You're sure this is acoustic data, and not magnetometer readings
looking for sunken galleons or Russian nuclear subs?
For recording your data onboard the ship, I'd suggest writing the
data directly to DVD-R discs. A single DVD-R can hold 4.7GB of data,
or more than three hours of data at your current rate. 24bit 96kHz
in stereo is 600 kBytes/sec, and DVD-R write speed has been measured
at up to 2.77 MBytes/sec, so the drive should have no difficulty
keeping up with the data stream. For increased reliability, you
could configure your equipment to use RAID 1 disc mirroring to two
DVD-R recorders simultaneously.
Pioneer makes the standard DVD-R drive. Their new DVR-A04 costs less
than $300.
The blank DVD-R media vary in price due to marketing. Generic discs
cost less than $100 for 100 discs. A disc with a better reputation
is the TDK 2X DVD-R, which costs about $275 for 100, including jewel
cases. The very highly regarded Verbatim DVD-R disc costs $450 for
100, with cases. I'd experiment with the generics, but probably
spend the money for a brand name for original recordings.
DVD-R discs have an estimated storage life of 100 years, far more
than storage on magnetic media like tape or hard disc. The discs do
fail, however, so the standard routine of having off-site backups
still applies.
In the confusing world of DVD standards, several companies make
recorders that use the DVD+R standard. They have a higher write to
disc speed, but DVD-R is plenty fast enough for your recording.
DVD+R discs also cost more than twice as much. So I'd recommend
sticking with DVD-R for now.
For online storage, the Intel/Microsoft specification for ATAPI drive
storage is limited to 28 bit addressing = 137GB limit to drive space,
even in a RAID configuration. The largest ATAPI drive sold today,
Western Digital's $400 200GB unit, requires a special hard disc
controller to get around this limitation.
On the other hand, SCSI uses 32 bit addressing = 2.2 terabytes of
storage. So SCSI RAID is the right choice for a big dataset. 32bit
pc motherboards don't benefit from SCSI RAID speed as much as a 64bit
Sun system does, but the extra storage space makes SCSI the right
choice. SCSI drives are more expensive because they are built to
higher standards and offer faster performance. They still offer good
value due to their typically longer warranty and longer MTBF rating.
Fibre Channel and SAN offer higher speeds and larger capacities
still, but then you'd be building your own data center.
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