4TB Hard drives by 2011

[Royston]

Please see full BBC article here...http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7044606.stm

 

from BBC site

However, Hitachi has discovered a method of reducing noise and boosting signal output when using GMR heads and so further increasing the density of data on a disk than can be read.

 

"We changed the direction of the current and adjusted the materials to get good properties," said John Best, chief technologist for Hitachi's data-storage unit, in an interview with AP

[Sisyphus]

Not that I know much about this, but doesn't it seem like the more data is compressed in a physically smaller area, the easier it would become corrupted and destroyed? Or is that not actually a problem?

[Klaynos]

Not that I know much about this, but doesn't it seem like the more data is compressed in a physically smaller area, the easier it would become corrupted and destroyed? Or is that not actually a problem?

 

A very serious problem is the smaller the magnetic domains, the easier they can switch so the more likely you get accidental switching, which can lead to runaway switching when large areas of the disk switch to a single magnetisation state... It's something that the research group I work in is working on

[herme3]

A 4TB hard drive sounds interesting, but how would the average person benefit from it? I have several games, hundreds of pictures and music files, Windows Vista, and Fedora 7 on my computer, and I'm not even using 40GB. I think hard drives need to be faster, but I don't see any reason to make them larger.

[Klaynos]

A 4TB hard drive sounds interesting, but how would the average person benefit from it? I have several games, hundreds of pictures and music files, Windows Vista, and Fedora 7 on my computer, and I'm not even using 40GB. I think hard drives need to be faster, but I don't see any reason to make them larger.

 

 

My thing is photography... I can easily fill 4GB of CF cards in a day, 10 days and I've got 40GB already...

 

I remember when I got my first 1GB hard disk and wondering how I could EVER have that much data....

[jryan]

I am a data security and data architecture planning specialist for a large national IT firm... I can assure you that data has, for all intents and purposes, the characteristics of a gas... It fills the container it is given.

[Obba]

I am a data security and data architecture planning specialist for a large national IT firm... I can assure you that data has, for all intents and purposes, the characteristics of a gas... It fills the container it is given.

 

But containers change: Data containers used to be paper holes. Now Data containers are Magnetic.

 

But the magnetic containers are the same size now; 5.25", 3.5" and 2.5". So staying with the most common format 3.5", the 'gas-volume' in this 3.5" format has gotten - obvioulsy - a lot smaller.

 

Your analogy of gas is correct. But we (humans), can always shrink it, and do whatever we can to get the most in that's possible. Gas volume compress's with lower temprature, anyway. So why can't the magnetic data be compressed?

 

Maybe it's a case of 'How low can we go'?

[Psyber]

A 4TB hard drive sounds interesting, but how would the average person benefit from it? I have several games, hundreds of pictures and music files, Windows Vista, and Fedora 7 on my computer, and I'm not even using 40GB. I think hard drives need to be faster, but I don't see any reason to make them larger.

I tend to agree. I have a pair of WD Raptor 36GB HDDs striped giving me about 68GB of usuable space and after 3 years have used 15GB so far. Of course I do periodically take off the redundant rubbish rather than hoard everything. The machine also has a 150GB HDD on to which I put multiple back ups of the things that do matter.

 

On the other hand a friend of mine said his 3 kids downloaded 53GB over the Christmas break this year - basically in movies and pop music - I suggested they have too much leisure time and should be sold into slavery!

[bascule]

A 4TB hard drive sounds interesting, but how would the average person benefit from it?

 

I just bought two terabyte hard drives and made them into a ZFS array, then consolidated all of my data.

 

I filled it up before I could finish. Fortunately ZFS is expandable so I'll probably just buy another 1TB drive and throw it in the pool.

 

HDTV is going to be a huge consumer of bandwidth. Your average feature length film, in HD, will run in the 25-35GB range.

 

Lowballing it, 4TB is approximately 160 HD movies.

 

And that says nothing about Ultra High Definition, which will run you 360GB for a two hour film (encoded in a codec like H.264)

 

A 4 TB hard drive will store about 11 of those...

[Mr.Chockuls]

TB? that a enought to comparison of we will need in that year.