Terabyte hard drives before the end of 2006? - bit-tech.net Forums

Da Dego · 15th Aug 2006, 18:14

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/08...e_end_of_2006/

HB magnetic storage!

EK-MDi · 15th Aug 2006, 18:26

I can't wait! I won't have to get more than one hard drive, and so I can save space for better airflow in my PC.

By the way, the link doesn't work.

rupbert · 15th Aug 2006, 18:35

2 x 1TB in raid 0 =

riggs · 15th Aug 2006, 18:36

Very cool...just need holographic storage to be able to backup that amount of data.

rupbert · 15th Aug 2006, 18:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by riggs

Very cool...just need holographic storage to be able to backup that amount of data.

Well I guess if 1TB was enough you could have raid 1 for redundancy, or buy more 1TB disks and use raid 1 + 0 or 0 + 1

specofdust · 15th Aug 2006, 18:44

That sounds very very cool. I reckon it'll cost a huge ammount of money for a fair while, but if 500GB drives get into the price/GB sweetspot there'll be a lot of very happy storage geeks.

I'll be intrested to see if people buy 1.5TB drives, and the intermediary steps between 1 and 2. Personally I'd probably want just to go straight from 1TB to 2TB, but that's a massive leap when we're not even hitting 1TB yet. Time will tell I guess.

Oh, and one last thing, 1TB = about 900Gib, gotta love formatting a disk only to lose 100GB.

careyd · 15th Aug 2006, 19:01

Interesting input from Watkins into the whole hard drive vs. flash debate. He's right. While flash will play in integral role in the future of storage, particularly in portable devices, the speed/performance and cost efficiency of hard drives is hard to beat. And while everything is scaling and accellerating (things get bigger better and cheaper with time), I think he's right that hard drives are here to stay and will be the dominant choice in storage for a very VERY long time.

rupbert · 15th Aug 2006, 19:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by specofdust

I reckon it'll cost a huge ammount of money for a fair while, but if 500GB drives get into the price/GB sweetspot there'll be a lot of very happy storage geeks.

Well 750Gb drives have only been out for roughly 3 months, and they have gone from almost £400 to £262 (Scan.co.uk).

So I guess 1Tb will be £400- 450 at launch.

Buzzons · 15th Aug 2006, 19:11

you lose about 20% of the space when you format, so it will be about 800gig, and anyhoo whats so amazing about that kinda space? I have 4.5 TB in my fileserver, over 15 disks, yes its a lot, but each one has its own MTBF so i doubt ill lose 1tb of data in one go.. where as with this, you will.

rupbert · 15th Aug 2006, 19:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buzzons

you lose about 20% of the space when you format, so it will be about 800gig, and anyhoo whats so amazing about that kinda space? I have 4.5 TB in my fileserver, over 15 disks, yes its a lot, but each one has its own MTBF so i doubt ill lose 1tb of data in one go.. where as with this, you will.

That's a fileserver though, these disks will be used in standard desktop machines .

EQC · 15th Aug 2006, 19:19

The question is, will it be a "Real Terabyte" as reported by an operating system?

I'm not sure if any HD manufacturers have changed their strategy since Western Digital lost the court case...but as it stands now:

every GB an HD manufacturer makes is 1000 MB, each of which is 1000 KB, each of which is 1000 bytes. While operating systems use a 1024 standard (2^10). So, this means each GB listed on the HardDrive packaging is going to be seen as 0.93 GB by your operating system...and all the files you store on it will only total 0.93 GB based on their listed filesizes.

If this trend continues to the 1 TB level, each "TB" listed by a harddrive manufacturer will be 1000 of the small GB. That means that when you buy your 1TB hard drive, it'll really be only seen as 0.909 TB by the operating system, as it's still only 930 GB as measured by the computer.

I realize this is all convention, and technically, "giga" goes better with 10^9 than it does with (2^10)^3...and I absolutely love Seagate....but I do wish they'd just fall in line so I didn't have to run numbers to figure out how much space I'd actually be getting. And so old people could better understand things.

Also, note that the "loss" i've described has nothing to do with space taken up by formatting a drive...it's just because what HD manufacturers call a GB is smaller than what everybody else calls a GB. I could be wrong, but in my experience with XP, formatting the drive doesn't eat much space at all -- I think less than 1% for a drive or partition of at least a few GB.

rupbert · 15th Aug 2006, 19:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by EQC

The question is, will it be a "Real Terabyte" as reported by an operating system?

Nope, as said it above it will be more like 840GB...

Tyinsar · 15th Aug 2006, 19:28

Great, I'm happy, but how many average computer users (Dell type customers) use even a moderate portion of today's drives? Even a tiny 20GB is way more than many of them will ever use with today's OS's.

I could see flash becoming standard in laptops or compact computers (think Mac mini or iMac) and I can see the latter replacing the big boxes of today.

But in the short term, "go with what works best today" seems to have worked for AMD and may other companies.

rupbert · 15th Aug 2006, 19:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tyinsar

Great, I'm happy, but how many average computer users (Dell type customers) use even a moderate portion of today's drives? Even a tiny 20GB is way more than many of them will ever use with today's OS's.

It's a fair point, however like most hardware it is pushed by the enthusiasts which in turn drives down the prices of previous models.

Incidently the installed footprint of Windows Vista is apparently 7Gb.

And a 1TB of data may seem a lot at this point but really it's forward thinking.

2007 will be the year for legally downloading movies, and with devices such as digital cameras increasing in size (6MB being the current average), digital camcorders like Sonys new HD for under £1000 and the dawning of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, storage is going to be a big system seller.

EQC · 15th Aug 2006, 19:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by rupbert

...and with devices such as digital cameras increasing in size (6MB being the current average)...storage is going to be a big system seller.

I know exactly what you meant...but I'll take an opportunity to point out a funny mistype whenever I can...so I'll ask you:

How many digital cameras can my 200GB hard drive hold?

dire_wolf · 15th Aug 2006, 19:43

This is awesome stuff, atm i'm having to literally burn everything to DVD because i can't afford another hard drive. Funny though, about 8 years ago, a friend built a new PC with a 10GB hard drive, and I couldn't fathom how he would ever fill it at the time, now i'm struggling with 400GB at my disposal, how nieve

Then again, at the time, 500MHz was mind blowing

Quote:

Originally Posted by rupbert

digital cameras increasing in size (6MB being the current average)

Surely you mean 6MP? TBH it's not even that, I work in a photo sales and the current average is more or less 3-4MP, with people only now tending to buy 5-7MP cameras

rupbert · 15th Aug 2006, 19:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by EQC

I know exactly what you meant...but I'll take an opportunity to point out a funny mistype whenever I can...so I'll ask you:

How many digital cameras can my 200GB hard drive hold?

DreamTheEndless · 15th Aug 2006, 19:50

Some interesting math work on that 50 year old hard drive:

Code:

                              One 1956 5MB hard drive = approx 1 ton (2000 lbs)
                              One 1956 5MB hard drive = 50 twenty-four inch platters
                                            1 platter = Assuming one sided platters, 450 square inches, not counting for the spindle (900 square inch platters if they contain data on both sides of the platter)
(Sticking with single sided platters,) 5MB of storage = 22500 square inches
                                          1MB of data = 10 platters
                                          1MB of data = 4500 square inches
                                          1KB of data = 4.4 square inches
                                          1KB of data = 2839 square mm
                                       1 byte of data = 2.8 square mm
                                        1 bit of data = 0.35 square mm

1/3 of a mm² for one bit - you can get greater data density than that in a barcode. You could print ones and zeros nearly that small.......

JaredC01 · 15th Aug 2006, 20:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by DreamTheEndless

Some interesting math work on that 50 year old hard drive: cut for space

Wow, didn't realize the first hard drive was that... huge.

I'm looking forward to 1TB hard drives. They'll be especially handy for me in college doing video and graphical work. Uncompressed video takes a HUGE amount of space (enough to fill my current 250GB hard drive with less than an hour of total video clips, at a somewhat small size). I'll probably get 2 of them in RAID 1 just in case, and put it all into a dual Xeon 1 or 2U rack mount for storage and remote rendering.

Tyinsar · 15th Aug 2006, 20:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by rupbert

It's a fair point, however like most hardware it is pushed by the enthusiasts which in turn drives down the prices of previous models.

Incidently the installed footprint of Windows Vista is apparently 7Gb.

And a 1TB of data may seem a lot at this point but really it's forward thinking.

2007 will be the year for legally downloading movies, and with devices such as digital cameras increasing in size (6MB being the current average), digital camcorders like Sonys new HD for under £1000 and the dawning of HHDDVD and BBluRay, storage is going to be a big system seller.

So the "surf the net / check my e-mail / type an essay" computer might be fine with a 10GB drive even with Vista?

You are correct about the future though - When mom & pop start using the potential of computers they will fill the storage fast.

Incidentally, I wonder what percentage of large drives in homes are needed to store pirated material.

15th Aug 2006, 18:14	#1
Da Dego Brett Thomas Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Cleveland, OH USA Posts: 3,906	Terabyte hard drives before the end of 2006? http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/08...e_end_of_2006/ HB magnetic storage! __________________ "Frankly that seems overkill. iluvtrees2 arguing with spec is the intellectual equivalent of a bunny rabbit taking on a pissed-off lion." - Nexxo

15th Aug 2006, 18:36	#4
riggs ^_^ Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Lincs. Posts: 1,645	Very cool...just need holographic storage to be able to backup that amount of data. __________________ Hell hath no fury like a hippo with a machine gun PSN ID: buster2006

15th Aug 2006, 18:44	#6
specofdust Banned Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Aberdeen, UK, EU Posts: 7,622	That sounds very very cool. I reckon it'll cost a huge ammount of money for a fair while, but if 500GB drives get into the price/GB sweetspot there'll be a lot of very happy storage geeks. I'll be intrested to see if people buy 1.5TB drives, and the intermediary steps between 1 and 2. Personally I'd probably want just to go straight from 1TB to 2TB, but that's a massive leap when we're not even hitting 1TB yet. Time will tell I guess. Oh, and one last thing, 1TB = about 900Gib, gotta love formatting a disk only to lose 100GB. __________________ Like marmite, only no-one hates it Mmm bop!

15th Aug 2006, 19:19	#11
EQC Multimodder Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: CA Posts: 220	Real Terabytes? The question is, will it be a "Real Terabyte" as reported by an operating system? I'm not sure if any HD manufacturers have changed their strategy since Western Digital lost the court case...but as it stands now: every GB an HD manufacturer makes is 1000 MB, each of which is 1000 KB, each of which is 1000 bytes. While operating systems use a 1024 standard (2^10). So, this means each GB listed on the HardDrive packaging is going to be seen as 0.93 GB by your operating system...and all the files you store on it will only total 0.93 GB based on their listed filesizes. If this trend continues to the 1 TB level, each "TB" listed by a harddrive manufacturer will be 1000 of the small GB. That means that when you buy your 1TB hard drive, it'll really be only seen as 0.909 TB by the operating system, as it's still only 930 GB as measured by the computer. I realize this is all convention, and technically, "giga" goes better with 10^9 than it does with (2^10)^3...and I absolutely love Seagate....but I do wish they'd just fall in line so I didn't have to run numbers to figure out how much space I'd actually be getting. And so old people could better understand things. Also, note that the "loss" i've described has nothing to do with space taken up by formatting a drive...it's just because what HD manufacturers call a GB is smaller than what everybody else calls a GB. I could be wrong, but in my experience with XP, formatting the drive doesn't eat much space at all -- I think less than 1% for a drive or partition of at least a few GB. Last edited by EQC; 15th Aug 2006 at 19:38.

15th Aug 2006, 19:28	#13
Tyinsar 6 screens / 1 card Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: AB.CA Posts: 2,005	Great, I'm happy, but how many average computer users (Dell type customers) use even a moderate portion of today's drives? Even a tiny 20GB is way more than many of them will ever use with today's OS's. I could see flash becoming standard in laptops or compact computers (think Mac mini or iMac) and I can see the latter replacing the big boxes of today. But in the short term, "go with what works best today" seems to have worked for AMD and may other companies. __________________ It's not about how life treats you, it's about how you treat life.

15th Aug 2006, 18:26	#2
EK-MDi Multimodder Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 210	I can't wait! I won't have to get more than one hard drive, and so I can save space for better airflow in my PC. By the way, the link doesn't work.

15th Aug 2006, 18:35	#3
rupbert Hypermodder Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Northern Ireland Posts: 799	2 x 1TB in raid 0 =

15th Aug 2006, 19:01	#7
careyd Minimodder Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: minneapolis, mn, usa Posts: 22	Interesting input from Watkins into the whole hard drive vs. flash debate. He's right. While flash will play in integral role in the future of storage, particularly in portable devices, the speed/performance and cost efficiency of hard drives is hard to beat. And while everything is scaling and accellerating (things get bigger better and cheaper with time), I think he's right that hard drives are here to stay and will be the dominant choice in storage for a very VERY long time.

15th Aug 2006, 19:11	#9
Buzzons Mod Master Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 2,086	you lose about 20% of the space when you format, so it will be about 800gig, and anyhoo whats so amazing about that kinda space? I have 4.5 TB in my fileserver, over 15 disks, yes its a lot, but each one has its own MTBF so i doubt ill lose 1tb of data in one go.. where as with this, you will.