Questions tagged [storage]
Computer data storage, often called storage or memory, refers to computer components and recording media that retain digital data. Data storage is one of the core functions and fundamental components of computers.
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Is there still a reason to choose a 10,000 RPM hard drive over an SSD?
For anyone who's serious about storage performance, SSDs are always the fastest solution. However, WD still makes their 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor hard drives, and a few enthusiasts even use enterprise-...
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Why should I use exFAT over NTFS on removable media?
So, basically I always format my removable mass storage devices as NTFS by default, but someone told me I was better off using exFAT. Now I've been looking around google, but can't find any good ...
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How to wipe free disk space in Linux?
When a file is deleted, its contents may still be left in the filesystem, unless explicitly overwritten with something else. The wipe command can securely erase files, but does not seem to allow ...
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Disadvantages of partitioning an SSD?
A wise guy who goes by the name of NickN maintains a lenghty forum post on his views about building a powerful computer (directed towards playing Microsoft's Flight Simulator X, a very demanding piece ...
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Cross-platform file system
I would like my external drives to be readable and writable from Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
FAT32 works, but the 4 GB file size limit is a showstopper these days. Are there any alternatives?
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How much time until an unused hard drive loses its data?
Do you guys know how much time needs to pass until the data stored on a hard drive starts to degrade?
To keep the data intact for long periods of time, I heard you need to periodically rewrite it on ...
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What medium should be used for long term, high volume, data storage (archival)?
This question was inspired by https://superuser.com/questions/374386/how-to-store-and-preserve-lots-of-data. There have been other similar questions, but none with the same criteria.
This is two ...
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What is the origin of K = 1024? [closed]
Why does the discrepancy in the number of bytes in a kilobyte exist? In some places I've seen the number 1024 (210) while in others it's 1000 (and the difference gets increasingly large with M, G, T, ...
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Why are USB flash drives so much slower than SSDs?
From what I understand, USB flash drives and solid-state drives (SSDs) are based on similar technologies, NAND flash memory.
But, USB flash drives are usually quite slow, with a read and write speed ...
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How much slower do SSDs get as they fill up or age?
I'm considering buying a 256 GB SSD. I've heard that they get slower as you fill them up with more than 75% of their capacity, owing to the mechanics of how they write data.
Question is: How much ...
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What's the technical difference between a flash drive and an SSD?
I was just reading a question on backups with flash drives, but I was not quite sure why SSDs would be better than flash drives for backups.
To me, solid-state drives look like larger versions of ...
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How do I recover lost/inaccessible data from my storage device?
What steps can I take to try to recover lost or inaccessible data from any storage device?
Answers:
This applies to any computer storage device, e.g. internal/external hard drives, USB sticks, flash ...
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How to store and preserve lots of data?
I have many DVDs with movies and games, they are getting old and dusty, some of them are damaged. And I have more than 300 GB of general files in my PC. I want to store and preserve all of my data and ...
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What is the difference between a kibibyte, a kilobit, and a kilobyte?
This question got me wondering about the differences between these three ways of measuring size: a kibibyte, a kilobit, and the conventional kilobyte.
I understand that these measurements have ...
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Why is my HDD so slow on the "4K" speed tests?
What is wrong with my speed at 4K? Why is it so slow? Or is it supposed to be like that?
Is that speed okay? Why do I have such low speed at 4K?
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How can Windows 10 function on as little as 32 GB of disk space?
There are a number of sub $200 Windows 10 laptops with only a 32 GB SSD hard drive, like Lenovo 100s, HP Stream 13, etc...
Given that the Windows directory itself is over 32GB on my regular laptop, ...
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Which of the Windows updates are really necessary? [closed]
I downloaded a lot of Windows updates in the automatic mode.
Are they all necessary?
Can I remove some of them?
How do we know which ones are necessary?
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Will reading data cause SSD's to wear out?
It's almost common knowledge that excessive writes (including formatting, defragmenting etc) will, in time, wear out solid state drives. But does reading lots of data from SSD's cause wear too?
I'm ...
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What is the function of the four pins on my SSD?
While searching for an answer, I found this question on SU what is the purpose of this 4 pin interface on sata hdds and why doesnt it exist on SSDs?
Well, on my Kingston HyperX SSD drive, they do ...
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Can I set up a RAID 5 with a bunch of drives of different sizes?
I currently have 3 1TB drives, a couple 500GB ones and some 750GB ones. Can I put them all in a RAID 5 configuration or do they need to be of same size?
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Intel Matrix Storage Manager vs Linux Software RAID
The chipset I'm using supports the Intel RSTe technology. It means that I have two options for RAID setup:
Ordinary linux software RAID, using mdadm command.
RSTe (either by the BIOS or, again, using ...
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Immediately spin down a HDD on Windows
I have 2 non-system SATA HDDs which are not mapped to a dir and normally kept 'offline' on my Windows 7 OS. Even this way they spin up from time to time, including but not limited to windows update ...
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What's faster? Moving files from one drive to another, or moving files in the same drive?
Let's suppose I have a 2GB file that I want to move, and I have two hard drives that are exactly the same.
Would it be faster to move the file from one drive to another, or will it be faster-moving ...
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Size of files in Windows: is it KB or kB?
One "kilobyte" (KB) is 1024 bytes in JEDEC-standard, whereas the definition has shifted, in most contexts, to mean 1000 bytes (kB) in accordance with SI. To resolve this difference, binary ...
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Confusion with storage capacity (powers of 10 and 2) [duplicate]
I was taking a look at a HDD and I found a document (from Toshiba, link: 2.5-Inch SATA HDD mq01abdxxx) that says:
"One Gigabyte (1GB) means 10^9 = 1,000,000,000 bytes using powers of 10. A computer ...
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How is a NAS different from a SAN?
I've been doing research into NAS and SAN for a situation at work, and I am struggling to workout the difference between the two on a corporate level.
Is a NAS basically just a small SAN? Or are SANs ...
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Any recommendations on a NAS for a home-super-user? [closed]
Can anyone recommend a good NAS for use in a home-server environment? I would request at least 2, preferably 4 disks, and I am most interested in good to excellent throughput for file-server and ...
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Hard drive clicking for 16 times during startup
Sometimes when I boot my laptop the hard drive makes a clicking sound (every time 16 times), Windows does not start and I am stuck on the boot screen (note: F2, F4 or any other key do not respond).
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What happened to WinFS?
The most interesting feature that was ever connected to what eventually became Vista was WinFS, a revolutionary (so it seemed, at least back then) new way of storing and accessing information on a ...
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Website Wants to Store Files on this Device? (Chrome)
In Chrome i recently wanted to get a large download and a popup alert shows saying:
Website Wants to: Store Files on this Device
What does this mean exactly and how is it different to a regular ...
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Are M-disks truly more reliable than other forms of storage?
I came across M-disks boasting a lifespan of 1000 years and resistance to harsh environmental conditions. Is this based on some new technology or is it just the same as the other disks with ...
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What is the advantage of iSCSI over SMB?
At my house I'm running a Hyper-V server with a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM acting as a file server. Files are shared across my network using SMB. (Also, the machine is using a PERC 6/i RAID card but ...
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Is the lock mechanism on an SD card hardware, firmware, or software (driver,OS) enforced?
Where is the lock to read-only mode enforced with SD cards? Is this done inside the card itself physically, in the firmware of readers, or in the OS? (Some other place?)
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Space issues on 32 GB Windows 10 mini PC
I recently bought a cheap Windows 10 mini PC with only 32 GB of space.
I installed it two days ago, and after the installation (more activation than installation) I had about 13 GB of ...
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Lifespan of an SSD (NAND Flash) for minimal write use archive purposes: Write once, toss in (proverbial or literal) storage closet
Okay, so I saw this other question which was closed as being too localized and I understand the idea of that closure: Systems, environments and usage are all different.
But my question is about using ...
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should I put my multi-device btrfs filesystem on disk partitions or raw devices?
If I'm going to create a multi-device btrfs filesystem. The official recommendation from the documentation apppears to be to create it on raw devices; i.e. /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, etc, but this is not ...
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How can a hard drive provide a host device with file/directory listings when the drive isn't spinning?
On several of the newer hard rives that I've used, I've noticed that they will often stop spinning when not in use - presumably to save energy and to prolong its life. Interestingly, however, I've ...
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How long can you read files from a flash drive if kept in a cool, dark room?
Say you had some sensitive information that you didn't want to store on the internet, was incredibly important to you, and you didn't need to access very often either.
Think of a digital picture ...
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Can you just "pull the plug" on MTP devices?
After attaching a typical USB storage device to Windows, it is important to properly unmount the drive before unplugging it. If you don't, you might lose data.
But for MTP devices (such as many ...
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Is there any P2P private file storage? [closed]
I would like to upload my private encrypted files to the cloud. However I don't want to rely on a company to do this, such as Dropbox. If I share it on a P2P network (such as using torrents) nobody ...
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Expand a Linux MD RAID 10 array to use larger disks
From what I understand this is possible, but I can't find a straight answer anywhere about how exactly to go about it, and I don't want to risk losing data experimenting with it myself so I'm asking ...
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Why does sector-number addressing in CHS start at sector 1 and not 0?
Before LBA was introduced, why does CHS start at 0,0,1 and not 0,0,0 ?
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How do defragmenting programs work?
a) What algorithm would a typical defragmenting program use to get rid of the fragmentation?
b) In Defraggler, I have a quick defrag option and a defrag option. Assuming defrag would do a normal ...
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Alternatives to Windows Home Server Drive Extender?
As Microsoft is cutting support for Drive Extender in Windows Home Server v2 (Windows Server Codename Vail is the official name), what are the alternatives to Drive Extender on a self-built machine?
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Sink directory like /dev/null
I want a /dev/null directory, to which a graphical program can write a file, and think that it actually is writing it, like redirecting stdout to /dev/null. I can't write it to /tmp, as I nearly never ...
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Rebalance hard drives in a Storage Space Pool?
I have 2x 1.5TB drives in a (two-way mirror storage pool). That pool recently hit 100% capacity meaning both drives had 0% space left.
I added 2x 4TB drives to the storage pool but Storage space ...
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How vulnerable are SSDs to power failures compared to HDDs? [closed]
Are SSDs as vulnerable to data corruption as Mechanical HDDs during power outages? Since SSDs have no moving parts, I'm assuming that they can handle power failures better.
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How can I replace a broken M.2 SSD mounting standoff for my motherboard?
I just bought an ASUS Z97M Plus motherboard.
It has an M.2 socket. Here's a pic of the socket:
I want to install this M.2 SATA drive:
The drive is held in the socket by a screw in a standoff, ...
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Why my SUnreclaim is too high (issues with having free memory)?
I have lot of memory (32Gb) on my laptop though still have issues with having amount of free memory. I am using linux (Fedora 27) and this happens after while since reboot.
If you check free output, ...
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Western Digital Green drive from 512 byte sectors (jumpered) to 4k byte sectors (removal of jumper)
I was using a WD20EARS drive with pins 7 and 8 jumpered in order to use it on an OS that doesn't support 4k sectors. But now, I want to transfer that hard drive over to an OS that has 4k sector ...
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