Samsung introduces PM1633a, world's first 2.5" 16TB SSD

My point exactly. Very true that it's a huge waste. Look at how we waste bandwidth, diskspace etc already on our computers... we don't store videos watched on Youtube, we just download again. It's probably still in some cache on-disk; we just don't care. Disk space like that will allow us to be so much more wasteful.

Donald,
So to avoid wasted bandwidth we should waste hard disk space? And I seriously doubt Google sees more ad time shoved in your face as a wasted revenue stream. Since when is anything about efficiency?
nerd,
Then why keep anything we haven't looked at in five years? If one can afford the storage (cheap) then keeping RAW files forever isn't any more wasteful than keeping JPEGs. Maybe they take up more room, but the opportunity cost is roughly nil. In other words, will I take fewer pictures or spend tons of money on extra hard drives? Nope. And you never can tell when you'll decided to use an old photo and want it processed to make it suitable for today's application.

Ive been taking digital photos since 2000 (sony f505) yet my photo library is quite manageable (less than 200gb), so that I can triple backup them in SSDs.

And I don't even shoot in RAW anymore, except for very special cases that requires HDR treatment...

last two times I returned from India I brought 120Gb of raw photos in total. If you keep/archive all your photos I can't see how 16tb could be too much for professional that shoot a lot, have 2nd backup camera, do occasional video. The only question having ordinary people in mind - is it worth initial investment for storage you will be using like ~5 years before it's full? It's more adequate to upgrade your disks every 3 years with double the size you have now for essentially the same price. Oh, did I mentioned those new cameras with 50mpix resolution? Medium format? ;)

nerd,
To his or her own, as the case may be. Very technology forward of you to back your files up to SSDs, but talk about taking the most expensive route. You could probably octuple back them up on HDDs for the same cost and cut your potential for total loss down to roughly the same odds as the sun exploding in your life time. Going the SSD route is fine and understandable, but personally I find the RAW format much more advantageous, especially when I'm running an internal dual JBOD, and external RAID 0, and then another external drive for offsite storage. At under 1TB it's a breeze and cheap to maintain. I've been shooting digital for roughly the same number of years I'm only at around 700GB, although for timelapses I do process then only keep the JPEGs (IQ not of utmost conern) and for client shoots they usually take the very reasonably priced option of keeping their own RAW files.

nerd2:

There are big reasons to shoot raw.

And 200GB of photos just isn't very much--I likely have more in scanned negative files.

I never trust mechanical drives (saw so many drives dying) so I need at least RAID 1 or 5 system - both of which are quite expensive still. On the other hand 512GB SSDs are now relatively cheap ($150-180 range) so I prefer to double backup on two tiny SSDs at two different locations, rather than having a huge RAID5 array.

And I am but a hobby photographer, so professionals may have different viewpoints..

@nerd2, when I go back into the archive to republish or re-exhibit older photos, I often redevelop the raw and am very pleased at how newer raw software improves the result. Better color, better highlights and shadows, sharper, lower noise... There is time to do it when it's worth it, and there are definite rewards in doing so.

The file size issue is one everyone will have to face whether you shoot raw or not. Megapixel counts continue to grow, so if you aren't having to store 30MB raw files right now because you shoot JPEG, you'll still be editing 30MB JPEG files eventually as megapixel counts go up.

I'll say RAID5 is overkill, but I did mean 1 not 0. Four times the storage for half the price is great if it does what you require, but SSD drives do fail and corrupt. I've only had one drive in decades fail, thus the backup. Enjoy your system of choice, but raw files are nothing to sneeze at.

nerd2:

SSD's wear out sooner than hard drives, that's assuming you don't drop the hard drive.

Every HDD I have used died within two years. Modern SSDs have 20+years of life expectancy on the other hand.

nerd2:

I've never had hard drives die that quickly.

And the biggest HD fail I've ever had was a storage drive that just won't spin up--even with a new case.

HowaboutRAW, where is the data for your claim? Recent tests have shown that consumer SSDs are now reliable enough that you will want to upgrade to a newer/bigger drive long before the SSD dies.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/03/consumer-ssds-benchmarked-to-death-and-last-far-longer-than-rated/

graybalanced:

SSDs, all, still have limited writes to each cell.

Not true with platters, the moving arm can break in a spinning disk, but the drive surfaces have a nearly infinite write/erase capacity.

HowaboutRAW, did you read the link I posted? The "limited writes" has been shown to be a complete non-issue in that test. The sheer volume of data you would have to write to an SSD to reach the limit where one of today's common SSDs would die, is many times in excess of what you would be capable of achieving no matter how hard you tried in an ordinary, or even reasonably extraordinary, usage pattern.

That was the entire point of the article.

"Errors didn't strike the Samsung 840 Series until after 300TB of writes, and it took over 700TB to induce the first failures. The fact that the 840 Pro exceeded 2.4PB is nothing short of amazing..." The common, affordable Samsung 840 Pro refused to die until after "...about 240x as much writing as a typical consumer SSD would need to endure over its lifetime."

SSDs and HDDs can both die, but when you look at the realistic and not imagined causes of drive death, HDDs are much more at risk.

gray:

Limited writes and reads are not a non-issue for drives used for the operating system and applications.

And one who claims otherwise doesn't know a thing about modern computers.

I'm sure SSDs are just fine as dead storage. But each cell has a limited life, measured in 10s of thousands of uses.

I'm not interested in when a drive dies entirely, that I know how to avoid with a hard disk, I don't want my SSD to just start losing parts of programs because those bits are constantly being rewritten, and that bit of the SSD has failed.

When ARSTechnica has used an SSD to run Windows 7 for 2 years, 24 hours a day, and had zero errors in data recovery, I'll pay attention.

HowaboutRAW, it seems like you aren't bothering to read what I write. You want to know when errors start happening, I already quoted when errors started happening ("it took over 700TB to induce the first failures"). You say SSD writes are limited to "10s of thousands of uses," when the research says the real limit may not be reached until "...about 240x as much writing as a typical consumer SSD would need to endure over its lifetime." I am writing that again because you didn't seem to read it the first time.

Also, you are showing more errors in your understanding of HDD vs SSD. You said "I'm sure SSDs are just fine as dead storage." But what researchers are finding the opposite: While SSDs are demonstrably more reliable in daily usage, it is in dead storage where SSD data retention has been questioned. You have it backwards.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9248/the-truth-about-ssd-data-retention

You might want to start paying attention to the research...

grayb:

I read what your wrote, and it wasn't helpful.

The question is how many writes+reads per cell an SSD can withstand. That number is NOT measured in terabytes.

The fact that you keep bringing up terabytes more than suggests you don't get this point.

There remains a huge difference between using an SSD for storage and using it for the operating system.

If SSDs failed as storage, then I'd have had flash fail over the last 14 years, and it hasn't happened, except one photo on one CF card.

Google did some testing of platter hard drives and those endure longer, longer than other hard drives, when used frequently.

Sure, sure, read/writes per cell is important. That is why they use leveling algorithms to minimize cell wear by spreading it out across the entire drive as much as possible. That is how the long lifetimes are achieved.

Hard drives are still useful on the desktop. I've got a lot of them. But today, mobile devices far outsell desktops, and in my laptop, phone, and tablet that are subject to shock and stresses during transport, my data is much safer on solid state storage than it ever could be on spinning mechanical disks.

More facts: The type of memory used in SSDs is usually much more robust and higher quality than used in consumer flash, especially USB stick flash drives which are the bottom of the barrel.