I used that backblaze analogy too, but after yours, @ano:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1735418&cid=33075574

It comes up to $45K/90TB tops, in just one 4U enclosure, management overhead and real estate included. ($50K/100TB)
To answer @spazimodo, the Taiwan-built Barracuda XT disks have low failure rates compared to the Seagate disks built in China, and you can combine them in RAID 6 or 60 with Adaptec controllers for $1-2K more. Why would you ever use RAID 5 anyway, that's insane. We're talking raw storage here, so backup hardware, snapshots, replication are exactly the same as the 1M/100TB raw space estimate. If you want real usable space data all costs included, get 2 such servers, let's say at $50K each with RAID 6 controllers and fiber optics cluster connection. That's 74TB of usable space, plus another 74TB on the backup clustered server, or $135K/100TB usable space.
Even a backblaze enclosure comprised exclusively of SSD disks for performance would cost only $72K per enclosure, hardware and 1st year costs included, about $640K/100TB. But I assume this level of performance is far above the $1M figure, assumedly for SAS disks, and which also probably spreads out the hardware cost onto 3 years, so it's more like $0.5M for pure SSD 100TB. It would really help if the article would detail that $1M cost.

SSD costs assuming 256GB disks @ $700 each. 1 backblaze 4U server would provide only 11TB of SSD raw space, 9TB of usable RAID 6 space.

Well 10TB is rather small and can easily be filled up, so you need the low usage rate, but for datacenters with petabytes of storage space, which are what the article is mostly about, you can aggregate the unused space, remove some, and increase the global usage rate quite a lot, while still allowing for huge increase of storage usage from many of your customers or departments. Compared to the whole capacity of the datacenter, these increases are rather diluted to small percentages.

Not really. Google designs and builds their own servers.
The "super expensive storage solutions" are for suckers.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html

These expensive solutions are probably the reason why the analyst mentions saving $1M for each 100TB removed.
With 4U enclosures like backblaze's, you get 90TB for $11K of hardware and $6K (45 disks @ 8WH) of power usage per year.
An IT operator can control dozens of such enclosures, let's say a conservative 2 dozens. So $160K salary / 24 enclosures is $7K.
Add $7K for a full time dev and custom storage management software, and $14K for management (still for 24 enclosures).
That's still about $45K for 90TB all included, exactly 20 times less than the mentioned $1M for 100TB.

http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/
I replaced the 1.5TB disks with Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6Gb/s 2TB disks at $200 on newegg in this computation.
Seagate's other models built in China have lots of problems that the XT doesn't seem to have.

A new Windows rewritten from scratch would really help a whole new class of efficient and reliable embedded and consumer systems, maybe an OS that would make multiplatform programming easier too (developing apps simultaneously for Windows, Mac OS and Linux.)

But that would be a tremendous job, you'd basically need to rewrite from scratch all the applications and especially the developers' tools. Even then devs would need a lot of training about the changes and new features offered by the new OS, how to port their existing apps, etc. All software companies would need to adapt too. Not too sure we'll find many supporters for this cause.

*you => read @Liquidrage

Thanks, @Ano. I know where the citations were from, I was merely asking @Liquidrage to make his post more readable.
For the same amount of letters, "CNET:" would be more understandable than "FFTA:" incorrectly spelled, confidential and cryptic FTFA acronym.
Acronyms are evil!

And yet another hate comment... No need to insult people, and don't forget that not everybody is a native English speaker who can easily understand that FFTA stands for FTFA, which is a stupid acronym anyway. "Farking", really?

Yes, I know, you also wrote the correct spelling in the first instance, but I didn't see both had different spellings, and when I tried to understand that "FFTA", I thought maybe it was the name of the blogger or site you referred to, hence my natural question for sources.

And none of the excerpts you mentioned earlier are taken from the article's "damn summary", they are from one of the 3 links in the article (CNET). Anyways, I just wanted to react when you defended burst.net by saying their decision was an "honest mistake", it was a mistake indeed, but there is nothing "honest" in it, their official statement says that it was a conscious decision. I don't think such a professional business would kill a whole blogging platform without due consideration of all the implications.

Where I "fail?"
Quit trolling if you have nothing else to do but insult people and read their comments without understanding them. But if you're only spamming the board with ads for your own 404-ridden commercial web site in your signature, or if you work for burst.net, feel free to keep replying.

Of course burst.net has all the "rights" to take down blogetery for any reason, thanks to their meaningless cover-my-arse contract.
I was merely stressing ("legal as in...") that they volunteered to do it, they were not requested to do so by a legal order or government agency, unlike what they pretended when they first answered blogetery: "Bn.xx*********** was terminated by request of law enforcement officials"

In that sense they abused their powers and the trust relationship with their customers.

Source links?
The only "mistake" made was when an employee inadvertently let out that it was a "federal matter", when he was not supposed to tell that much. Burst.net official statement states that the take down was a conscious decision made after reviewing the blogs referenced by the FBI, not an "honest mistake": https://www.burst.net/news/blogetry.shtml

Plus I wonder how happy the FBI is with burst.net's decision and all the publicity: It might have wanted to infiltrate the terrorist blog(s) or at least track which IPs were posting or commenting on it. The FBI was only asking burst.net who the blogetery owner was.

I did read it already, what do you think? It was referenced in 4.5. BTW, the link is: https://www.burst.net/policy/contract.pdf

But as I said in http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=965094, this clause does not make sense. The same Exhibit B section states:

"(D) Offensive or Objectionable Material. BurstNET reserves the right to request you remove any material which BurstNET deems offensive, hurtful, or otherwise objectionable.
Failure to do so may result in blocking your site or termination of the Agreement by BurstNET Services."

In that case, blogetery was not even given the chance to delete the offending blog(s). Even if burst.net gives itself all powers (basically making the whole contract a total joke), it was 1) not legal (as in "required by a legal court order or Patriot Act request") for burst.net to take down the site, 2) a partial breach of 4.5 and Exhibit B (D) of the contract, and 3) a totally stupid act to take down 73,000 blogs when only a couple were being investigated by the FBI.

Burst.net should get all the blame and bad publicity it deserves for such an outrageous act. The whole blogosphere is posting comments asking everybody to stop working with burst.net, I totally agree.

I second that. At least for some Asus mobos, they have near perfect audiophile sound.
Currently listening to a Lúnasa lossless wma rip ("Iúil : Frailock") on a Sennheiser HD 650 plugged directly into the mobo, it's pure pleasure. Same with good USB Logitech speakers and woofer, the sound is huge and clean at the highest volume level.

Or a SATA 6Gbps controller...

Just read the linked thread by affiliateplex. Are slashdot commenters usually so hateful?
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=964013

Burst.net clearly takes no account of its own contract if it does not consider his customers responsible for handling the situation:
Paragraph 4.5 states: "Client shall be solely responsible for all content available on or through its site"

Many commenters said that burst.net had no choice in the matter, but I beg to differ. Burst.net should have redirected the FBI to the rightful contact, the owner of blogetery.
Many also accuse affiliateplex of having broken the law. If so, Facebook and Google Blogger have broken the law thousands of times for child porn. Were they shut down? Of course not, only the individual illegal/infringing blogs were shut down, not the whole service.
Others also say affiliateplex should monitor every post in every blog he hosts. What a stupid nonsense. Again, Facebook and Blogger don't monitor their blogs. Instead, they have a "Report this blog" button for readers to signal potentially illegal blogs. Only then do they take action to verify if the claim was justified.

I really feel sorry for affiliateplex, he certainly did not deserve both the shutdown of his hosting site and the hate comments, and he has all my sympathy and support.