Facebook uses 10k Blu-ray discs to store 'cold' data (2014)

https://www.pcworld.com/article/443619/facebook-puts-10000-bluray-discs-in-lowpower-storage-system.html

by padthai • 2 years ago

19 9 2 years ago

Does anybody know the current status of this?

My understanding is that if you delete your Facebook they will, in fact, completely delete it. That's post Cambridge Analytica of course.

xenospn• 2 years ago

Good luck verifying that.

__jonas• 2 years ago

Interesting, so do they still use this 10 years later? I can’t find anything on it.

I thought magnetic tape was kind of the standard for this type of storage, would be curious about the details of this system and how the drives work

colejohnson66• 2 years ago

What’s the density difference and lifespan between dual layer Blu-Ray (50 GB) and the latest tape standard (multiple TB)? On the surface, I’d think tape is denser and lasts longer. Not to mention that tape is reusable.

edward28• 2 years ago

Lto9 tapes can store 18TB and are about 231cm^3. BDXL can store 128GB and are about 54cm^3. Tape about 79GB/cm^3 vs Bluray 2.3GB/cm^3.

filcuk• 2 years ago

Denser storages have worse longevity. CDs (and similar) have been found to have the best longevity of the commonly used storage media.

TacticalCoder• 2 years ago

Facebook has built a storage system from 10,000 Blu-ray discs that holds a petabyte of data...

One petabyte may have looked impressive in 2014 but is it still (honestly asking, it's not rhetorical)? A friend of mine has got 200 TB in his homelab. That's one fifth of the way there.

One petabyte is definitely within reach of an individual nowadays. Granted, it's only HDDs and not Blu-ray discs, but it's still a manageable amount.

Now as to why an individual would fill that is another topic: scientific data or options trading data or the various blockchain transactions data (including what's happening on the "L2" chains/sidechains) would quickly fill that, for example. But that is not my point.

Is one petabyte a lot? What would be a lot today?

For although 10 000 Blu-ray discs is something, 100 000 or one million discs to manage is something else altogether.

h_tbob• 2 years ago

So is there some form of blu ray that’s rewritable so they can delete the content if a user deletes their account?

thedougd• 2 years ago

I doubt they’re doing it, but one way to handle this with WORM is to encrypt each user’s data with a key unique to the user. When they request you forget, delete the key.

Facebook uses 10k Blu-ray discs to store 'cold' data (2014)

Related Stories