Hitachi: Terabyte hard drives to be commonplace by 2011

Yeah so there I was browsing through the technology news sections, when I came across this:

Hitachi Announces 4TB Disk Drives through New Head Technology



More news on the subject:

To advance drives, Hitachi changes the head
Cram 4TB on Desktop Drives by 2009, Hitachi Says

*drool*

I'll probably max-out the space in under 2 months if I get me one of these.

Wow, that's some cpu Beachcoma..... I read somewhere that *they* prevent the open flow of new technology being released to the public to really milk us out of more money and stagger creative growth. I see some truth in that and wish they'd release the fastest cpu at the most affordable price as they discover the technology -- hey, I can dream, can't I?

Since 500GB drives are pretty commonplace now and can be purchased for $100.00, I think that 2011 for TB drives is a pretty conservative estimate. I wouldn't be surprised to see them in the sub 200.00 range as early as late 2009.

reply to post by anhinga


It's actually the hard disk. Like Karlhungis said, 500GB drives are pretty common today, so it's a reasonable assumption that terabyte drive will be common by 2011.

But what's fascinating, though, is that they reverted back to a technology that was supposedly "maxed out". Just a new spin (haha) on an old idea.

Edit to add: It's true that they hold back the tech and release slowly for profits. I actually read about this method of data storage (perpendicular) some two years back. An insider leak. But it was Samsung, if I recall correctly, not Hitachi.

[edit on 15-10-2007 by Beachcoma]

And if you want one in the UK £229

PC World Online

Been on sale for months now, just waiting for the price to drop.

Holy s**t, a 4TB harddrive?

And that's supposed to be common in about 2-4 years? I bought my computer 2 years ago, it has 200GB space and I still didn't use 50% of it, and im a computer junkie!

I agree that Terebyte could be commonplace by the end of next year, even. By 2011, we will probably see computers running on 128GB of RAM, let alone the average 2GB today. 2011 is still 4 years away folks, remember 4 years ago in 2003? Technology (especially in the computer field) is increasing at a vast amount of speed.

I don't think that they are holding back anything, it is only a question of money, we have to remember that what we see advertised is the common hardware for common PCs, special computers get special treatments in many ways, although I think that in the case of disk space the PCs have larger (but slower) disks.

My first PC, bought in 14 years ago, had a 170MB (yes, Mega bytes) disk.

reply to post by Hyzera


It is easy to use up 4 TB ... it all has to do with what you store on it.

Microsoft sells a Media Center PC ... XP MCE 05, and the top two Vistas have Media Center. You can record tv. You can playback movies to multiple tvs (if you have the graphics card(s)) ... So, someone who does this will purchase online movies, tv series, etc. I have over 250 GB of anime. I have over 40 GB of music, and I still have a couple hundred CDs that haven't been touched and many backup omg music files (about 17 CDs full) that haven't been put back on my hard drives. I have tons more DVDs to where it would be convenient to have more hard drive space. I am waiting for the drives to get bigger, cheaper, and faster access.


By 2011, I expect at least 64 GB RAM at 4 GHz, 8-core processors at 10 GHz each, 20 TB total hard drive space, Graphics cards with 2 GB memory and 4 GHz processors, and 64-bit will be the norm and possibly 128-bit architecture will be considered (gaming systems had this YEARS ago) ... as well as many other hardware and software upgrades to utilize it.

10 years ago I had a 333 MHz processor and 256 MB of RAM ... 3 years ago 2.2 GHz AMD 3500+ 64 bit processor 1 GB SDRAM DDR (upgradable to 4 GB) .... currently the top tier mac (expensive) 16 GB DDR2 ECC RAM (8 x 2 GB), 3 TB Hard disk space (4 x 750 GB), 2 - 3 GHz quad-core xeon processors ... a mean machine if you have enough to buy a car.

I don't know if I expect hard disk speeds to increase too much. 7200 rpm seems to be fine for most people, and some top end laptops/notebooks get them. I know you can get some 10k to 15k speeds, but for the average home user, I don't think it is too necessary except for virus scanning, defrag, or if you have a fragmented drive ... I guess 4 TB would need to spin fast then


I expect to see a big improvements in four years ... that doesn't mean they don't have better under wraps ... just like 'HDTV' ... computer monitors have smoked 1920 x 1080 resolution for years. The only problem they have is data transfer over cable or satellite. A 1080p signal is quite massive ... I have read upwards of 3-4.5 Gb/s.



So yeah ... TB hard drives commonplace by 2011, certainly ... most likely sooner.

Originally posted by Hyzera
Holy s**t, a 4TB harddrive?

And that's supposed to be common in about 2-4 years? I bought my computer 2 years ago, it has 200GB space and I still didn't use 50% of it, and im a computer junkie!

Heck, I have 2 500GB drives and they are almost filled up. I have a Sony camcorder that uses micro MV tapes which are expensive and hard to come by so I just transfer all my movies to my PC. Give me a 4 TB drive and I bet I could fill it up in a month