[stefankendall]

Price per GB is a crap metric; price per used GB would be more relevant. If your test data is terabytes, you externalize to servers or lock yourself into only being able to work off a desktop. I also question whether or not a subset of that data could be run locally, and the CI system could run a full stack.

This just sounds like a justification of a bad test environment.

I also can't think of any project that compiles "in a second or two". Compilation and tests usually run build time into the minutes quickly, and time grows linearly, or possibly superlinearly with a project assuming even mild test coverage.

If you're locked into a desktop, you're locked into a network, and you can stick big data on a NAS or centralized server for re-use and testing. Or do you copy and paste the terabyte of data to every new developer?

[bunderbunder]

The latency and bandwith of a hard disk is unacceptable, but then you suggest using a NAS instead?

Interesting.