Terabyte Storage Solutions?

DeMechman asks: "As many on Slashdot may know, storage is one thing which you can never have enough of. Given the current situation with CD/DVD rot (Personally I can attest to a 10% attrition rate) hard drives in a RAID configuration seem to be a better and more economical solution. If you own more than fifty CD/DVDs, it can be a daunting task to find a file. I am wondering if anyone has found a hardware solution that can inexpensively be set up to handle 10 or more 250GB HDDs in a RAID configuration. Primarily, has any case manufacturer tackled this niche market yet?"

Daaaamn!

[Anonymous Coward]

Try deleting some stuff! It's free!

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Terabyte Storage

[Achmed]

> Anyone have any ideas on how to back up 1TB in a home environment? i.e., not $3000 tape drives & $200 tapes

Ummm, yeah, it'll cost you ~$600. make another one and make a copy occasionally...

Sorry, couldn't resist...

Re:Not exactly what you're looking for..

[Gilmoure]

You can RAID USB floppy drives or keychain drives with OSX. Might take a few keychain drives to get up to 1TB, though

Re:What's "inexpensively"?

[coolgeek]

Controller $500
Drives $150 each
Case $150

Redundant Power Supply for RAID Array.....priceless

"Erica from Simpli"...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I think I love you. You hold the serial ATA cables to my heart. :-)

LEGO(tm)-ROM

[Mad Bad Rabbit]

Or, if you want really durable read-only storage (i.e. lasting a few hundred years without maintenance), you could use the little 1x1 LEGO blocks as bits.

• You could pack a single byte into two 1x1 blocks, using void plus seven colors (red/green/blue/white/black/grey/yellow); and also use double-sided format, so a 1KB LEGO-ROM would fit neatly on two 32x32 green baseplates glued back-to-back. (about 26 cm on a side)
• A 16KB LEGO-ROM would then be roughly 1 meter on a side. If these were stacked on roll-out shelves, say 3cm apart, you could fit 1MB of LEGO storage in a 1m x 1m x 2m cage.
• A typical office building should easily have space on a floor for 1024 such cages, or 1 GB of LEGO storage; and the building itself would act as a 16 gigabyte LEGO-ROM.

Therefore, a mere eight-by-eight city block area could store a full 1 terabyte of LEGO-ROM, with no worrying about DVD rot or head crashes (although access speeds would leave something to be desired).