Terabyte Hard Drives

[Dravic]

Originally posted by: letdown427

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

Hahaha, that's the spirit!

its the truth though...


what backup process will the masses have in place to backup 1TB of data... HD dvd's are still only like 33GB, and tapes which i perferer are still way behind the capacity curve.

i'm worried now about backing up the 120-160GB drives in my network at home now. I dont even want to think about the consumer grade solutions for 1TB. backup to optical... thats a long wait, and a lot of media switching.. I guess we will all just by two (3 on in the fire proof safe) and hope they dont go at the same time. be sure to put them in seperate machines, and pray for no natural disasters or fires...


I currently keep 4 copies of my data

1. live
2. live backup on same PC, but separate disk
3. network backup
4. optical backup

and I haven?t done my network and optical backups nearly as often as I should.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: Pariah
1TB? Who needs 125 hours of stored video in a DVR?

Evidently you don't *have* a DVR. I have ~200 hours of usable storage in my HTPC (more if I edit the files down and recompress to MPEG4 or record at crappy bitrates) and sometimes I think it's not enough. I don't know how people get by with ~20 hours in the low-end TiVos. Believe me, the demand will be there once the majority of TV is in HD and everybody has or wants a DVR.

Anyway, back to the OP... we should have 1TB drives in the next 2-3 years, once perpendicular recording (someone above got most of the technical details right but called it "parallel" recording...) hits mainstrean consumer drives.

If there was huge demand for it, yes, they could make drives with more platters -- but they cost a lot more and are less reliable. It's cheaper to just make two 500GB drives right now.

 

[Genx87]

I think it really depends on how fast or how much penetration HD video gets. I dont know if cable companies or DirecTV allow you to copy your recordings over a network to a computer but TiVo does. I filled a 200GB RAID 1 volume in about 1 month of recording 3 shows. If I got serious I could fill a TB in the same time period.

I would welcome larger drives so I am not forced to build some ungodly 8 drive RAID 5 solution to get 2TBs of space for the shows I am recording. When the series 3 TiVo DVR comes out with HD capability 1TB disks will be used up very fast.

 

[Acanthus]

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

HD-DVD backups

 

[Thraxen]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
Evidently you don't *have* a DVR. I have ~200 hours of usable storage in my HTPC (more if I edit the files down and recompress to MPEG4 or record at crappy bitrates) and sometimes I think it's not enough. I don't know how people get by with ~20 hours in the low-end TiVos. Believe me, the demand will be there once the majority of TV is in HD and everybody has or wants a DVR.

Anyway, back to the OP... we should have 1TB drives in the next 2-3 years, once perpendicular recording (someone above got most of the technical details right but called it "parallel" recording...) hits mainstrean consumer drives.

If there was huge demand for it, yes, they could make drives with more platters -- but they cost a lot more and are less reliable. It's cheaper to just make two 500GB drives right now.

Here's the thing... the HTPC crowd is very small compared to the masses. Most people like simple things like DVRs. Also, if most people want to watch a show over and over they will just buy it on DVD. I have a DVR and generally just delete shows after I watch them. At this point I'm not really sure how many people actually try to use their DVRs for archival storage. I know several people with DVRs and they pretty do the same thing as I do: watch and delete. Of course, maybe that's a direct result of DVRs having limited storage. If people could easily archive TV recordings maybe they would do so, but it has to be easy... and for most people that means DVR, not HTPC.

Anyway, maybe the solution to easily backing up large TB drives lies with HVD?

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: Thraxen

Originally posted by: Matthias99
Evidently you don't *have* a DVR. I have ~200 hours of usable storage in my HTPC (more if I edit the files down and recompress to MPEG4 or record at crappy bitrates) and sometimes I think it's not enough. I don't know how people get by with ~20 hours in the low-end TiVos. Believe me, the demand will be there once the majority of TV is in HD and everybody has or wants a DVR.

Anyway, back to the OP... we should have 1TB drives in the next 2-3 years, once perpendicular recording (someone above got most of the technical details right but called it "parallel" recording...) hits mainstrean consumer drives.

If there was huge demand for it, yes, they could make drives with more platters -- but they cost a lot more and are less reliable. It's cheaper to just make two 500GB drives right now.

Here's the thing... the HTPC crowd is very small compared to the masses. Most people like simple things like DVRs. Also, if most people want to watch a show over and over they will just buy it on DVD. I have a DVR and generally just delete shows after I watch them. At this point I'm not really sure how many people actually try to use their DVRs for archival storage. I know several people with DVRs and they pretty do the same thing as I do: watch and delete. Of course, maybe that's a direct result of DVRs having limited storage. If people could easily archive TV recordings maybe they would do so, but it has to be easy... and for most people that means DVR, not HTPC.

Anyway, maybe the solution to easily backing up large TB drives lies with HVD?

TiVo branded units allow you to archive over your network to a computer. That was the reason I gave up trying to make an HTPC. Why bother when the 150 dollar unit does it better, easier, and looks better?

 

[johnnyMon]

You can back up 1TB onto 694,444 floppy disks. Floppy disks are cheap. Quit worrying about backup and buy them floppys!

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Thraxen
maybe the solution to easily backing up large TB drives lies with HVD?

Would be nice, but I don't see it becoming available and affordable any time soon, considering the extend of the advance over the other much hyped and awaited technologies. A driving cost would be media, and I'm not sure the demand would be there for such capacities to make the media affordable. Would be very nice to see though, and some are expected to release as early as mid 2006.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc

Until then, the affordable and viable solution to backing up many/large disks is more disks.

Note also that cost/capacity is not linear. Last I checked, the curves rose significantly at 400 and 500 GB, making 300 GB the more ecomonical choice.

 

[Arkitech]

Originally posted by: johnnyMon
You can back up 1TB onto 694,444 floppy disks. Floppy disks are cheap. Quit worrying about backup and buy them floppys!

lmao

that's going in my sig

 

[Maluno]

Originally posted by: 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

We've had 5GB hdds for a decade now, I think you meant 500GB.

also, what is this parallel recording technology that someone mentioned? I have only heard about perpendicular technology. Maybe it was a typo? I am quite seriously interested, though.

 

[Madwand1]

Toshiba's announced a HD-DVD recorder which will have a 1 TB disk (or disks -- nothing to confirm that it isn't an array internally.)

http://www.engadget.com/2006/06/22/toshibas-rd-a1-hd-dvd-recorder-with-1tb-disk/

 

[JeepinEd]

You guys are forgetting digital camcorders. Dumping all that video into your HD will consume quite a bit of space.I just started playing with video editing and filled a 320GB drive while working on just 2 projects. These are not professional videos, just slide shows with video & music that I have put together for my son's school that were later burned to DVD.

I'd be willing to bet that within 2 years we will have a 1TB drive for the masses. As far as backing up, well why buy 1 when you can buy 2 at twice the cost!

 

[Madwand1]

Hitachi is now saying that a 1 TB drive will likely be available this year.

Desktop hard drives holding 1 terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes, of storage will likely debut in 2006, according to Bill Healy, senior vice president of product strategy and marketing at Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. These drives, which will have a 3.5-inch diameter, are expected to be incorporated into PCs and home servers.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-6105515.html

 

[grant2]

Originally posted by: Brentx
... 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: ||||||

The term is "perpendicular", as in, "perpendicular to the platter" ... not parallel.

 

[GrammatonJP]

why not.. wd already claims to have high density plates w/o using perpendicular recording

 

[Powermoloch]

so far AFAIK we reached 750 gb on a perpendicular hard drive (sorry guys I just read it on a pc mag)