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12 petabytes vs the Black Hole

This fascinating series is a combination of historical seafaring, swashbuckling adventure, and high technological science-fiction. Join us in a discussion!
Re: 12 petabytes vs the Black Hole
Post by Fireflair   » Thu Apr 25, 2019 3:56 am

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I run two Raid 10 set ups. One is my main rig drive, two 2TB drives in parity then mirrored to another two 2TB drives. All four drives are SSD. The only thing on my boot drive, an NVMe M.2 500GB drive, is the OS and programs I run.

On my home network I have 10TB of mirrored storage on 7200RPM drives. (And this is hardly considered a lot of storage now) Every movie I buy I rip the entire contents to my network so my kids can stream to any device or TV in the house without arguing over screen time. It also, conveniently, keeps them from ruining my discs. I can access my home network from anywhere I have an internet connection too, so I can stream anywhere I am.

I like having my own storage on site without lag or access issues.

On the PC front my first PC was a Zenith Heathkit with 128k of RAM, assemble it yourself at home. I learned things like COBOL and Fortran, which were pretty cool at the time. I can recall upgrading years later to a 386DX2 and being wow-ed by it. 4MB of RAM?! Then an upgrade to 8MB, WAY more than I could ever need, right? Same for the HD. I went from 50MB to 200MB, I'll never fill that! Silly me....
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Re: 12 petabytes vs the Black Hole
Post by Daryl   » Thu Apr 25, 2019 6:47 am

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Interesting Fireflair,
My main PC has a 512GB SSD, two 2TB internal drives, and two 2TB external drives.
I use the SSD to run the PC, the internal 2TB drives for storage, and the external 2TB drives are manually connected and disconnected for backup, but only after full virus scans. Paranoid perhaps? I also use gold media DVDs to store family photographs off site.
Not interested in the cloud, for several reasons. Privacy, a low download limit of 60GB a month due to Satellite service, and a life time preference to own rather than rent in all things.
Eight TB of SSDs is enviable but wouldn't have been cheap.
The first computer I used was a vacuum tubed mainframe that possibly had a tenth of the power of my current watch. My first PC was a clone that used 360kb real floppy discs. We saved up for a 10MB hard drive that we doubted we'd ever fill.
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Re: 12 petabytes vs the Black Hole
Post by DMcCunney   » Thu Apr 25, 2019 2:24 pm

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Fireflair wrote:I like having my own storage on site without lag or access issues.
I do too, but out of curiosity, what all do you store? I have about 2TB of online storage in my desktop. Less than half of it is used.

However, I am not a gamer, and don't store a lot of local video. (I prefer reading to watching, don't watch TV, and don't try to keep up on films. I realize that makes me an edge case. :P)

On the PC front my first PC was a Zenith Heathkit with 128k of RAM, assemble it yourself at home. I learned things like COBOL and Fortran, which were pretty cool at the time. I can recall upgrading years later to a 386DX2 and being wow-ed by it. 4MB of RAM?! Then an upgrade to 8MB, WAY more than I could ever need, right? Same for the HD. I went from 50MB to 200MB, I'll never fill that! Silly me....
My first home computer was an AT&T 3B1 running AT&T Unix System V Release 2. (I still have it.)

My first PC was an IBM XT clone, with 4.77mhz Intel 8088 CPU640KB RAM, CGA graphics, and tow 5.25" 360KB floppy drives. I swapped in a 10mhz motherboard with a NEC V20 CPU, added a Hercules graphics card and an AST 6-Pak card with a megabyte of additional RAM split between EMS memory, a disk cache, and a RAMdisk, and two Seagate ST-225 MFM 20 megabyte hard drives. Wow! Enough storage space forever... (Silly me.)

The current desktop has a 3.1-3.4 ghz Quad-core CPU, 8GB RAM, Intel HD2000 graphics, and about 2TB total storage. It boots and runs Win10 Pro and applications off a 240GB SSD and performance is quite acceptable, thanks. I can upgrade to 32GB RM but have no present need to. The machine is low end as such things go now, but more than adequate for what I do with it. It was a refurb ex-corporate desktop from a local retailer, and base price was $250. The SSD came from another failed machine. The updates I've added are a BT4 USB dongle and a PCI-e USB3 card, sine the machine didn't com with USB3 on the motherboard. I think those cost under $40 to add.
______
Dennis
Last edited by DMcCunney on Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 12 petabytes vs the Black Hole
Post by Isilith   » Thu Apr 25, 2019 2:29 pm

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I still remember the advertising campaign for the IBM 40MB hard drive... "More memory than you will ever need". :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Re: 12 petabytes vs the Black Hole
Post by Joat42   » Thu Apr 25, 2019 2:47 pm

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I'm a packrat and currently have about 40TB of storage spread over two RAID 5's that's about 60% full.

Every time I retire a computer I image the disks so I can spin them up in a virtual environment if the need arises plus I rip all media I buy. I have also built my own TiVo like system so I can record any TV-shows that piques my interest - the backlog of unwatched stuff keeps growing though...

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: 12 petabytes vs the Black Hole
Post by Fireflair   » Fri Apr 26, 2019 12:45 am

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DMcCunney wrote:
Fireflair wrote:I like having my own storage on site without lag or access issues.
I do too, but out of curiosity, what all do you store? I have about 2TB of online storage in my desktop. Less than half of it is used. Dennis


(I hope that quoted properly!)

I save every movie I buy, ripping the entire disc to my network. This lets me stream it anywhere I want or take a hard copy when I travel. Before I retired I used to travel all over the world for the Navy, so having a large amount of mobile media not tied to a cloud was important to me. Additionally being on submarine meant I had limited space available so putting it on hard external hard drives seemed the best idea. I was giddy with glee when USB 3 external drives came out. I promptly bought four 1TB external drives. Sailors can fill up a lot of junk!

I just refuse to trust storage off site. Not because I'm worried about the NSA seeing what I have or some hacker stealing it (I don't keep any sensitive information on a system connected to the internet if I can help it.) but because I want my stuff on hand and on tap right away, regardless of ISP, state of the national electric grid, etc. :)

I remember my 386 was 33MHz and was a great machine at the time. My current rig I built back in January. Went AMD instead of Intel this time (performance/cost trade offs and upgrade-ability reasons). But in consideration I went from a 33MHz machine back in '93 to a 4.31GHz machine in 2019. 26 years and a 4GHz upgrade!
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Re: 12 petabytes vs the Black Hole
Post by DMcCunney   » Fri Apr 26, 2019 4:39 pm

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Fireflair wrote:I save every movie I buy, ripping the entire disc to my network. This lets me stream it anywhere I want or take a hard copy when I travel.
That was largely what I suspected. I don't watch all that many movies, and most I do watch aren't things I'm interested in watching again.

The principal use for storage most people I encounter with large amount of it is storing video. As mentioned, I'm an edge case because I don't.
Before I retired I used to travel all over the world for the Navy, so having a large amount of mobile media not tied to a cloud was important to me. Additionally being on submarine meant I had limited space available so putting it on hard external hard drives seemed the best idea. I was giddy with glee when USB 3 external drives came out. I promptly bought four 1TB external drives. Sailors can fill up a lot of junk!
Anyone can fill up a lot of junk. :P

And I just saw an offer for 1TB SSDs at the price I paid for the 240GB SSD that is my current boot drive when I got it a few years back.

It's the nature of semi-conductor electronics - things get steadily smaller, faster, and cheaper. Things we couldn't do with computers not that long ago because they were simply too expensive are now affordable. We are just seeing the tip of that iceberg.
I just refuse to trust storage off site. Not because I'm worried about the NSA seeing what I have or some hacker stealing it (I don't keep any sensitive information on a system connected to the internet if I can help it.) but because I want my stuff on hand and on tap right away, regardless of ISP, state of the national electric grid, etc. :)
I concur. I keep some stuff on the cloud for access from anywhere or to share with collaborators, but preference goes to local storage. Keeping everything on the cloud makes your access to the cloud your single point of failure. My Internet access is generally reliable, but there has been the out outage. I commented to my SO during the last one "I can't go out and mug a little old lady to get email, so we'll just have to suck it up and deal till service is restored."

Nothing I store externally is sensitive and would give me heartburn if it became public.

And I point and laugh at the tin foil hat crowd worried about MS leaving back doors in Windows so the NSA can snoop on their machines. My response is "You wish you were important enough that the NSA could be bothered to snoop on your PC. You aren't. Unless you are in a position to influence what the government does or plans to do, the NSA doesn't care what you think, where you go, or what you do. They only way they would notice you existed would be as something they scraped off their shoe after stepping in the wrong place. Get over yourself and shut up."
I remember my 386 was 33MHz and was a great machine at the time. My current rig I built back in January. Went AMD instead of Intel this time (performance/cost trade offs and upgrade-ability reasons). But in consideration I went from a 33MHz machine back in '93 to a 4.31GHz machine in 2019. 26 years and a 4GHz upgrade!
I had a 33mhz machine when I was running Windows 3.11, with 8MB RAM. The Unix machine I mentioned above used a 10mhz Motorola 68010 CPU, and could boot Unix, a full multitaking multi-user OS, in 1mb RAM, and run acceptably. I had 3.5MB RAM, and it flew. It ran rings around the Windows machine, which was running a multitasking shell on top of a single user OS. I looked in the direction of Redmond, WA, and said "What are you doing?" I still say that on occasion.

I used to build systems from components, but got cured of it. The current machine is a refurb former corporate desktop. It's low end as such things go, but entirely adequate for what I do with it.
______
Dennis
Last edited by DMcCunney on Mon Apr 29, 2019 11:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 12 petabytes vs the Black Hole
Post by Fireflair   » Mon Apr 29, 2019 3:13 am

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Oh yes, I still use a dual boot system. Unix/Linux environment is fun to play in and far more efficient than Windows has ever been.

My 386 ran a version of Redhat and DOS 5.1 with Windows 3.11. I really liked the DOS environment that came out in 5.1 But Linux could always run circles around DOS and especially Windows.

I distinctly recall being young and dumb when it came to Linux set up at that time. Computer monitors were not half as cheap as they are now and I burned up a 14" CRT monitor because I had the settings totally screwed up for the video. Linux has gotten to be far more user friendly since, though I suspect that like Windows the cost in user friendliness has been to performance and efficiency.

I mostly build my own machines because it does save a few dollars when you're talking custom performance rigs and because I enjoy doing it. But with the custom computer gaming industry having gone main stream you can definitely get an off the shelf performance machine for a price that is as competitive as building it for yourself.

And I absolutely agree with you about the NSA or any other group wanting to look at my e-mail, stored data, etc.
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Re: 12 petabytes vs the Black Hole
Post by DMcCunney   » Mon Apr 29, 2019 11:42 am

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Fireflair wrote:Oh yes, I still use a dual boot system. Unix/Linux environment is fun to play in and far more efficient than Windows has ever been.
I'm not dual-booting at the moment. I was given a cast off machine that decided it could't boot, and I thought "wipe and redo it as a Linux system, connect it to my network using a CAT5 cable, and access it via a KVM swith. It proved to be a fair bit of doing, so I simply swiped the 1TB SATA HD and tossed the rest. It's sitting in a USB3 drive enclosure awaiting need.

Next experiment is booting Linux off a thumbdrive plugged into a USB3 slot. (That will mostly be a convenient way to install it. Just need a couple of spare round tuits...
My 386 ran a version of Redhat and DOS 5.1 with Windows 3.11. I really liked the DOS environment that came out in 5.1
I still run some old DOS programs under Win10 Pro.

There's an open source product called DOSBox intended to let users play old DOS games on machines that aren't DOS systems. There's a fork of it called vDOSPlus specifically intended to run character mode productivity apps, which drops the video and sound stuff DOSBox implements. I know folks joined at the hip to WordStar 7 who run it using vDOSPlus.

(For that matter, I have some old DOS programs up on Android courtesy of an Android DOSBox port.)
But Linux could always run circles around DOS and especially Windows.
I ran a setup like that back when. There were a couple of Linux desktop managers that did their level best to look and act like Windows as an aid to newbies.
I distinctly recall being young and dumb when it came to Linux set up at that time. Computer monitors were not half as cheap as they are now and I burned up a 14" CRT monitor because I had the settings totally screwed up for the video. Linux has gotten to be far more user friendly since, though I suspect that like Windows the cost in user friendliness has been to performance and efficiency.
I had an advantage in having a Unix machine at home before having a PC, so I had a leg up on how to setup and configure because Linux was created to be a Unix workalike.

I got Ubuntu the last time I dual booted because it did the best job I'd seen in a distro of discovering what it was running on, setting itself up, and Just Working. I've spent enough time fiddling to make stuff work. I wanted to use the system, not fiddle to make it usable.

The one thing I had to correct after the fact was swap. Ubuntu defaulted to allocating swap equal to installed RAM. I have 8GB RAM. I do not need 8GB swap. In fact, I could probably get away with no swap.

(On my old 32bit built-from-components machine, an emergency motherboard replacement had side effects. The new mobo supported four IDE devices, period. I had more, plugged into IDE expansion cards plugged into mobo slots. Getting things configured to work was a challenge.

One of the issues was that with more than four IDE devices, the system would suddenly decide one not on a motherboard IDE connector wasn't there.

I had Ubuntu updates fail while I was booted into it because the drive Ubuntu was on had gone walkabout, and the file system the updates needed to be written to wasn't there. Ubuntu tried to run entirely in RAM if you had enough, so I had no idea there was a problem till updates failed.

I could only imagine the results had it been the Windows boot drive that went away... :P)
I mostly build my own machines because it does save a few dollars when you're talking custom performance rigs and because I enjoy doing it. But with the custom computer gaming industry having gone main stream you can definitely get an off the shelf performance machine for a price that is as competitive as building it for yourself.
I understand, but I've gotten less patient these days. After one too many hardware failures, I said "Screw it" and bought off the shelf. My needs are modest and a refurb ex-corporate desktop from my local retailer has been more than adequate.

The retailer has a dedicated DIY section, and that's aimed at the gaming crowd who custom build rigs for maximum performance. I'm not a gamer, so...
And I absolutely agree with you about the NSA or any other group wanting to look at my e-mail, stored data, etc.
I had a go around with a chap at a con a few years back worried about that sort of thing. I asked "Why should the government pay any attention to you?" "I call them fascists!" "You and a million other people. What makes you special? Nothing."
______
Dennis
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Re: 12 petabytes vs the Black Hole
Post by Imaginos1892   » Sun Jun 09, 2019 11:07 am

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Don’t forget Avogadro’s Number. No, not the one scrawled on the bathroom wall, the other one.

602,214,085,700,000,000,000,000

Six hundred and two million million billion. That’s a lot. That’s how many atoms there are in a mole. 9 grams of beryllium, 12 grams of carbon, 26 grams of aluminum, 28 grams of silicon, and so on.

Avogadro’s Number divided by 12 petabytes is almost 6.3 million atoms per bit.

What element or elements are used? How many atoms does it take to store a bit? What kind of error correction encoding did the Federation use?

If those answers fall within reasonable limits, there’s room for a whole lot of stuff in Schuler’s Key.
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Don't open that!! It's the original can of worms!
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