3 Drives @ £127 each - £2921 - 97p/gig
12/13: 23 Corsair 128GB USB3 Drives @ £69 each - £1590 - 53p/gig
07/14: 23 Verbatim 128GB USB3 Drives @ £39 each - £897 - 30p/gig

12/15: 23 Corsair 128GB USB3 Drives @ £30 each - £690 - 23p/gig

I thought last time that it would have bottomed out, but apparently we weren't even close!

For the first time ever, hard disk is not the cheapest method of storage. As ever, there's a big caveat around using 25GB BD-Rs over a traditional hard disk, in that it would be a pain in the neck, but I never thought it would be a cheaper option than a hard drive. And double layer BD-Rs, which at 50GB are far more convenient, are less than 50% more than a hard disk which makes them a perfectly viable method of storage as well.

[jim]

[peterb]

Not optical, but a 2.5Tb (uncompressed) Ultrium 6 tapes costs £22, which works out at .88p/GB

Assuming an average of 2:1 compression ratio, that works out at .5p/GB

Plus the cost of the drive of course

(£1,250 for a drive and SAS card plus VAT)

Used Ultrium 2, 3, and 4 drives can be found and tapes are available.

Ultrium 4 tapes hold 800GB (uncompressed) cost around £12 so working out at 1.5p/GB or assuming 1.5:1 compression is 1p/GB

But if you can get an Ultrium 2 drive, 200GB (uncompressed) tapes are around £8 working out at 4p/GB (3p/GB with an average 1.5:1 compression ratio)

The problem with U2 and U4 drives is getting the SCSI card to go with them, the drives themselves are available second hand or refurbished at anything from £200 to £800.

Tapes are reckoned to be good for 20 to 30 years for archive storage.

But regardless of which technology you use just make sure you BACK UP YOUR DATA!

[watercooled]

It's interesting to see BDs drop below HDD in price, I didn't think that would happen any time soon. IIRC the likes of Facebook use huge amounts of them for backups/archives so maybe volume is driving the price down? But having said that, I'd guess retail volume is probably not that high with fewer people burning discs because of cheap flash drives, online storage etc?

It's also peculiar how BD50 have dropped so low while DL-DVD have remained so high!

@peterb: Yeah I'm still pondering tape backup myself but the initial cost of the drive is off-putting. For now I'm just using alternating HDDs for backups. I've also been using DVD-RAMs for some more important archival stuff but their capacity is obviously fairly limited now.

[peterb]

@peterb: Yeah I'm still pondering tape backup myself but the initial cost of the drive is off-putting. For now I'm just using alternating HDDs for backups. I've also been using DVD-RAMs for some more important archival stuff but their capacity is obviously fairly limited now.

Yes, it is a hefty investment. I started with a second hand U2 drive (and bought the SCSI card from someone here) and used that to back up a server over my LAN. This was after I nearly lost a lot of data on a RAID1 array (as it happened, I hadn't, a Logical Volume had disabled itself as a protection measure because of a dodgy SATA cable, but that was another story, documented somewhere on the forums)

I bought a refurb U4 a couple of years ago, and had already bought an Adaptec low profile SCSI card so I could build that into the server to get speeds that could keep the drive streaming.

The problem now is that both SCSI cards and the high performance cables are getting hard to find. I bought a couple from SCAN two years ago when they were selling their remaining stocks in a sale.

The streaming speeds of U5 and U6 are too fast for SCSI, and are either Fibre Channel or SAS.

[ik9000]

Great chart, but no SSD - Or is that too volatile?

[scaryjim]

Great chart, but no SSD - Or is that too volatile?

Given that SSDs and USB are both still over 20p/GB, I'd assume jim decided they weren't viable and therefore not worth charting.

I did wonder if (micro)SD cards might be a viable option, but they're about the same cost/GB as USB 3 drives currently. And BD-R XL look hard to source, but useful for small-scale backup; perhaps they're a good reason to go back to 100GB system partitions in my computers: could write a system disk image to a single BD-R XL!

[ik9000]

1TB SSD drives were £190 earlier this month which is sub 20p per GB but maybe that was sales... Sandisk 960GB hits sub 20p/GB at current pricing

See your point however - still not competitive. Was thinking more because of how much faster it is to back up to them, cost might in some cases be worth it.

[jim]

Great chart, but no SSD - Or is that too volatile?

I didn't include SSDs in the chart because it skews everything, but the data is in the table above (post #103).

I only added SSDs originally because it was amusing (originally it cost £6500 vs £140 for DVD) - it's a complete side point to my original question posed in 2009, which was "Is it worthwhile using optical discs for backup purposes? And if not, when will it be?"

Nonetheless, I've created a second chart to show SSDs and USBs (started later on when scary added the latter to the mix).

[ik9000]

I think your current SSD cost is wrong. Sanddisk 960GB = 19.8p per GB atm and recent sales saw the Samsung EVO 1TB down at £185 (18.5p per GB) which it will soon be normally.

No need to compress the whole chart, but with a small increase in the Y-axis cut-off they now start to appear