Hard disk storage is so cheap these days we often act as if size doesn’t matter, but just because you could potentially store everything doesn’t mean you should. I’ve been reminded of this lesson today by a most unlikely source: TV reality show Big Brother.
Picture: Big Brother/Channel Nine
In a backstage tour of the BB house (something I did myself a decade or so back), TV Tonight notes that while every housemate movement is captured digitally, not all that footage is kept permanently:
There’s so much vision captured across the series from so many cameras that not all of it is kept. I’m not sure there’s enough hard drives on the Gold Coast to store it all. But all audio is kept for referencing.
It seems reasonable to presume that the demand for footage of sleeping non-entities will be low in the foreseeable future, though it’s always dangerous to predict the programming strategies of TV stations. The lesson for IT pros is that you don’t have to keep everything, but you do need a strategy and a rationale for what you do keep, and it helps to index and track content rather than simply dumping it into storage.
Behind the scenes at Big Brother eviction night [TV Tonight]
Comments
9 responses to “Big Brother Reminds Us: You Don’t Have To Store Every Piece Of Data”
… Just like.. What? I dont even…
I sometimes wonder if you hesitate before calling yourself a journalist, let alone an “it pro”.
A interesting bit of trivia really. Don’t like it, head somewhere else.
You’re right. The fact big brother don’t store footage of people sleeping but do keep audio really teaches me a lot about storage and data management – as the article thinly tries to veil itself as..
I just wish this article was around 5 years ago so I could be an “IT pro” too.
You don’t even what? What is this “I dont even…’ stuff I see tweens posting everywhere even mean? You don’t even finish sentences? Well that’s apparent.
As far as the article is concerned, He is providing an analogy of cloud and physical storage and providing a reference that us Australian may connect to.
If only there were as many hard drives as there were trolls.
Hahaha! Ohhh yes, so true!
Bih Brother is still a thing?Wow, just wow.
Here I was foolishly expecting a reference to George Orwell and 1984. And in such an environment, you indeed might not want it all stored.
Aim a little higher with your references, maybe?
Yes, what an incredibly low-brow reference to make on the internet of all places…