Truly Teeny Tiny Hard Disks To Turn up

[Jonathon Watkins]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14895' target='_blank'>http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14895</a><br /><br /></div>The Inquirer has a short story up which says that Seagate “is set to present research findings this week which mean storage capacities of 50 terabits a square inch are within the grasp of technologists. It will present its findings on March 25th at the American Physical Society conference based on R&D using heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). That technique means that over 3.5 million high res photographs, 2,800 audio CDs, 1600 hours of TV programmes or the entire printed collection of the US Library of Congress can sit on 30 millimetres disks.” 8O OK, that’s small. I always wanted to store a few dozen copies of the US Library of Congress in a match box anyway. :lol: <br /><br />The headline claim is that entire libraries will fit in your pocket, which is an interesting image. I mean, how do they get the shelves that small anyway and what happens to the librarians? :wink: It’s certainly good to see the inexorable trend for smaller mass storage continue. I wonder who will be the fist to release a Pocket PC with some *real* storage capacity in it? :?:

[theone3]

Heh.

Yo Toshiba! :twisted: :wink:

[TheZodiac]

storage capacities of 50 terabits


TeraBITES!!!!! :lol:

[Jonathon Watkins]

TeraBITES!!!!! :lol:

:twak:

:lol: Groan! :lol:

Funnily enough Theone3 - I was thinking of Toshiba as well. I know they bundled a 1Gb Microdrive back with previous models in Japan. Time to build it in guys! 8)

[Darren Behan]

This is great I must say. However, how long do you think 50 Tb's would take to download over 56K. Hell, even on a cable modem, I can see myself being spoon fed by a beautiful nurse in an old age home, she leans in closely, purses her lips and "Files Done" are the last two words I ever hear.

db

[gmelfi]

just to let you know, it would take about 4 years to transfer 50 terabtyes using my adsl connection (400k/sec). not that bad. :D

[Darren Behan]

I knew someone would take the time to figure that out. Personally I just don't like math enough to do it. Well done though. :)

db

[theone3]

Funnily enough Theone3 - I was thinking of Toshiba as well. I know they bundled a 1Gb Microdrive back with previous models in Japan. Time to build it in guys! 8)I was talking about their "world record breaking" 0.85" HDD. It's huge compared to this. ;)

[jlp]

We are talking about BITS not BYTES (nor bites as well), so thats about 5 Terabytes (or 5,000 GB)

[jgrnt1]

How many different readers with incompatible DRM schemes will we need to read the entire library in our pocket? :confused totally:

[Aerestis]

uhhh, I would be ok with... One terabyte? Is that too much(little) to ask? There's no way I could manage 50 terabytes, that's ridiculous.

[Jonathan1]

Someday literally you could have the entire knowledge of human civilization in the palm of your hand. That scary. The only thing that will keep us from such a feat are copyright laws. :wink:

Seriously. Are we getting to the point of not needing any more storage? Sure in terms of size smaller is always better but I'm thinking of desktop capacities. How many people really use the full potential of their CPU? Are we going to be getting to the point soon where it’s not conceivable that we can fill up a 50TB, 100TB, 500TB, 1PB hard drive? Short of physically storing entire world simulations on your computer (Which is probably conceivable at some point for gaming.) I can't see movies, music, photos, or any other media taking up that kind of space.

PS- Aren't we closing in on the capacity of the human brain? Thought it was somewhere in the 2TB range. Probably wrong. I just had a thought. Imagine recording your dreams like in that Final Fantasy movie.

[bspline]

First rule of storage: no matter how much space you have, you'll end up filling it.
Second rule of storage: you'll always wonder how could that happen, as the new 5 TB hard disk seemed so big at first...
Third rule of storage: approximately 25% of the wasted space will be duplicate (triplicate, quadruplicate, etc.) copies lost in obscure and 15-level deep folders.
Fourth rule of storage: "how the hell did that happen?"

[jizmo]

Seriously. Are we getting to the point of not needing any more storage?

I was constantly running out of disk space, no matter how much space I had. I first bought the 4gb HD, then 12gb, then 40gb and then 80gb and managed to get them full, no problem there. Like most, I was hungry for storage and files. More, MORE!!

This was before I realized I'm really storaging obsolete junk. Not junk as such but stuff I could live without. I went trough my files and folders, asked myself if I was ever going to need this again and if I hesitated even a second, I sent it to bit heaven.

It felt good afterwards, and it was kind of a purifying experience. All I have left is my work stuff, nicely catagorized. Afterwards I can say that having a too big HD full of miscellaneus stuff felt a bit like having an untidy desk with piles of junk paper.

It was a bit stressful.

/jizmo

ps. anyone want to buy a HD? ;)

[jgrnt1]

Fifth rule of storage: No matter how big the storage device gets, Microsoft will manage to bloat the OS and Office applications to insure they take up 70% of the space.

[jizmo]

Fifth rule of storage: No matter how big the storage device gets, Microsoft will manage to bloat the OS and Office applications to insure they take up 70% of the space.

That's the reason I don't upgrade too often :roll:

/jizmo

[duncanhbrown]

When I got my first mass storage device (an 89kb Atari floppy drive, for $600), it seemed pretty big. Then came 20 MB Seagate hard drives, and 40 MB ST-251-1s, and so on. Now 40 GB is starting to seem small, and 1 TB and bigger doesn't sound too big any more.
The biggest problem I have with large HDDs is backup. I don't like tape backup (except the expensive DLT technology), so I wind up backing up onto writable CDs, and archiving those. It took some major planning and organizing to insure that all the data files on the two workstations and the network server at my house are fully backed up onto CDs on my workstation. Plus, no file lives only on one hard drive once I finish my intermediate backup step; they're on both a workstation and on the server.
Another thing I starting considering is software-- specifically, what do I have installed, and what would it take to reinstall it? So I listed all my software (including OS), collected the license keys, and got all the installation CDs together on a CD spindle. Now that's in my safety deposit box along with my data backup CDs, and I'm now bullet-proofed against a site disaster in addition to the loss of any one workstation, or the server.

[milkman dan]

I heard from a friend that a storage technology has been created which uses the substance from static bags to store data. Apparently, they shoot microscopic holes in the stuff with small burst of electricity, and can hold hundreds of terabites on a little chunk the size of a stick of bubble gum. I tried looking it up on google but couldn't find anythign on it, but it sounds like thats most likley the next main leap in storage technology