Terabyte Hard Drives

[stevem326]

I mean just regular end users like you and me? Maybe in 12-18 more months? I guess it's going to happen at one point, sooner or later....

 

[HiME]

not even, maybe another 10 years or so

oh yeah, after 10 years we may not be using hard drives anymore, technology is growing too fast for me..

 

[stevem326]

Originally posted by: HiME
not even, maybe another 10 years or so

oh yeah, after 10 years we may not be using hard drives anymore, technology is growing too fast for me..

Wow, you think that long? Considering we're already up to 400GB-500GB drives right now? But then, it has taken us a good 8-10 years to get to this point...so maybe you're right...we have another 10 years to go.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Hard drive storage has been doubling every 18-24 months right along with transistor count, so within 2 years is a much safer bet than 10.

 

[stevem326]

Would be nice if they can one day make solid state drives affordable for the masses

 

[RallyMaster]

Two years sounds about right. When two years do roll around...I think we'll be using more advanced technology.

 

[PhoenixOrion]

in a couple of years when platter densities are very high.

hopefully we'll have better/superior storage technology that are reasonably priced consumer-level by then.

 

[alimoalem]

i wonder how much longer 7200 rpm drives will stay the norm

 

[imported_rod]

Probably in a couple of years. They can make them now, but it's FAR cheaper to make (and therefore buy) a pair of 500GB drives. So until they're economical for the masses, they won't really be put into production.

Problem may be, how many ppl even need a 200GB drive? If it wasn't for my leeching at LAN parties, my 200GB would never be filled (and most ppl don't go to LAN parties). "Necessity is the mother of invention"

RoD

 

[Kakumba]

lemme put it this way, Fujitsu want terabyte per square inch platters by 2010. so, if they are aiming for that kind of density, we should see normal terabyte HDDs next year. my guess.

 

[Missing Ghost]

I think technologically they can be done. I have a 1997 18GB 12 platters drive. The current 500GB are like....4-5 platters max. I'm sure they can just stack more platters up to 12 with no problems.

 

[fatpat268]

but don't you run into reliability issues with more platters?

 

[minofifa]

i thought i saw a 1 TB drive when i was looking at the lacie drives. maybe their product was some sort of RAID in a box though with several hard drives together.

 

[gamephile]

Yes you're probably thinking of the LaCie Bigger Disk

 

[Brentx]

With the brand new parrallel storage techniques, I say 2 years. Parallel storage drives are just hitting the market now, I beleive some Seagate SATA II drives use it. Think of it like this:

Right now we store data on drives like this: _ _ _ _ _ _

With the new Parallel technology we can store data like this: ||||||

Much more room, and much higher density of data. Cool stuff.

I remember in 2000 watching the Screen Savers on TechTV at Computex, and seeing Patrick Norton holding a hard drive in his hand say "Look at this, the first 100 Gigs". That drive came out in 2001. Look at where we are now. You can easily buy 500GB drives for under $350. That is nuts, and that is in just 5 years.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

i'd go radical and say in about 1 year. we already have 5gb hdd's. i'm sure we can double up in a year. the guy that said 10 years obviously doesn't know what hes talking about

 

[InlineFour]

in exactly, 1 year 269 days 4 hours and 5 minutes.

 

[Pariah]

Probaby closer to 5 years down the road than 2. It will certainly be technically feasible before then, but the market demand won't be there barring some significant change in the way we use computers. 500GB is already more storage than 99.99% of the market needs. Hard drive manufacturers who are already counting every penny aren't going to just keep increasing capacity for the heck of it, resulting in artificially lowering the cost of lower capacity drives that larger markets actually need.

 

[batmanuel]

I think 18 months is about right for the TB drives, which puts us in the Black Friday 2007 time period.

It'll be around that time that most mainstream drives ought to be using perpendicular recording, which will make the TB drives feasable from a purely technical standpoint. Also it'll be around that time that a lot of Vista Media Center computers will be sold that are capable of capturing HD streams via CableCard, which will drive the market for large amounts of storage.

Right now TB drives seem like too much space, but once you start recording 720p video streams to disk they'll seem a lot more reasonable.

 

[Pariah]

Originally posted by: Kakumba
lemme put it this way, Fujitsu want terabyte per square inch platters by 2010. so, if they are aiming for that kind of density, we should see normal terabyte HDDs next year. my guess.

Seagate stated they believe HAMR technology will reach 1 terabit per sq inch around 2010, or about 125GB per sq in. So if Fujitsu thinks they will beat that by a factor of 8, well... we'll just have to wait and see on that one. The Magic 8 ball is saying unlikely though.

For those looking to the past to predict the future, you may want to look again. Hitachi released their first 400GB drive in late July of 2004. While they released a 500GB drive in January of 2005. That's means that there has been a 20% increase in drive capacity over the last 20 months, and a 0% increase in the past 14 months, with nothing larger than 500GB having been announced yet. If we actually speed up the current rate of increase to 20% every 18 months, we're looking at a 6 year wait for TB drives. Though I doubt it will take that long. Again, probably 3-5 years from now.

 

[frankgomez75]

Originally posted by: Pariah
Probaby closer to 5 years down the road than 2. It will certainly be technically feasible before then, but the market demand won't be there barring some significant change in the way we use computers. 500GB is already more storage than 99.99% of the market needs. Hard drive manufacturers who are already counting every penny aren't going to just keep increasing capacity for the heck of it, resulting in artificially lowering the cost of lower capacity drives that larger markets actually need.

Considering that 1TB hard drives could only store 100 hours of Hi-def Video, approx 50 made for tv movies, or only 3 full seasons of your favorite shows or approx 200 DVDs... 1TB HD's are really that big.

really, 1TB HD's will be in demand largely by the the htpc/pvr/dvr crowd which is growing rapidly.

 

[Pariah]

I think you're significantly over estimating the market penetration of HD usage. HD is still a long way off from mass market acceptance, certainly not anywhere near enough to see hard drive capacities affected by them. Time Warner currently has an HD DVR available, and it only has 160GB of capacity, no where near the 500GB drives available, which they claim in good enough for 20 hours. 1TB? Who needs 125 hours of stored video in a DVR?

 

[minofifa]

losing 1 TB of data when one breaks will be devastating....

 

[letdown427]

Originally posted by: minofifa
losing 1 TB of data when one breaks will be devastating....

Hahaha, that's the spirit!

 

[MrX8503]

a 1 TB hard drive will only come around or come out faster only if there is a need for it. Media is always increasing in size, this will help push towards bigger hdds.