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  • Can anyone spare half a petabyte of data storage?

    From Spalls Hurgenson@3:633/10 to All on Sunday, March 01, 2026 19:21:19

    Why do I only hear about these things after their gone? Well, nearly
    gone; the administrators of Myrient --a self-described 'video game
    archive'-- is reporting* that due to increased costs, they'll no
    longer be able to maintain their 390TB archive of games 'n' stuff, and
    will be shutting down by end of March. They point their fingers at
    AI-bros for snarfing up all the RAM and hard-disks necessary to keep
    the servers running, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are legal complications as well. I'm not really sure what that archive includes,
    but at 390TB I doubt all of it is on the up-n-up.

    And, myself, I'm not really interested in having untold gigabytes of
    pirated material... but still, resources like Myrient are sometimes
    the only archive for lost games and losing it means losing part of our
    history. Sure, I have no desire to download and play, say the
    Scandanavian release of "Beetle Bug 2" for PC (to pick a game at
    random from that archive)... but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be
    preserved.

    Alas, I've only about 10% of the necessary disk-space (and nowhere
    near enough bandwidth to fill it, even if I were willing to risk the
    legal consequences. But I'll mourn its passing regardless.





    * their report is reported here https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/390tb-video-game-archive-being-taken-offline-due-to-skyrocketing-ram-ssd-and-hard-drive-prices-ai-driven-supply-squeeze-results-in-closure-of-one-of-the-largest-online-video-game-archives


    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.12
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)
  • From Spalls Hurgenson@3:633/10 to All on Tuesday, March 17, 2026 11:17:19
    On Sun, 01 Mar 2026 19:21:19 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> said this thing:


    Why do I only hear about these things after their gone? Well, nearly
    gone; the administrators of Myrient --a self-described 'video game
    archive'-- is reporting* that due to increased costs, they'll no
    longer be able to maintain their 390TB archive of games 'n' stuff, and
    will be shutting down by end of March. They point their fingers at
    AI-bros for snarfing up all the RAM and hard-disks necessary to keep
    the servers running, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are legal >complications as well. I'm not really sure what that archive includes,
    but at 390TB I doubt all of it is on the up-n-up.

    Whew! We dodged a bullet there! But it turns out that the 385GB
    archive of old video games (many pirated) has been saved after all.
    Apparently half a petabyte of storage isn't quite the hardship it used
    to be, since it's been backed up by unnamed sources. Currently that
    archive is only available by torrent, but plans are to make it
    available by website eventually. *

    Again, I can't say I'm thrilled at the piratey-bits, but some of the
    games archived just aren't easily available anywhere else, usually
    because of licensing issues ("No One Lives Forever", is one example...
    but it's popular enough that there are numerous other sources for that
    game. But where else are you going to find the PC version of 2003's
    "Fantastic 4"?). So the archive has value and I'm glad it's not been
    lost forever.

    I wish I had a petabyte of storage.







    ----
    * the follow-up story https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/385tb-video-game-archive-saved-by-fans-myrient-has-been-100-percent-backed-up-and-validated-torrents-being-generated




    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.13
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)