The World "Behind" SDA

Tranquilite

2012-10-14 03:21:30 am

Quote from Judgy:

MY Cleanfreak PC

That's the Fractal Define R3 (or maybe the R4) case isn't it? I have one of those too and they definitely help bring out OCD cable management tendencies.

Judgy

Edit history:

Judgy: 2012-10-14 03:32:39 am

Judgy: 2012-10-14 03:30:06 am

2012-10-14 03:29:03 am

Borderlands 2 Glitch Hunter/ router.

Quote from Tranquilite:

That's the Fractal Define R3 (or maybe the R4) case isn't it? I have one of those too and they definitely help bring out OCD cable management tendencies.

Yeah fractal design not sure if its known as a R3 or R4 elsewhere but its this -> Case
~~Doesn't show it in the pics but it has about a 2 cm channel behind the backplate for cabling~~ ignore that it shows it in the last picture lol

Patrick

Edit history:

Patrick: 2012-10-14 05:51:56 am

2012-10-14 04:55:07 am

It is great that you are answering those questions Nate. :-) I have two little questions (I have little to no knowledge about this topic):
1) How long do the server's hard drives work?
2) Can you post statistics on how many bytes have been downloaded in which month?
3) My question regarding SSDs as 'file servers' lost its significance.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html
Portman Wills [...] got infected with the SSD religion [...] purchased eight SSDs over the last two years [...] terrifying:
Super Talent 32 GB SSD, failed after 137 days
OCZ Vertex 1 250 GB SSD, failed after 512 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 251 days
G.Skill 64 GB SSD, failed after 276 days
Crucial 64 GB SSD, failed after 350 days
OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD, failed after 72 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 15 days
Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD, failed after 206 days

PJ

2012-10-14 08:32:18 am

Is PJ

Yea, I want to second everything everybody else has said in this thread. Thank you so much for everything you do for us, Nate!

kwinse

2012-10-14 08:33:22 am

Quote from PJ:

Yea, I want to second everything everybody else has said in this thread. Thank you so much for everything you do for us, Nate!

HiipFire

2012-10-14 08:54:36 am

Quote from kwinse:

Quote from PJ:

Yea, I want to second everything everybody else has said in this thread. Thank you so much for everything you do for us, Nate!

Scepheo

2012-10-14 09:16:31 am

Quote from HiipFire:

Quote from kwinse:

Quote from PJ:

Yea, I want to second everything everybody else has said in this thread. Thank you so much for everything you do for us, Nate!

And I'm gonna add my personal touch to show you I really mean it. I remember ads being on the site when I started lurking around here, along with a little message asking me to pretty please not disable them because they helped keeping the site up. By then I hadn't ever heard of adBlock or the likes, so I'm proud to say I never did!

You're awesome Nate.

nate

2012-10-14 10:14:17 am

Quote from freakypaddy:

How long do the server's hard drives work?

have to ask the stars or tarot cards or something. i have monitoring turned on which will sometimes give you some warning but even then there is no guarantee.

Quote from freakypaddy:

Can you post statistics on how many bytes have been downloaded in which month?

can't really. i can sort of tell just for dl.speeddemosarchive.com but keep in mind that a lot of people download content via archive.org mirrors or bittorrent. mikoto is on a 100 mbit unmetered connection and it uses a lot of that, so we can say with confidence that sda goes through something in the 50-100 terabyte range per month. as an interesting bit of trivia, the monthly bandwidth cap on the first dedicated server in 2004 was 1 terabyte. i think i talk a bit about how that was nowhere near enough in one of the history blocks on the m2k2 forum.

not sure what to say about ssd failures. i've been running them for years now and never seen one, and i've killed maybe 3-4 hard drives in that same period. i'd heard before that ssd failures tend to be sudden and catastrophic compared with hard drive failures, but my anecdotal experiences with both types of disks suggests that i would be better off never buying hard drives again for any reason. they have been that bad for me. unfortunately i'm still waiting on moore's law for that since sda has many terabytes of content that would never fit on today's ssds without paying i dunno, $10 - 20,000 or something.

[quote="freakypaddy"]How long do the server's hard drives work?[/quote]
have to ask the stars or tarot cards or something. i have monitoring turned on which will sometimes give you some warning but even then there is no guarantee.

[quote="freakypaddy"]Can you post statistics on how many bytes have been downloaded in which month?[/quote]
can't really. i can sort of tell just for dl.speeddemosarchive.com but keep in mind that a lot of people download content via archive.org mirrors or bittorrent. mikoto is on a 100 mbit unmetered connection and it uses a lot of that, so we can say with confidence that sda goes through something in the 50-100 terabyte range per month. as an interesting bit of trivia, the monthly bandwidth cap on the first dedicated server in 2004 was 1 terabyte. i think i talk a bit about how that was nowhere near enough in one of the history blocks on the m2k2 forum.

not sure what to say about ssd failures. i've been running them for years now and never seen one, and i've killed maybe 3-4 hard drives in that same period. i'd heard before that ssd failures tend to be sudden and catastrophic compared with hard drive failures, but my anecdotal experiences with both types of disks suggests that i would be better off never buying hard drives again for any reason. they have been that bad for me. unfortunately i'm still waiting on moore's law for that since sda has many terabytes of content that would never fit on today's ssds without paying i dunno, $10 - 20,000 or something.

Judgy

2012-10-14 11:08:28 am

Borderlands 2 Glitch Hunter/ router.

Quote:

OCZ Agility 60 GB SSD, failed after 72 days

My OCZ Agility 2 120GB (SLC- Single layer cell) lasted about 100 days lol apparently it couldn't handle windows being installed twice however i believe this was back when most drives had a firmware issue more recent drives don't seem to suffer as much. both my OCZ Vertex 3 and OCZ RevoDrive3 PCI-E SSD have served me without a hitch.

Flip

2012-10-14 11:14:10 am

1-Up!

Dunno how many times I've read those history posts on m2k2, nate, but they're great to read every time. Would be awesome if there were more, taking us from then to present times.

usernameguy

2012-10-14 02:04:27 pm

Hey nate - thanks so much for your dedication.

I was in a similar situation with a similar community site, only 1000 active users, on its own host. We'd easily cover hosting costs with annual fundraisers - kind of "passing the hat". In fact, our biggest problem was that people would give too much. You'd be surprised how many $50+ donations you might get, even after you close the fundraiser.

Anyhow, have you considered such a thing here? I figure, hey, that's $1000 back in your pocket. You definitely deserve it.

Tranquilite

2012-10-14 03:07:44 pm

Quote from Judgy:

Yeah fractal design not sure if its known as a R3 or R4 elsewhere but its this -> Case
~~Doesn't show it in the pics but it has about a 2 cm channel behind the backplate for cabling~~ ignore that it shows it in the last picture lol

Ah, looks like they also make a full tower version of this case, and that's what you have. And I thought that the mid tower version was massive...

Back on topic:

Quote from PJ:

Yea, I want to second everything everybody else has said in this thread. Thank you so much for everything you do for us, Nate!

Dragondarch

2012-10-14 04:46:06 pm

Pudding%

Quote from PJ:

Yea, I want to second everything everybody else has said in this thread. Thank you so much for everything you do for us, Nate!

This.

Alko

2012-10-14 05:22:52 pm

Caution: This user contains Kana ^_^

Okay, so those ads should have existed when I started lurking around here. Can't remember them, but imho it is much nicer to have an ad-free site ^^ And I must be the only one on the net to be pissed off by ads, know about adblock, and still not use it xD

Back on-topic: Nate, you are one of the greatest!

DJGrenola

2012-10-15 10:11:50 am

guffaw

seems the site finally got the server for which we always yearned back in the dark old days. I'm still a little amazed at how long and how well we managed to cope without it. I'm also amazed that those drives in the original dl didn't spontaneously combust (... they didn't, right?)

Remember when we would have lost all the Flash video if I hadn't had the fortune still to be logged into the shared hosting when they disabled our account? I had to FTP the whole lot somewhere safe as quickly as possible before they kicked me off the box and deleted SDA's stuff. High drama. I remember my fingers slipping on the keyboard with the sweat. Ah, good times.

(you people are lucky, he never bought me any fun hardware like that to play with.)

nate

2012-10-15 06:06:08 pm

wow, yeah. it's been so long. crazy. i did remember that shared hosting thing being a bigger deal than i could recall in detail now. like for example i also talk about trying to avoid them charging me in the thread i linked and i probably wouldn't remember that now if i hadn't written about it there - even though i remember now that it scared the shit out of me at the time.

a lot of times people ask whether i'm going to write more history blocks and i always think "yeah, too bad there isn't anything that exciting to write about." but it seems like there could be. unfortunately i wrote those in like 2005, 1-2 years after the events described, and now it's over 5 years after the 2007 stuff. my memory doesn't seem to be as good either. i keep telling myself it's because i've been alive longer. like i should expect less not because my memory's worse by some objective measure but because i have more to remember. but in reality it's probably just because it's shit you know. no sense trying to run away from it.

the good news is that i still have all the irc logs, so if i were really interested for some reason then i could go back and relive all the fun.

wow, yeah. it's been so long. crazy. i did remember that shared hosting thing being a bigger deal than i could recall in detail now. like for example i also talk about trying to avoid them charging me in the thread i linked and i probably wouldn't remember that now if i hadn't written about it there - even though i remember now that it scared the shit out of me at the time.

a lot of times people ask whether i'm going to write more history blocks and i always think "yeah, too bad there isn't anything that exciting to write about." but it seems like there could be. unfortunately i wrote those in like 2005, 1-2 years after the events described, and now it's over 5 years after the 2007 stuff. my memory doesn't seem to be as good either. i keep telling myself it's because i've been alive longer. like i should expect less not because my memory's worse by some objective measure but because i have more to remember. but in reality it's probably just because it's shit you know. no sense trying to run away from it.

the good news is that i still have all the irc logs, so if i were really interested for some reason then i could go back and relive all the fun.

Radix

2012-10-15 06:17:25 pm

I'm addicted to games

I think the bit about you being up all night with the power out in your town during the most recent move deserves a write-up...

DJGrenola

2012-10-15 07:16:28 pm

guffaw

yeah, I'd forgotten about the charging too. Now I remember being pretty shocked about it though.

DJGrenola

2012-10-15 07:49:11 pm

guffaw

if an "official" history of sda were ever to surface in any form, I'd not be averse to contributing to it.

DK28

2012-10-16 11:06:49 pm

General Kong - Bullets and Bananas

I remember hearing some of that stuff from nate a long time ago when I first registered and started submitting. You have all my love and respect nate, sincerely.

You da man!

X

2012-10-22 05:07:49 pm

destroy them with lazers

Wow so much good stuff to read on hear. Was awesome to read SDA's origins. Four years I've been here now and I've always enjoyed it. For that I thank you Nate, Radix and everyone else involved.