Everywhere we turn someone is collecting data on us. At one point in the short lived history of technology someone, somewhere decided it was crucial to hoard data. Alas, after years of storing seemingly pointless data, people are finally starting to realize there needs to be a cap. Storing infinite amounts of data costs big money.

You don’t have to remind me that I talk about data a lot. Preserving people’s data is what keeps my little company afloat so I’m a little sensitive to the nature of storing information. This week’s article comes from an email I received from Microsoft announcing their unlimited cloud storage will now be restricted. Apparently they realized it only takes one person to take their offer literally before they lose money.

Strapped to the back of many Vermont police cars are two little boxes that collect license plate information, GPS coordinates and timestamps. An officer told me they collect the information to assist in potential future police matters. Vermont legislature is now ruling on the use of license plate readers partly because of the giant amount of information they need to manage.

Cell phone companies are now complaining to government officials about the amount of metadata they need to store because of space limitations. Every part of a call, except an actual voice recording, is stored on a server that must be maintained by the phone provider. I can’t imagine the amount of data they need to hold with people like me who are constantly on the phone.

Maintaining data is expensive. Data is stored on hard drives in data farms or giant rooms with tons of computers. Most data farms are made up of arrays of hard drives that when combined become both redundant and can be nearly infinite in size. It doesn’t really matter the type of data, all organizations storing large amounts of data use the same technique.

Companies require air conditioned rooms for these massive systems to function. Each farm is powered year round with no downtime so users can access data anytime. Maintenance is done by paid, skilled workers who replace hard drives and other failed components frequently. All of this costs money.

Going back to my Microsoft example, if they continued offering unlimited storage to every customer it wouldn’t take more than one or two overzealous customers to fill their infinite storage. Infinite storage translates to infinite amounts of money to maintain the infrastructure and integrity of a data farm. Though mathematically indefinite, infinity multiplied by the 15 million users of Office 365 equals a lot of information and money.

Cell phone companies and the state of Vermont are now realizing the implications of collecting and storing data. The benefit of collecting one piece of information at a time is a predictable growth rate which equates to a predictable budget. The downside is the  addition of one model still has the real potential of continuing forever.

Frequently overlooked is all the low tech stuff that goes into keeping a data farm alive. Things like air conditioning and power management equipment that haven’t been updated in years may be less efficient. Companies like Google have been experimenting with newer more efficient means of cooling large rooms chuck full of computers, but that still costs money. I figure I’m doing my part in helping big brother keep their expenses down by not storing information in the cloud and avoiding police cars with boxes attached to them.

(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner.  You can read past articles at www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)