the average US household has 4l.5TB of data spread across 14 digital devices
or so says the article, quoting WD
I think this is another "steaming pile".
data does not equal "all of those downloads" for system updates and the OS itself. Data is things like cat videos, photos, e-mails, and so on.
in fact, their largest is only 20TB from the article.
I really doubt the 41.5TB claim. that's like they're trying to sell you WAY more than you actually need.
(And of course 99% of that would be CRAP anyway)
with all of the crap I've got stored, including an IMAP server [with regular backups], SVN repository [with regular backups], company history [like documents and YEARS of accounting system backups], cakewalk bundle files and the resulting music I created, downloaded videos, a few DVDs I imaged locally, a bunch of MSDN DVD/CD images that I use occasionally, and a WHOLE BUNCH of VirtualBox VMs of various operating systems and configurations, I _STILL_ haven't filled up a couple of 2TB drives [on 2 different machines, that cross-backup one another, and replicate MOST of that in one form or another between the two machines] that BOTH use ZFS [and in some cases, with replication enabled].
So how in the HELL do people accumulate 41.5TB of "data"? More like 1-2TB of "data" and 39.5TB of *CRAP*. I just don't get it, really. It makes NO sense.
It's just another example of "ass-pull statistics", aka "rectal extrapolation". They should at least spray it with Fabreze before announcing it like it's 'fact'.