In article , Tim Watts
wrote:

Google design redundancy in at a server level

why bother if they could use SSDs.

Because when scaling to 10000s of servers, even a few percent savings of
costs amounts to a *lot* of capital.

the difference is *much* more than a few percent, not that it matters,
since google can't afford *not* to lose user data, which would cost a
lot more than the difference in hardware costs.

For a professional (or keen amateur) user, even a premium of 100-odd%
extra is unlikely to amount to a huge amount in absolute terms. It's
like giving your dinner guests Lidl digestives because they're cheaper
than After Eights.

you're off by an order of magnitude, particularly for sd cards.
see below.

and at a high factor (ie
they'll tolerate more that one device in a group failing.

and that's the way backups should be done/kept.
I bought an external 4TB for £85 last week.
How much would I need to spend to get 4TB of SSD ?

I bought a 1/2 TB for £80 internal.

So I would have needed to spend about ~£1600 + a PSU for a similar SSD.

Rubbish. And you have the cheek to tell me I don't know what I'm talking
about?

you don't.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ext.../dp/B078STRHBX

£180 for 1TB.

the largest capacity for that is 2tb at £419, which means two of those
would be needed for the requested 4tb, or £838, along with the
additional hassle of managing two devices rather than one for a single
backup.

meanwhile, a 4tb hard drive is £80:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/WD-Elements...ve/dp/B00JT8AJ
Z0/

that's more than a ten-fold difference, a difference in cost of £758,
far more than your claimed '100% premium'.

that difference is enough to buy an additional *nine* 4tb hard drives,
or better yet, a fully populated nas.

also, 4tb is considered small these days. backing up 10-20tb and the
difference becomes *substantial*.

the other problem is you said you use sd cards for your backups.

looking at prices for those, a 512g sd card is £274:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ext...y/dp/B00NP699Z
I/

the requested 4tb would require *eight* sd cards, totaling £2192,
nearly *thirty* times the price of a single 4tb hard drive, and nowhere
near as convenient nor as reliable.

That's a decent make (I have 2), fast and reliable. I have never had a
Sandisk flash product fail on me, whereas I have had several spinning
hard drives fail from a similar number of units I have bought for home use.

nothing lasts forever and hard drive failures do not matter.

simply replace the failed drive and restore to the new drive as
appropriate. it takes maybe a minute to unbox and swap, with the
remainder of the restoration process being entirely automatic.

Little over 2x to lose the whole mechanical aspect - also more compact,
lighter, faster.

try 10x-30x see above.

I'd rather have multiple HDs than rely on one SSD.


This only translates to backups *if* you are prepared to back up to
several spinning disks.

why wouldn't I be.

Because lots of people can barely manage to maintain a simple regime let
alone one that requires making multiple copies of the same data.

that you're calling it a regime shows your ignorance.

all the user needs to do is click a button to enable backups (which is
done *once*) and then computer takes care of everything else, the part
that you're calling a 'regime'.

in other words, there is nothing for the user to manage. it's all
*automatic*.

Most normal people struggle with backing things up at all.

you mean sub-normal people like yourself.

Says the one arguing the toss and resorting to ad-hom because he's lost
the argument.

you're not one to be talking about ad hominem, especially when you kill
file anyone who disagrees with you. you have *nothing* to back up your
claims (no pun intended).

I have an excellent backup regime. I use SSDs for primary, SD for
secondary (which gets pulled for a batch, then replaced back in its box)
and Tresorit which is automatic with no intervention on my part and puts
a copy of my data in Switzerland.

that's a clumsy manual process which uses very expensive low capacity
media.

no reasonable person would call that acceptable, let alone 'excellent'.

Anyway - welcome to the KF - You can argue with yourself. Anyone
sensible can take my advice, leave it or adapt it to the way that suits
them.

anyone sensible knows that your 'advice' is awful, a disaster waiting
to happen.