Photos are stored for a period determined by your device settings and storage capacity.
Photos are stored for a period determined by your device settings and storage capacity.
I initially understood it as photons, which left me really puzzled.
Was it worth it? They’d likely have to continuously increase expenses in thousands or terabytes each day.
They don’t preserve them in their usual form; instead, they’ll likely shrink everything to the simplest essential structure and save it in a compact way. It won’t be useful for anyone needing quick access, so the current version isn’t necessary.
Certain websites may remove content after some time, but major platforms usually retain it indefinitely. Most uploaded material stays intact, meaning any storage savings would be very small—perhaps just a fraction of a percent. It’s generally better to preserve files rather than delete them. Photos and videos are already compressed, so reducing them further isn’t much possible. On sites like YouTube, the uploaded file size can sometimes exceed what you had on your device because each video is converted into multiple formats.
They keep them in a kind of "cold" storage that’s reachable but very slow, or they actually place them on drives that are then taken offline. Facebook and Google do the opposite—after some time without use and little access, they move the data to a slower storage system that feels sluggish to users. There was an article discussing how Facebook handles this, but I’m having trouble locating it now.
I understand someone opted for Blu-rays mainly due to cost savings. Many locations also rely on tape as a backup method.
The article noted that after about six months, the system was switched to slower storage devices and eventually transitioned to tapes or alternative formats.
I cant see anyone in their right mind backing up to Bluray for commercial data. Usually backups to other drives then to tape. But on the topic, there is no reason to not backup data that has been deleted from the live servers as the actually amount of data is minuscule now of days.