The tens of thousands of servers inside the two existing buildings are always on, ready to deliver your pictures and musings to your Facebook friends around the world.

By contrast, most of the computers in the new cold storage facility will be asleep. A few will be alert, awaiting a request for old material and ready to summon the slumbering computers to provide their data.

This material won't reach your computer as quickly as something posted just a few hours ago, but Facebook says it won't take long.

"The principle will be so that it doesn't impact the user experience, so think about a matter of seconds, or milliseconds," said Michael Kirkland, a Facebook communication manager.

Facebook estimates a cold-storage data center will cost one-third less than its standard data center.

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