Looking over the Drobo thread, a thought hit me. For the past few years, I've always had some sort of RAID setup, because no single hard drive was ever big enough to hold all my stuff. Right now, for example, my work machine (a 2013 MacPro) with a 5-disk Thunderbolt disk array is using:

- Internal SSD: 602GB used (of 1TB)
- External main stripe: 2.2TB used (of 6TB)
- External TimeMachine stripe: 1.7TB used (of 4TB)

The external main stripe also includes the CrashPlan backup of my home machine, which is excluded from TimeMachine, so those numbers don't exactly add up properly.

If you look at those numbers, versus the latest hard drives (10TB for $500 plus or minus from Seagate), it's looking like hard drives have finally grown much, much larger than any capacity I'll ever forsee myself needing via RAID striping. You can even get a 2TB external SSD for maybe $750 from Samsung, opening the bizarre thought that I could rebuild my RAID -- currently made from 5x2TB HDDs -- into an equivalent amount of storage that's entirely SSD. Seems overkill, but it's entirely possible now.

So, yeah, CPUs have fallen off the Moore's Law gravy train, but storage is still very much on it. The big question, then, is what I'm supposed to do with all that extra storage.

You need to take up a new hobby: Video editing.

Here: 20TB array (three drives in mhddfs), 85% full: videos-on-demand.

Right. Video editing or simple video storage (I still plan one day to put all my DVDs and BR on disk) and you're ready to fill one more order of magnitude storage.

Also, I am currently able to store all my home data in a RAID 1 6TB system. Admittedly, a lot of work stuff is in the office storage system (much larger), but my point is: you'll still be using RAID even though just for mirroring.

Here's another bet: in 5 years, we'll be on SSD-only sotrage in homes - again unless you store a lot og 4K (8K) video content by then.

Depends on your parameters, like "most users." I would personally need SSDs to come WAY down in price in order for this to make sense. My NAS is my file drawer that doesn't require super fact read/write times.

An all SSD storage array would be quiet (no fans, no hard drive noises), compact, and use less electricity 24x7. Might even have a longer service life without any spinning drive replacements.

Could you calculate how much your current storage costs annually just in energy?

Let's eee.... Most users: 80% ?

My guess, of course.

Sure, my guess is based on price of SSDs decreasign significantly.

Very good points. I'll have to measure the energy usage of my Synology sometime to see what it's doing now.

Currently, the cost to replicate the storage I have now with SSDs would be over $4500 for just the drives. That's compared to $390 for the same in HDDs. I'm pretty sure it'll take quite a long time to spend $4110 in energy costs. SSD prices are going to have to come down by orders of magnitude.

FYI, here's the numbers I was using:

- my NAS has four drives of 3, 3, 3, and 4 TB
- I was using the cost of 3 4TB SSDs
- either way, I end up with 8TB of usable space

16TB: That's less than CAD$3500 -- and cheaper again in USD$.