Disk storage
Jan. 6th, 2004 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sobriqueWhat is it about hard disks, and users.
I'm having immense grief at the moment, trying to tidy and rearrange filesystems. Why? Because as soon as I clear off some space, some tosser comes and fills it up again.
ARGH.
I suppose I'm a fine one to comment, cos my room is a mess. But the difference is I _do_ tidy it occasionally (and my home directory too for that matter). And it's _my_ room, not shared space.
When trying to shuffle around 400gb of disk, you _really_ do need at least a few gigs free on each filesystem.
And don't give me a 'disk is cheap' argument. It is when it's IDE for a PC at home. At work, we charge 200 quid per gig per year for storage. When I last checked the sums, that is actually running at a loss too.
It works out something like 60/gig payed in capital on the storage array, 50/gig on backup costs (tapes aren't cheap, and doing monthly, weekly and incremental does use them up), and the rest made up in floor space, electricity (the actual array power consumption is measured in kW), air conditioning, admin time etc.
You'd have thought that with such blatant robbery on prices though, they'd at least tidy _some_ of the stuff that they don't need. But no.
One of the classic culprits is internet explorer. using 5% of your disk space as 'temporary files cache' may _sound_ sensible, but when it's copied to network storage, and you have an 80Gb hard drive, that _really_ munches storage.
But not quite as badly as disorganised data. You know, communal directories that no one owns, know one knows what half the files are, but they don't want to delete it 'just in case'. Bah. I create crap directories on my computer, but they're downloads directories, and I don't keep anything there that I'd cry badly if I lost. Well, I'd be a bit irritated about the episodes of B5 I'd not gotten around to watching, but that's about it.
What's annoying me most though, is the layout of these filesystems. One of my predecessors organised the data according to what disk it was on. So we have an 'ausr1, ausr2, ausr39 ...'. Originally, these were volumes, in the days when disks were of the single gigabyte size. Then, he created a filesystem, and put links in to these names. I figure this must have been about 10-15 years ago. It's still in place today, because I certainly don't have the enthusiasm to resolve and tidy around 6500 symbolic links.
To absolute locations.
If I knew who it was, I'd go beat him with a clue stick.
Oh well. Back to the ol' grind.
Oh, and my personal favourite dose of daily humour may be found here:
http://www.computerworld.com/departments/opinions/sharktank
I'm having immense grief at the moment, trying to tidy and rearrange filesystems. Why? Because as soon as I clear off some space, some tosser comes and fills it up again.
ARGH.
I suppose I'm a fine one to comment, cos my room is a mess. But the difference is I _do_ tidy it occasionally (and my home directory too for that matter). And it's _my_ room, not shared space.
When trying to shuffle around 400gb of disk, you _really_ do need at least a few gigs free on each filesystem.
And don't give me a 'disk is cheap' argument. It is when it's IDE for a PC at home. At work, we charge 200 quid per gig per year for storage. When I last checked the sums, that is actually running at a loss too.
It works out something like 60/gig payed in capital on the storage array, 50/gig on backup costs (tapes aren't cheap, and doing monthly, weekly and incremental does use them up), and the rest made up in floor space, electricity (the actual array power consumption is measured in kW), air conditioning, admin time etc.
You'd have thought that with such blatant robbery on prices though, they'd at least tidy _some_ of the stuff that they don't need. But no.
One of the classic culprits is internet explorer. using 5% of your disk space as 'temporary files cache' may _sound_ sensible, but when it's copied to network storage, and you have an 80Gb hard drive, that _really_ munches storage.
But not quite as badly as disorganised data. You know, communal directories that no one owns, know one knows what half the files are, but they don't want to delete it 'just in case'. Bah. I create crap directories on my computer, but they're downloads directories, and I don't keep anything there that I'd cry badly if I lost. Well, I'd be a bit irritated about the episodes of B5 I'd not gotten around to watching, but that's about it.
What's annoying me most though, is the layout of these filesystems. One of my predecessors organised the data according to what disk it was on. So we have an 'ausr1, ausr2, ausr39 ...'. Originally, these were volumes, in the days when disks were of the single gigabyte size. Then, he created a filesystem, and put links in to these names. I figure this must have been about 10-15 years ago. It's still in place today, because I certainly don't have the enthusiasm to resolve and tidy around 6500 symbolic links.
To absolute locations.
If I knew who it was, I'd go beat him with a clue stick.
Oh well. Back to the ol' grind.
Oh, and my personal favourite dose of daily humour may be found here:
http://www.computerworld.com/departments/opinions/sharktank
