Optical Storage Comparison

[jim]

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

My rule for optical discs has been the cheapest Verbatim on Amazon, and likewise my unpublished rule for the other devices has been cheapest reliable brand (so for SSDs that has been Intel, Crucial, Samsung) on Scan.co.uk on the day of checking. Otherwise it gets a bit nuts. But anyway, 20p vs 22p is splitting hairs really.

[meynardhill10]

Probably true, although I had a file on one of my backups a couple of years back that just refused to copy, and was partly corrupted. I know it's always a possibility with any kind of media, but it made me a bit jumpy

[watercooled]

Probably true, although I had a file on one of my backups a couple of years back that just refused to copy, and was partly corrupted. I know it's always a possibility with any kind of media, but it made me a bit jumpy

What sort of media was it? With optical storage it's important to get decent-quality media if you're going to be using it long-term, and to store it properly i.e. kept away from light and extreme temperatures.

[jasonmav]

Interesting thread. I do think you have dismissed an online backup as a viable solution. Not only is it less manual work for you but it doesn't take THAT long. I quickly calculated that 3TB of data would take about 30 days at a nowdays avg 10Mb/s upload speed. You then get all the extra benefits of a good online backup service would offer. All for £3.50 per month.

[peterb]

LTO 7 is now available. Tapes are around the £100 each for 1 5TB (compressed, 6.5TB native) so cost per GB is around 10pm which is much more than LTO6 at the moment, although prices will fall. The big plus is that speed is increased.

Hardware costs are still high, but while LTO 6 was initially moving towards fibre channel and SAS, there are some Thunderbolt connected drives in both LTO6 and LTO 7 - mainly for external tape drives.

[watercooled]

Hmm, Thunderbolt is definitely an interesting development - it makes them potentially more usable in a non-enterprise environment. Well, aside from the cost of the drive anyway...

[badass]

For those interested in this thread for backup reasons, another way of using HDD's is to place them in a Microserver, NAS or similar and find a friend/family member that's prepared to keep it at their house. Their stuff is backed up incrementally to mine and my stuff to theirs. Snapshots are kept locally every few hours for about 1-2 months, remote site, monthly snapshots for about 2 years. This is only for files such as documents and pictures though. The rate of change is pretty small.

[jim]

Update 8: (15 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

02/17: 650 DVDs @ £19 for a 100 pack - £124 - 4p/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

02/17: 360 DL-DVDs @ £21 for a 25 pack - £305 - 10p/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

02/17: 120 25GB BD-Rs @ £30 for a 50 pack - £72 - 2p/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

02/17: 60 50GB BD-Rs @ £83 for a 50 pack - £100 - 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

02/17: 1 Toshiba DT01ACA300 @ £78 each - £78 - 3p/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

02/17: 6 Crucial 525GB SSDs @ £149 each - £894 - 30p/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

12/15: 12 Corsair 128GB USB3 Drives @ £68 each - £816 - 27p/gig

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Well, that's the most depressing update I've done so far. Every single category has seen a significant increase in price. Broadly speaking, in all categories we're looking at the same prices as 2014 (excluding BD-50 which saw a weird increase that year, perhaps an anomaly).

I suppose the drop in the value of sterling will account for some of this, but SSDs increasing in price by 50% is way outside the bounds of that impact.

In reference to the original question (which let's not forget was posited just over 7 years ago!), I don't think any of these methods are particularly economical for backup purposes now.

There is now a lot of logic in using BD-50 or BD-25, and I would still have more confidence in that method in the long-run than HDD, but I can't deny that maintaining a library of them would be extremely complex - and furthermore a lot of space would likely be wasted unless I started dabbling in split archives, which requires further use of libraries or some logical system.

Over that period, there have been three key developments to my mind. Firstly, with the advent of fibre we now have reasonable upload speeds. Secondly, whilst 3TB seemed a lot in 2009, it isn't so much in 2017, and obviously tripling your required backup size triples the cost of any of these solution. Thirdly, online 'unlimited' backup services have come onto the market with reasonable pricing.

Crashplan is now £48 per year and Backblaze £40. Assuming that you need 9TB of storage, that would cost £215 on BD-25 (plus a Bluray drive) or £235 on HDD, which would pay for 4-5 years of online backup.

Admittedly, online storage isn't for everyone, and I'd think very carefully before putting personal documents on the web, but then it's unlikely that this quantity of data is personal. Point is, on a cost and effort basis, I think it's hard to make the case for physical backup right now.

Nonetheless, I find this an interesting process to catch up on how the storage world is moving so I will continue monitoring!

[jim]

[watercooled]

The jump in SSD prices is something I've noticed myself - like you say, the exchange rate change does not account for it (as much as it's a convenient thing to blame for everything negative at the moment), and although I've not really been paying close attention to the market I wonder if it has to do with the 3D NAND transition?

We see this sort of thing with commodity DRAM prices rising and falling sharply based on a number of factors such as supply and demand, and when a new technology is introduced it can go from a market with huge (likely peak) production capacity easily meeting demand, to one where many companies close down production lines to make space for the new technology, which reduces worldwide capacity in the interim period. New fabs are often built to try to keep up with demand, but it's likely not economically viable to keep fab space 'on standby' for transitions and let their competitors eat into market share, so it makes sense to me that the lowest prices for a given technology comes right before the new one enters production.

It also takes some time (on the order of months) for wafers to make it through a fab even with a running production line. Add to that the time to replace equipment and the production ramp, and there could be quite a lengthy dip in shipping production volumes.

Something else which likely exacerbates this, is the cost savings from new nodes aren't what they used to be, so while this has probably always happened to an extent, it was likely offset by the much lower cost of the newer product in the past.

That's my understanding of the market at least, so I expect something similar is happening with SSDs at the moment. 3D is also entering the market en masse, and I imagine that takes substantially more time both for production line modifications, and the wafer processing itself as it involves more steps, which could further lengthen that gap.

Edit: Anandtech mentions SSD prices increasing here, along with some information about future products hopefully bringing it back down again: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10903/...its-production

Edit2: The dollar price of HDDs seems to have risen recently too. I wonder what's going on there? https://camelcamelcamel.com/Seagate-...context=browse