I have heard that UNIX disk storage is costlier than Windows Disk storage. Is that true? If not why we have limited storage on UNIX systems? Windows disk storage is so cheap nowadays. Is it not true for UNIX disks?
That's not true, Windows and UNIX use the same hard drives. I have no idea what they were trying to say.
Possibly because Unix systems tend to use SCSI disks rather than IDE/SATA, and therefore disk space is more costly.
UNIX and Windows systems can and do use / support the same hard drives, so the statement ".... UNIX disk storage is costlier than Windows Disk storage" is nonsense.
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Perhaps you mean Enterprise storage versus Desktop storage?
Reasons are here.
The most important difference is regarding management and service.
Now to the hardware.
In the past the SCSI disks for servers had visibly more electronic circuits than the ATA disks for the desktop. And Unix desktops aka workstations had SCSI disks. The last Sun workstations used ATA disks...
Meanwhile the higher integration hides the complexity, and the price gap between SAS and SATA disks should heavily shrink - but does not. It might be the sales strategy of the big manufactures, or even a cartel...
Either way, "enterprise versus desktop" the core premise that "UNIX storage" is more expensive than "Windows storage" is still nonsense.
UNIX and Windows are operating systems.
On both Windows or UNIX you can use SSD, ATA, SCSI, or whatever you, the person who configures the system, desires.
Network storage versus desktop storage is the same. The OS is independent of the underlying storage choice of the system designer.
I haven't seen a physical SCSI device in eons. My understanding is SCSI doesn't scale well - to keep up with modern performance, it kept growing in cost and complexity compared to serial or network solutions, which pushed it out of many places it used to reign supreme. I know the concept is still used a lot in the abstract, even when the disks themselves aren't necessarily SCSI bus.
SCSI, when it was started, was seen as complex. But the complexity did not rise much, and today SAS (serial SCSI) is quite similar to SATA (serial ATA), only the command set is still richer, requiring some more logic in the embedded disk controller.
Therefore I think the SAS prices are artificially kept high.
Not entirely. The defining quality of a disk is not the connection (SCSI, FC, SATA) but the MTBF (mean time between failure, the average time the disk will work before having to be replaced) the disk is designed to handle. The $59.99/TB disk sold at the Penny-shop will perhaps not do more than 20000h (~3years) MTBF at all. Data center quality disks have MTBFs of 100000h and more. If you have a DC with, say, some thousands of disks in it you will apppreciate the fact that only 5 disks a week give up instead of 50.
Because SCSI is traditionally used in professional equipment (read: data centre equipment) they tend to be somewhat more expensive - not because of the SCSI, but because they are usually better quality too.
bakunin