Slashdot Mirror


Disk Storage Limits Loom 3-5 Years From Now

evanbd writes: "According to this article the major disk manufacturers all finally agreed on something. And it's not a good thing. Specifically, they all think that in about 3-5 years, the superparamagnetic limit will kick in and current technology will stop getting better. But wait, there's more. New technology won't be ready for something like ten years. I know superparamagnetism has been discussed before, but I hadn't seen it as quite this bad and this much of a sure thing." No matter how quickly storage advances arrive, there are certain dead ends will inevitably appear.

220 comments

  1. Re:Clarification by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Honestly, though, who needs a petabyte of space? If you're not doing data archiving and such, why do you even need a disk of that size?

    1994 : Honestly, though, who needs a gigabyte of space? If you're not doing data archiving and such, why do you even need a disk of that size?

    Do you remember that far back? I do. When a 200Mb drive was huge, and a Gb was inconceivable. Look, the faster computers become, the more data they can process in a resonable time. Therefore, the size of data files increases. Think about it, would you store all your MP3's encoded in 64kbps to save space, or would you rather store them at 192kbps and use more space on the drive?

  2. Re:Not good news for M$ Bloatware.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1
    -- The ability to monopolize a planet is insignificant next to the power of the source.

    Wow, a referenece to Star Wars, implications about Microsoft's evil monopoly, and a rah-rah for Open Source, all in a one-line sig!
    I nominate you for karma-whore-sig-of-the-year!

  3. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Besides, even when manufacturers do reach the size limit, can't we just use a holepunch to double it?

  4. No. Limiting factor is LASER frequency. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2
    CD players use infrared lasers. DVDs achieve higher density by using red lasers. Higher frequencies mean you can read smaller pits on the disc and thus pack more per square inch.

    Note that small devices like these require SOLID STATE lasers. So while a gas discharge laser could produce hire frequencies cheaply, the high voltage apparatus makes for bulky equipment. Forget fitting it and the optical drive into a 5inch PC bay. Some shorter solid state wavelength lasers do exist but are are extremely costly (e.g., green lasers cost around USD$200.00. There are experimental UV LEDs out now. These may one day lead to CD sized discs storing 100GB or more.

  5. Re:Clarification by jk · · Score: 1


    hasn't been able to be made in reference to the fact that generally standard sizes used today are becoming able to push the output/input limits of our senses on the hardware.

    where's a carmack or sweeney when you need one.

    in terms of audio, sure. in terms of video, a 32bpp color palette only represents a fraction of the precision that the human eye can discern. sizes will still grow, just in different directions.

    Not that I'm saying we're quite there yet, but we are getting close enough to begin thinking about this realistically.

    we're close, but maybe not that close. don't be too proud of this technological terror you've created.

  6. Re:Holographic storage? by jandrese · · Score: 2

    Holographic storage has been a "couple of years" away for about 10 years now. So far I've only seen a whole lot of vapor from the holographic storage folks.

    Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  7. Re:Back to full-height? by Tim+Doran · · Score: 2

    And a drive like this is gonna need some of its own cooling. No big whup - we did it with video cards in the last few years - but as soon as we start exceeing the current form factor, this'll need to be factored in.

  8. Re:Interesting...kinda by Tim+Doran · · Score: 2

    Consider the source, of course - 'Enterprise Solutions' or whatever. This is the trade mag for companies that make their living selling big, expense storage solutions. These companies have relied on the falling $/Gig of high-end hard drives for their 5-year business plan.

    Interesting that once drives stop getting cheaper, all they can cut to improve price/performance is by reducing the price of their crown jewels - the controllers.

  9. Re:Clarification by Ian+Bicking · · Score: 2
    Except with the current techology, since it is mechanical the bigger the platters, the slower the drivers become.
    Yes, but no one's saying we're 3-5 years away from reaching the theoretical limit of mechanical technology. While we can't figure out how to get magnetic bits smaller, there's room to discover new ways to get those bits to the head. It's hard, but so is everything. That's why they pay lots of people to think about what to do next.
  10. Re:Clarification by Danse · · Score: 1

    a 32bpp color palette only represents a fraction of the precision that the human eye can discern.

    How big of a fraction? Exactly how many colors can the human eye discern? I thought I had read somewhere that 32bpp had it pretty much covered.

    --
    It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
  11. Re:Wrong storage model by sheldon · · Score: 2

    MP3? MP3!?

    Once I can buy a 200 Gig harddrive for a reasonable price, I for one am not going to waste my time ripping my CD's to MP3 when I can just store them in some raw audio format... WAV or whatever.

    I think you have the right point, but you are guilty of the same assumptions. :)

    It's very cheap today to put a Gigabyte of RAM in a machine. I wouldn't mind throwing a terabyte of drive space in my server at home for $100. :)

    Still the one big problem that I see is backup storage has not progressed similarly. Tape is still very expensive consider the larger sizes of drives today. I guess now that harddrives appear to be more reliable fewer people worry about this. I still have a 2 Gig DAT drive, yet I have 12 gigs in my server. It's slow and painful.

  12. Re:This doesn't mean... by Seth+Golub · · Score: 3

    First of all, our storage needs are pretty flexible. If we had ten times as much space, we'd stop using mp3/ogg and switch to a lossless compression scheme. And as digital cameras get better, photos will take up more space.

    But the real problem isn't that no device will be able to hold my data. The problem is that such a device will be much larger than I want. They already are. Right now I need about 34GB (most of which is music). Ideally, I wouldn't need a big chunk of metal under my desk to store it. I'd much prefer to have everything on my laptop or even my iPAQ. If I could fit 100GB on a microdrive, I would use it up tomorrow.

  13. Re:Clarification by Mawbid · · Score: 1

    I read something that said 33 bits. Could they have come up with a more disappointing number?
    --

    --
    Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
  14. Re:Plenty of space? by cdipierr · · Score: 3

    While you make a decent point, it's not entirely accurate. Right now IDE ATA-100 drives can theoretically peak up to 100MB/sec. Admittedly this doesn't happen often, but in sequential trasnfers it's common for them to sustain 40MB/sec or so. For non sequential transfers seek time will kill you more than throughput anyway. But you're right that this will ultimately be a bigger problem then it is now.

  15. Re:Who cares? Nanotech will take over. by Anarchofascist · · Score: 1

    Yeah, magnets suck. :)

    --
    Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
  16. Re:Wrong storage model by GeorgeH · · Score: 2
    Another trend I think you'll see is home media servers. Essentially network-attached storage on which TiVo's, MP3 players and all the other new and wonderful toys of the near future are going to deposit their trash.
    You mean like this and this?

    Now I just need to find a black box that lets me watch the stuff I find on alt.binaries.tv.simpsons
    --
    --
    Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
  17. Re:Clarification by Doctor+Memory · · Score: 1

    Maybe we'll have to go back to drums

    --
    Just junk food for thought...
  18. Re:Wrong storage model by Doctor+Memory · · Score: 2

    Just wait 5 years or so until HDTV becomes more mainstream

    Yeah, but the MPAA will take care of our storage needs by making it illegal to record anything...

    --
    Just junk food for thought...
  19. Don't panic... by JanneM · · Score: 1

    For that five to eight year gap, there is plenty to do still to enable us to cram evermore Divx files and mp3:s on our systems.

    Just because the drives stop becoming bigger, it won't stop them from becoming cheaper (up to a point). Instead of larger drives, we can always turn to adding more of them into a system (which is sort of what the article implies).

    Another way to enlarge the storage would be to bring back the 5 1/4 inch drives - more area = more storage. Add an ultrafast 2.5 inch drive as a cache, and you may get performance almost as good as current drives.

    Of course, this applies mostly to individual systems, where there is room to grow in various ways. For large serverfarms, already scrambling for space and power, this problem is rather more serious. Probably, virtualized storage is the only way forward at that point; there are of course other advantages to that technology besides space, so it may not affect organisations that badly as many of them would be moving towards this technology anyway.

    /Janne

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  20. Re:Absolutely Not True by JanneM · · Score: 1

    Hate to rain on your parade, but competition will _not_ solve any problem... If a problem will take a minimum of theoretical and practical advances, there is a practical limit as to how quickly it will be solved (an if it requires a lot of advances, it will take a lot of time no matter how much money you throw at it). If a problem has no solution, no solution will be found.

    /Janne

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  21. Re:Not Andrews - by pyxl · · Score: 1

    Uh.

    Mary Poppins??

    At least the Julie Andrews part was right...unless you want to include Dick Van Dyke. And so on.

    --


    Given enough hydrogen, just about anything is possible.
  22. They've ALL got the gannet! by GlenRaphael · · Score: 1
    You mean the one without the gannet?

    They've all got the gannet. It's a standard Julie Andrews tune; it's in all the books.

    --
    I play Nerd-Folk!
    1. Re:They've ALL got the gannet! by ncc74656 · · Score: 1
      You mean the one without the gannet?

      They've all got the gannet. It's a standard Julie Andrews tune; it's in all the books.

      But I don't like them...they wet their nests.

      --
      20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  23. Are you all insane? by ghjm · · Score: 1
    Yes, it's Julie Andrews, but not from Sound of Music. It's from her first film: Mary Poppins. See the credits on the Disney web site if you don't believe me. Or look at the soundtrack on CDNow.

    -Graham

    1. Re:Are you all insane? by limejuice · · Score: 1

      I think you might be confused. I was refering to this post, in which tbone1 makes a reference to the song "I Could Have Danced All Night" which was sung by Julie Andrews in the original Broadway production of My Fair Lady, not Mary Poppins.
      --

      --
      Daniel J. Kelly
  24. I don't think so. by ghjm · · Score: 2

    Today, the cost of owning data, even very large quantities of it, is mostly in the backup system. A 40Gb disk costs maybe $200. A 40Gb DLT drive costs maybe $2000. Plus you have to buy tapes at $30/ea to feed the thing, and pay a tech to change the tapes. As a percentage of the cost of ownership of that 40Gb of data, the drive itself is negligible. Even the power and rackspace to hold the drive doesn't amount to much when compared to the backup system.

    Also, nobody's predicting an increase in the cost of disk storage. The net result of this is that disk prices will continue to drop, but less rapidly. Oh dear, how will we survive. In order to support your statement that large raid arrays are going to get huge fast, you have to assume that the rate at which businesses data storage needs increase is equal to the rate at which disk prices have been dropping recently. This assumes the managers have no conscious awareness of the world around them. Why would they choose to massively increase their disk usage, in the face of stable prices, to a degree not justified by anticipated revenues?

    Then again, why would the markets massively overinvest in telecom infrastructure? Some questions just can't be answered, I guess...

    -Graham

  25. Re:Wrong storage model by uradu · · Score: 2

    > Yeah, but the MPAA will take care of our storage needs by making it illegal to record anything...

    Touche!

  26. Re:Wrong storage model by uradu · · Score: 2

    > You mean like this and this?

    Precisely (gotta get me one of those Audiotrons). Except that it will inevitably be taken to the next level with video, and used bi-directionally. In other words, your next DVD player might very well also have an Ethernet port and pull its files from a file server instead. And your next TiVo might very well have an Ethernet port and store its streams on a remote drive. 100BaseT has enough bandwidth for this type of application.

  27. Re:Wrong storage model by uradu · · Score: 2

    > am not going to waste my time ripping my CD's to MP3 when I can just store them in some raw
    > audio format

    Yeah, but once you realize that you're displacing an entire MPEG4 movie with that 650MB album, you might just change your mind. But if you're a ferocious audiophile, fine, have your way .

    > Still the one big problem that I see is backup storage has not progressed similarly.

    Very true, I've made this point a few months (years?) ago. Also, storage interface bandwidth hasn't kept up. Putting 1TB of data onto removable media (ha!) at IDE speeds will have you turning old and gray. Even before that I don't see any obvious and cheap solutions. Frankly, a large IDE drive in a 1394 enclosure that you can remove at any moment seems to me as good as any cartrige system.

  28. Wrong storage model by uradu · · Score: 5

    > Well, the average user just isn't filling up an 80 gig drive.
    [...]
    > I don't think much more will be needed until more people start using their computers for video recording

    That the whole crux of the matter. Most people that predict that our storage requirements will taper off in the near future apply obsolete usage models. For application and non-multimedia data storage even a 30GB drive will last a long, long time. But as soon as audio and in particular video enter the scene, nothing is too much.

    You seem to think that the main use of multimedia will be on a traditional PC, which couldn't be further from the truth. The future of multimedia computer equipment--in particular storage--belongs to the embedded/set-top market. We've seen the TiVo and the UltimateTV, but those are just the tip of a giant iceberg. Once their costs come down to the $100-$200 range, they will be as common-place as VCRs. Once manufacturers start incorporating PVRs in TVs and cable boxes, the appetite of the market for storage will explode. Just wait 5 years or so until HDTV becomes more mainstream and the same progams require a multiple of the storage space of today.

    Another trend I think you'll see is home media servers. Essentially network-attached storage on which TiVo's, MP3 players and all the other new and wonderful toys of the near future are going to deposit their trash. Once they become plug-and-play, and keeping that re-run of Seinfeld around for all eternity is just a button push away, people will want to store more and more media garbage. As those file servers keep piling up in the living room entertainment center, that terabyte won't seem that large anymore.

  29. Re:Clarification by nebby · · Score: 2

    That wasn't what I said, at all. I am not saying it is possible to predict where the limit will be, and did not say it was likely there ever would be a limit. What I was implying, however, is that the demand for higher storage media will slow down as we approach the level of storage which will allow our current hardware (sound cards, monitors) to fully use their output bandwidth. I'm not saying that better hardware won't come along (3d goggles, or whatever) and I'm not saying there won't be a need to store massive amounts of data for processing (the example you gave.) What I *am* saying is that there will be a upper bound for home storage that will slow down dramatically. If it is possible for you to store enough information on your computer to play DivX movies for the next four years, as well as high quality music for the same time, where is the need for more space on a home box? All other things outside of movies and audio are most likely to require less space since the amount of space required is a function of the resolution of output, in whatever form that may be.

    --
    --
  30. Re:Clarification by nebby · · Score: 4

    The difference being that up until this point, the "XX size is always good enough" argument hasn't been able to be made in reference to the fact that generally standard sizes used today are becoming able to push the output/input limits of our senses on the hardware. For example, the human eye only can distinguish certain refresh rate and a certain resolution in pixel and color size.. a screen with this resolution displaying at this refresh rate (with compression perhaps) is a static number of bytes (don't ask me how many.) Once you have storage space/memory space approaching this size, the question "We'll never need more" takes on a bit more validity since the additional storage will not be used for presentation of stuff but only for internal conputation (ie, a 3d universe has a ton of internal information.) Even in a huge 3d game, the amount of space used for the media of presentation will never go beyond a certain resolution (visually or audiably) both in space and time, since our senses can't make the distinction.

    Not that I'm saying we're quite there yet, but we are getting close enough to begin thinking about this realistically.

    --
    --
  31. Re:Who needs the space, anyway? by Detritus · · Score: 2
    Digital video.

    An uncompressed HDTV stream is 1.5 gigabit/sec. That would fill up a terabyte disk in about 90 minutes.

    --
    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  32. Re:Clarification by Detritus · · Score: 2

    I think you need 10-12 bits per color to eliminate banding. I've read about x-ray display systems that use 16-bit gray scale. 48 bits per pixel should be sufficient. Might as well toss in 16 bits for an alpha channel and make it 64 bits.

    --
    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  33. Already solved.. by Lumpy · · Score: 5

    Microsoft solved that years ago...

    It's called doublespace....

    OW!, Stop hitting me!

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:Already solved.. by eddy · · Score: 1

      I've always hoped that we'd get compression in hardware on these cheap ATA drives, like for free. Sure, it complicates adressing sectors, but it'd be cool.

      Maybe the Big Ones could get together and work out a standard for a small DSP/processor thingy with a small area for code and data which could be flashed with code for doing compression / encryption / added redundancy / whatever.

      --
      Belief is the currency of delusion.
    2. Re:Already solved.. by eddy · · Score: 1

      I know, I was "there" when superstor and stacker were all the rage.

      Back then the problem was a) Software solutions slowed things way down and ate precious memory b) They were relatively unsafe because they added another layer of filsystem indirection (lose a cluster of the 'container' file and you had days of fun ahead) and c) Hardware was expensive and 'external'

      With todays processing power you could offload it onto the controller on-board the drive. Cheap, fast and efficient.

      I said 'cool', not 'very important'.

      --
      Belief is the currency of delusion.
    3. Re:Already solved.. by ianezz · · Score: 1
      Back when CPUs were too slow to implement a software-only solution, Stac Electronics had a mixed hardware/software solution (the early versions of Stacker).

      Then, when CPUs were powerful enough, and Stac developed a software-only solution, someone thought it was a neat idea.

      The rest is history.

    4. Re:Already solved.. by mlafranc · · Score: 1

      Hmm, I tried that already.

      Seems that compressing compressed data (ie, MPEG2, MP3, JPEG, etc.) doesn't work all too well.

  34. Re:Limits oh Hard-disk space? by MikeFM · · Score: 2

    I just add a new large drive every 6 months or so.. my last one was 60Gb and cost $175.. am about ready to add a new one again and am thinking of adding an 80gb drive.. am not overly worried about the problem at this time. :)

    --
    At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
  35. Re:Not good news for M$ Bloatware.. by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

    wow, now that is good humor

    --
    Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
  36. is there any chance... by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

    of getting battery backed up RAM as mass storage. I just got 512M of ram from pricewatch for well under $100. With more and more reduction in the cost of ram it seems that a huge battery backed up ram drive could be an answer for this.

    Of course you wont be able to pull one out of your closet in 10 years and find all that cools stuff you use to have.

    --
    Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
    1. Re:is there any chance... by ArsonSmith · · Score: 1

      with the drop of price in ram as fast as it is now. I would bet that within the 5-8 years of reaching hard drive limits that battery backed up ram would be within price range.

      --
      Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
    2. Re:is there any chance... by joto · · Score: 2

      Yes, it is.

    3. Re:is there any chance... by b0bby · · Score: 1

      I was just musing on this this morning - RAM is so cheap, if someone made an affordable interface/battery/DIMM socket housing that you could load up with DIMMs it'd be way cool...

  37. Re:This doesn't mean... by sharkey · · Score: 1

    And who the fuck can fill up a terabyte in an appreciable amount of time?

    MS Office users who love their clip-art, that's who.

    --

    --

    --
    "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
  38. Do you have... by sharkey · · Score: 5

    superparamagnetism?
    Are you troubled by spooks, spectres or ghosts?
    Have you had an out-of-body experience?
    We are ready to believe you!

    Who ya gonna call?
    GHOSTBUSTERS!

    --

    --

    --
    "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
  39. Re:This doesn't mean... by rw2 · · Score: 4
    And who the fuck can fill up a terabyte in an appreciable amount of time?

    I can.

    Of course I work for a major high energy physicis lab, so YMMV... ;-)

    --
    Poliglut

  40. Re:Not Andrews - by paul7e · · Score: 1
    You all must have wasted your childhood watching "grown up" Broadway shows and not Disney movies, because Julie Andrews sings "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" in Mary Poppins.

    Of course.

    --
    Silly Rabbit, sigs are for kids.
  41. Re:Not Andrews - by evilpenguin · · Score: 2

    Sorry again. It is definitely from "My Fair Lady." Sound of Music has a completely different writing team ("I Could Have Danced All Night" is by Lerner and Lowe, and "Sound of Music" is by Rodgers and Hammerstein). Julie Andrews did play Eliza Doolittle on Broadway. Audrey Hepburn played her in the film. Rex Harrison played Higgins in both. Oddly enough, Eliza's singing in the movie was done neither by Ms. Hepburn nor by Ms. Andrews. It was a woman named Marnie Nixon, who also sang for Deborah Kerr in "The King and I."

  42. Re:If you had to... by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2

    You could reduce the ambient thermal energy by cooling, however every time you turned off your computer the disk drive would warm up and you would lose all your data. Not a very practical solution.

  43. Re:If you had to... by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2

    To take it to a LAN party of course.

  44. Re:Clarification by MindStalker · · Score: 1

    Yes, but bigger could be vertical and not horizontal, meaning multiple platters, in the same drive. While yes it won't fit into the same size slot, but big deal. Or multiple drives in a RAID configuration could become very popular. While they didn't give a figure for the theoretical max drive size in the current standard case, they said that drives increase 120 percent per year. 80 Gb seems to be the max about nowadays. So in 3 years from now we should be at 851GB Fairly close to a TB which we will probably reach. So seriously do you expect more than a TB in a single drive of current dimentions. (Of course we will eventually come out with better technologoy to hold more, but U I think that 1TB should hold us for a while)

  45. Re:Clarification by MindStalker · · Score: 2

    Yes, but if you think about it, at previous points in time a drive that was a year or two old would almost always be filled to the brim and while the newest drives seemed huge, you always were able to fill them up. With current drives you have to work hard to fill them up, and that trend will probably continue till once we reach that theoretical limit we should have atleast a couple of years breathing room before we catch back up with outselves.

  46. Re:Clarification by MindStalker · · Score: 2

    No, you just did an increase of 20 percent per year. its just like sales tax take 80+80*1.2 for the first year and you get 176 (which is a bit more than double.. its interesting that your figure is actually less than double 80, I don't quite see how something can increase by 120 percent per year and not double in 3 years.
    Anyways and easier way to do that is 80*2.2*2.2*2.2 That way you have the 80*1.2 plus the original 80 which makes it 2.2. Anyways, easy example. Sales tax here is .07 if I have 2 dollars and I said that the amount of money I had to pay increased by 7% I would just say 2*1.07=2.14 seems right to me.

  47. Re:Clarification by MindStalker · · Score: 2

    I didn't say indefinatly. Just that it should hold us till we can come out with something better. Seriously, who uses 80GB nowadays, now in 3 years 80GB will be nothing. but the 800GB will be huge, which should give us a few years to figure out how to break the barrier that we reach. No big deal really.

  48. They've reinvented PUNCHCARDS (really tiny ones!) by spineboy · · Score: 1

    I guess the trick with these will be how to change in from a WORM drive to a write many drive.

    These drives still seem Victorian to me (notion stolen from Gibson) and seem prone to mechanical breakage. What's the storage density attainable by other forms of memory systems (What else is there - Bubble memory? What else can we use for storage? - an improved non moving CD-ROM type of gagdet)

    Nanotech is cool, but moving parts seem like a dead-end to me....

    --
    ..........FULL STOP.
  49. If you build it they will come (and fill it up) by spineboy · · Score: 1

    No matter how big a hard drive/memory you have, it will always find something to fill it up. Companies will ship bigger programs (look, our program has these additional features!), you'll save more movies/3d holograms

    --
    ..........FULL STOP.
  50. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by Basje · · Score: 1

    Wow. It's been so long that I actually had to think what you were talking about. When the coin dropped, I was lauging out loud. Thank you!

    Wow, do I long back to that ugly beige thing with the greasy brown keyboard.

    ----------------------------------------------

    --
    the pun is mightier than the sword
  51. Re:Who needs the space, anyway? by LocalH · · Score: 1

    Also, using currently widespread technology, uncompressed digital video comparable to NTSC (D1) is 27MB/sec. That's a little under a gig an hour.

    Of course, to work with D1 in realtime, your enitre box has to be fast enough to push around 27MB/sec - not just the HD, all of it. Today's higher-end consumer PC's are fast enough, at least for straight record/playback.

    Besides, there's no point in storing an uncompressed HDTV stream, outside of video editing applications. You surely won't gain any quality as a viewer. When the signal is delivered MPEG-2 compressed, why not just store the stream directly? IIRC, HDTV uses between 4-9Mb/sec for a compressed stream.
    _______
    Scott Jones
    Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT

    --
    FC Closer
  52. Re:Trends by jcarney · · Score: 2

    5.25" floppies first??? When do you get out of nappies? I still remember 8" floppies ;)

  53. I wish I had a dollar every time I heard this... by Pengo · · Score: 1


    The technology giants may hit a brick wall, but someone, somewhere is comming up with a way to bypass whatever problems may arise. It's something that has pulled true for every other mainstream technology in the consumer market. I believe I read, (I don't have a link, so take it for what it is.. I could be wrong.. :)), according to the Gartner Group disk storage is the fastest growing sector in the tech industry and won't slow down for a long while.

    Demand will absolutely drive innovation in the sector.


    --------------------
    Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?

  54. If you had to... by ThePlague · · Score: 1
    From the article:

    With current drive technology, at around 150 Gb/in2, the magnetic energy holding bits in their recorded state will become equal to the ambient thermal energy within the disk drive itself.

    So, a possible solution to overcoming this limit would be reducing the ambient thermal energy. This could be done with the overclockers favorite technique: Cooling!

    Where's Dr. Freeze when you need him?

    1. Re:If you had to... by ThePlague · · Score: 1

      Why would you ever turn off your computer?

  55. Re:Clarification by jmauro · · Score: 3

    Except with the current techology, since it is mechanical the bigger the platters, the slower the drivers become. Due to more torque need to spin the platters and more effort to make sure the platters spin in a blanced settings. Making them physically bigger fights against speed. You can have a bigger drive, but it will be slower, not much of an improvement.

  56. Re:Trends by MrCreosote · · Score: 1

    I had a customer who would backup to 8" floppies

    --
    MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
  57. Not worried. It just means a different focus. by Snowfox · · Score: 5
    A single limitation like this doesn't mean much. This just means consumer-level hard drive manufacturers will spend more time competing on speed until the next breakthrough is ready.

    Given that I/O speed is still such a huge bottleneck for many operations, and given that you can already have 240 gigs of storage for under a grand, is this really such a bad thing?

    1. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by p3d0 · · Score: 1

      I don't think anyone's suggesting that hard drives will get larger to store the same amount of data. If the hard disks double in size to store twice the data, then you break even, and nobody gets laid off.
      --

      --
      Patrick Doyle
      I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
    2. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by cute-boy · · Score: 1

      And to contunue with your scenario...

      Disk have problem, noone there to fix in reasonable time, other IT systems in disarray (! :)), company struggles, either takes on IT staff again or fails.

    3. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by supabeast! · · Score: 1

      Let me put it into terms a paranoid idiot like you can understand:

      Your employer needs big database X to make money off of operation Y.

      Database X is 10 terabytes.

      Due to growing sizes of hard disks, database X will suck an extra million dollars out of the IT budget.

      To recoup costs and make stockholder happy, your employer lays off ten IT employees with 100K salaries.

      You now have no job.

    4. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by supabeast! · · Score: 4

      This is actually a really big bad thing. While for home consumers it likely means faster read times, and a return to bulky hard disks, this will suck for businesses that need mass storage.

      Once the storage capacity of a hard disk can only increase by adding platters, large raid arrays are going to get huge fast. Massive databases will take up huge amounts of physical space, eat up a ton of power to run, and that is really, really expensive.

      So yes, this IS a problem.

    5. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by Galvatron · · Score: 2
      Quite frankly, I agree. It would be good to have a 5 year break from size increases, to focus on faster read times. Just like with CPU MHz, everyone focuses on one number, and forgets that other things are important too. I admit, I'm guilty of this sometimes too, but as long as the population at large overlooks hd speed, it's harder to get info on it.

      For the time being, we have plenty of space for home use (I have a two year old 35 gig hard drive, and I still have plenty of room). We'll fill it up at some point in the future, of course, but I expect that it would be after we get other viable media. And if you REALLY need more space NOW, start burning DVDs.

      The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.

      --
      "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
    6. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by joto · · Score: 2
      Without being able to increase density, that leaves disk designers two areas to increase: read head movement speed, and disk rotation speed.

      And more platters, more heads per platter, heads moving individually instead of together, as well as good old-fashioned caching.

    7. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by loraksus · · Score: 2
      Why? Have you seen the size of the stuff that people were using as raid boxes a few years ago?
      If it fit then, it'd fit now.

      Besides, the concept of RAID is a large number of inexpensive disks, more small HDD's, more redundancy.

      The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit:
      Pissing off coffee drinking /.'ers since Spring 2001.

      --
      1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcfv gbhnjmk,l.;/
    8. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by Junnonen · · Score: 1

      240 gigs of storage space has room for only ~50 DVDs, which is not nearly enough.

    9. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by SpryGuy · · Score: 1

      Besides, even when manufacturers do reach the size limit, can't we just use a holepunch to double it?

      That was HILARIOUS, and probably quite lost on some of the youngsters around here... :-)

      - Spryguy

      --

      - Spryguy
      There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
    10. Re:Not worried. It just means a different focus. by Moriancumer · · Score: 1

      One problem with this attitude is that a large part of the speedup of the disk drives we use is due to the increases in density. Without being able to increase density, that leaves disk designers two areas to increase: read head movement speed, and disk rotation speed. Now, I am not dissin' those of you out there who like loud computers (my slot a athlon with alpha heatsink is like niagra falls), but disk drives can only rotate so fast before the sound becomes too much.

  58. Re:Not good news for M$ Bloatware.. by Snowfox · · Score: 5
    Good Lord! We'll all have to buy RAID arrays just to install Windows 2010!

    Gee, that's a whole new twist on "2010: A Space Odyssey."

  59. Re:Clarification by dustman · · Score: 3

    For example, the human eye only can distinguish certain refresh rate and a certain resolution in pixel and color size.. a screen with this resolution displaying at this refresh rate (with compression perhaps) is a static number of bytes (don't ask me how many.)


    These limits are high enough that we'll still need the exponential growth for quite awhile before the limit is hit... 1200 dpi laser printers are pretty much the limit for humans (although 600 dpi is probably enough... it's better than I can detect... I can see the pixels in 300dpi printout though)... at 600dpi, a wide aspect ratio monitor (to be easy, says its 16x9 inches) will be about 52M pixels... and each pixel, at 3 bytes (24 bit color), brings the memory usage per frame to 150MB... currently, movies are at 24 fps, so thats 3.7GB per second of uncompressed video... and, of course, the frame rate can go a lot higher (any good quake player will tell you that the game is noticeably better if the frame rate never drops below 60, rather than 40)...

    if you were to store this quality video uncompressed, suddenly a petabyte isn't even enough for a whole movie! and even if you had 1000:1 compression, it's still not large enough that you will never fill it up..
  60. Re:Jeesh by penguinboy · · Score: 2

    4 platters? Certainly in a full-height (~1 1/4") 3.5" drive. Those can hold 6 platters. Not in a standard (~5/8") high 3.5" drive, though. 2 is the most I've seen there.

  61. Re:Realistic needs? by Fixer · · Score: 1
    Nope. No such thing as "realistic needs". Ask Bill Gates about that one..
    No matter WHAT your storage capacity, speed, data throughput, bandwith, there will ALWAYS be applications for which it isn't enough. Always. And, it seems, eventually these high-usage apps become POPULAR, and hell, then they are required for any given field. When I first heard that Word Perfect was a megabyte, I lost my shit! "ONE WHOLE MEG?! Omg.. what's in that bloated POS??"
    Never enough. Never ever.

    --
    "Avast! Prepare for the rodgering!" THWACK! "Arrr.. me nards.."
  62. Re:Clarification by gorilla · · Score: 2

    You can put in more platters, and more heads. It used to be common that drives lots of platters. As storage densities went up, it became cheaper to have less platters, and more storage on each one. If we reach a limit of storage, then we can go back to adding more platters.

  63. Re:This doesn't mean... by p3d0 · · Score: 5
    And who the fuck can fill up a terabyte in an appreciable amount of time? I know I could fill up 100GB in a week or so but a terabyte?
    Apparently it would take you ten weeks.
    --
    --
    Patrick Doyle
    I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
  64. Re:superparamagnetism by brianvan · · Score: 1

    Well, I can post... I had the same problem with another posting I had yesterday as well - a bunch of people thought it should be one lower, so someone even moderated it "redundant" - and it was post #6! (The chance that someone said the same thing already is nil - and I checked it out, too). I really don't care either way, because my karma has been at least 48 for the past three months. Not that it matters for anything, but I like being a good contributor to discussion...

  65. Re:Not Andrews - by brianvan · · Score: 2

    Sorry to you both - it's from "The Sound of Music" which DEFINITELY starred Julie Andrews in the movie.

    At least I'm very sure of it. Someone let me know how I may be wrong. I've never seen "My Fair Lady" but I'm pretty sure I've seen the song sung in a movie, that's why I'm pretty sure it's NOT from that...

  66. superparamagnetism by brianvan · · Score: 5

    ex-pe-al-i-do-cious...

    (Apologies to Julie Andrews...)

    1. Re:superparamagnetism by SPrintF · · Score: 1

      Oh, thank goodness. I was afraid that I was the only one who would think of this.

      --

      Honesty. Loyalty. Kindness. Laughter. Generosity. Magic!

    2. Re:superparamagnetism by platos_beard · · Score: 2
      --
      What's a sig?
    3. Re:superparamagnetism by Foggy+Tristan · · Score: 2

      The Julie Andrews Dirty Songbook (the expurgated version).



      You mean the one without the gannet?

      --
      Beware typoes.
    4. Re:superparamagnetism by SunLad · · Score: 1

      Catch tune... Maybe it's me, but I can't stop chuckling.

    5. Re:superparamagnetism by tbone1 · · Score: 1
      Thank you thank you thank you! Not only did I laugh from this, it also triggered a memory about something that was done on the classic BBC radio show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again: The Julie Andrews Dirty Songbook (the expurgated version).

      I could have BZZT all night,
      I could have BZZT all night,
      And still have begged for more ....

      --

      The Independent: Reverend Spooner Arrested in Friar Tuck Incident - ISIHAC, Historical Headlines
    6. Re:superparamagnetism by infinite9 · · Score: 2

      ok, a bit OT, but I can't resist:

      Ghandi never wore shoes, so as a result, his feet became very tough and thick. In addition, he never ate very much which is why he was so frail. Also, his unusual diet gave him very bad breath. This is why he became know as the...

      Super calloused fragile mystic plaiged with halatosis.

      More apologies to Julie Andrews

      --
      Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
  67. Optical drives... by lostindenver · · Score: 1

    Why have advances in optical drives been so slow?
    I have seen so many articals saying they are coming out better, faster... But where are they?

    1. Re:Optical drives... by X-Guy · · Score: 3

      There aren't any advances to be made in optical drives. We reached the diffraction limit years ago. The diffraction limit comes long before the superparamagnetic limit. You could do near- field optics to beat that, but that has proven to be difficult mechanically because of the close proximity required between head and media.

  68. Re:Who cares? Nanotech will take over. by Thornae · · Score: 2

    Neat, but as far as I can tell, this is WORM storage, not write many, so it's more like a replacement for CD-R than normal HDs. Of course, I could have misunderstood the article.

    Still, it's an interesting concept - melting little dents into the media for bits. I imagine that they're going to have to do some hard research into how to get rid of excess heat along with it.

    Could be that one day, when you say your hard drive melted, it really melted.


    ÐÆ

    --
    |>
    Here be Dragons
  69. Re:Oh no! by homebru · · Score: 1
    Run down to CompUSA and get my own personal terabyte for under $300!!!!

    Before or after the $400 rebate from Microsoft?

  70. Re:Clarification by NichG · · Score: 1

    Well, the problem with that vein of thought is that it assumes that you're only going to store one piece of software\video\whatever on the drive at one time. Lets take video for instance. Lock the quality and compression at DVD level, and then look how much space it would take to store a day's worth of broadcast television (we won't even mention HDTV and ITS storage requirements). At 5-9GB for 2 hours, this goes to an upper limit of 108 GB/day. Still, by future harddrive standards this may not be overly much. However, in conjunction with everything else someone might want to store on their system, the numbers will just keep growing. Store the library of congress on your harddrive ;)
    Its really another form of the desk space syndrome... The more space thats available, the quicker it gets used up.

    There is also the issue of very high resolution data, not necessarily for human viewing, but for computer analysis. This isn't likely to hit the average user as something useful or necessary on their own system, but commercial and research systems could certainly find a thousand ways to fill up harddrives that would not normally occur to a user.

    NichG

  71. mmm... by karb · · Score: 1
    You could flip a bunch of 2.5 inch drives on end and stick 'em in a half or full-size 5.25 drive bay.

    Geekalicious...

    --

    Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone

  72. Re:The mother of ***** by warmenhoven · · Score: 1
    Magnetic devices prices got driven down as the technology became cheaper and more in-demand.

    Sorry, I have to nit-pick. The more in-demand something is the higher the price will be; it's a simple supply/demand curve. Higher demand, higher prices. Higher supply, lower prices. Then eventually the technology gets replaced or otherwise becomes obsolete and demand goes to 0, and the company can't even give the stuff away.

    I agree with you on everything else though (though personally I don't think any of the possibilities you listed are likely, especially the remote location idea, but it is still possible).

    -----

    --

    -----
    "A man is judged by his every word." -RW Emerson
    "They misunderestimated me." -GW Bush
  73. Re:Who cares? Nanotech will take over. by rtaylor · · Score: 1

    I wonder if it'll be quite -- no spinning disk but lots of moving read / write heads.

    --
    Rod Taylor
  74. Oh no! by Capt+Dan · · Score: 1

    What?!?!! Ohmygawd!!! Whattami gonna do in 5 years when I fill up 400GB drive???? How will I ever survive????? I know! I could get a new drive!!! Or two!!! OOooohhh beter yet a RAID array of 500GB drives!!! Yeah. that's it!!! Run down to CompUSA and get my own personal terabyte for under $300!!!!

    Do ya' get the sarcasm?

    Sig:

    --
    Sig:
    Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
  75. Capitalism Will Prevail by Dr.+Transparent · · Score: 1

    The comments that these technologies "are still a decade or so away" is likely a load of crap. Once companies see slimming profit margins and feel the pressure of shareholders, more research money and effort will be placed on getting new tech up and running. As long as companies are still trying to make money, product will still advance.

  76. Re:Clarification by Moonshadow · · Score: 1

    You know, it reminds me of those old "forecasts"...

    "Someday, we'll have computers that fit in a single room..."

    s/computers/petabyte drives/i;

    Look, in 50 years, they'll be the size of your credit card.

    Honestly, though, who needs a petabyte of space? If you're not doing data archiving and such, why do you even need a disk of that size? I'd think an 80 gigger will tide over all but the most compulsive Warez/ISO/MP3/pr0n hoarders. And even then, that's what your DVD-R is for.

  77. 5 years!?!?!?! by phunhippy · · Score: 2

    So in 5 years when we hit a wall i'll just have to buy 2 or 3 900gigabyte drives for 80 dollars a piece instead of 1 1.5tearbyte drive at currently levels? damn those technological walls!

    hehe i crack myself up :)

  78. Re:Bigger Devices? by mOdQuArK! · · Score: 1

    Or more surfaces.

  79. Re:This doesn't mean... by Geekboy(Wizard) · · Score: 1

    "640k ought to be enough for anyone"....get the quote right...;-)

  80. Re:Clarification by isaac_akira · · Score: 2

    I think that 1TB should hold us for a while

    Don't you know saying things like that will come back to haunt you? =)

    Future person: "1TB? Ha! That's less than half the space I use just for Win2007, much less all my holovids!"

  81. Re:Not good news for M$ Bloatware.. by RollingThunder · · Score: 2

    You know, there really needs to be a "Punny" moderation tag... although I can't decide if it'd mod up or down.

  82. Re:Clarification by nowindowz · · Score: 1

    And I predict that in 20 years computers will be so big and expensive that only the 12 richest kings of europe could afford them.

    I have learned from my mistakes though

    WOW 10 Meg you could never fill that up
    WOW 50 Meg I could never fill that up
    WOW 1 gig you could ever use that much space
    WOW 4.3 gig i will never have to buy another drive again.
    Now 2 18 gigs striped, I am saving my money so in 2 years I can replace them with 100 gig drives.

    Software will always find to make your hardware outdated.

    --
    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
  83. Re:Just so long as prices keep dropping. by Tiroth · · Score: 2

    Um, the major reason for costs dropping (and data rates increasing) is the increase in density. When density flatlines you can always add more (and bigger) platters to increase the amount of data, but it becomes more expensive to build these larger drives. This cost will be offset by increases in manufacturing technology, but gone will be the days of exponential growth.

    So, this /does/ directly affect the consumer's wallet.

  84. Re:This doesn't mean... by Tiroth · · Score: 2

    Exactly. As nebby points out above, a lossless 16x9 rendering of motion video could easily exceed a petabyte for a movie. Cube the amount of storage and people will be thinking holographic representations of the same density. There will always be a demand for more storage; our technological progress is often limited by the practicality of the storage medium.

  85. Oh, do pay attention... by Borogove · · Score: 1
    Allow me to summarise the relevant facts:

    'I could have ${danced} all night' is a song from My Fair Lady, the musical by Alan Lerner and Fred Loewe, based on Shaw's Pygmalion.

    Julie Andrews played Eliza Doolittle in the original cast, 1956.

    Julie Andrews also played Mary Poppins in the 1964 film of the same name, which features the atrocious-sounding song 'Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious'.

    She also played Maria in The Sound Of Music (1965), but failed to sing either of the above songs in this role.

    People who don't get the references to gannets wetting their nests might like to read this, which also mentions 'the Amazing Adventures of Captain Gladys Stoutpamphlet and her Intrepid Spaniel Stig amongst the Giant Pygmis of Beckles' (volume eight).

    Using these facts, re-read the preceding conversation and see if it makes more sense now.

    --
    There has been a major scientific break-in
  86. Re:Clarification by Borogove · · Score: 1

    I think it's pointless trying to predict what will be the limiting factors for storage space requirements. You've decided that we don't need to store more information than the human eye can distinguish - and yet there are a number of reasons why this might not be the case: if you are storing data for future editing, you don't necessarily know what you are going to want to keep.

    Video cameras used at sporting events can capture several hundred frames per second so that you can subsequently watch a smooth slow-motion replay. If you want to produce a 16-bit audio recording, you might use 24-bit samples during the editing process to avoid adding too much noise.

    There is no hard limit to how much useful data you can store. You say that the detail for a huge 3D game will never need to go above a certain resolution, but I don't see how you can decide what the resolution will be. Should it be decided based on how much you can see if you're standing 1 metre away from an object? 10 centimetres? Looking at it through a microscope?

    Ok, may be there is a theoretical limit when we model stuff at the atomic level, but I can't imagine that is what you are referring to when you say 'we are getting close enough to begin thinking about this realistically'.

    ...and I'm sure even then people will still find more ways of creating data.

    --
    There has been a major scientific break-in
  87. Re:Not good news for M$ Bloatware.. by Lacutis · · Score: 1

    Maybe it should randomly moderate up or down ;).

  88. Re:Just so long as prices keep dropping. by Lacutis · · Score: 1

    Someone mod this up, I think this summarizes it perfectly.

  89. Re:Clarification by ninewands · · Score: 1

    in terms of audio, sure. in terms of video, a 32bpp color palette only represents a fraction of the precision that the human eye can discern.

    This is true, photographic film can produce colors with a resolution around 256 bits per "pixel", but the 24 bit (32 with alpha channel) max on color palettes is not imposed by human vision, it's imposed by the inability of phosphors in a CRT to reproduce finer shadings. Color LCDs can't even do a GOOD job with a 32-bit palette.

    Regards,

  90. Re:Who cares? Nanotech will take over. by ninewands · · Score: 1

    I guess that then it would be OK to have bugs in your code :)

    No, it means you'll have your code in bugs ... ;)

  91. Re:This doesn't mean... by ninewands · · Score: 1

    The quote was "Nobody needs more than 640 K of RAM."

    But than no less an authority on the computer market than Thomas Watson once remarked "In the whole world I think there might be a market for 5 digital computers."

  92. Re:Not good news for M$ Bloatware.. by JesseL · · Score: 2

    "My God, it's full of drives!"

    Yes I know that's 2001, sorry

    --
    "Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
  93. Re:This doesn't mean... by hackerzrus · · Score: 1

    I work at a synchrotron facility that will go online in 3 years and the beamlines people tell me that the protein crystallography guys take data at 150 MB/s, or 1 TB/2 h. By the time we are supplying beam, it'll be 4 TB/h or ~100 TB/day! Now where the heck am I suppose to cache that?!

    --
    -- Without the right to carry and use self-defence tools, we effectively have no right to life.
  94. Not that this matters... by kc0dxh · · Score: 1

    We'll all be using .NET, right Bill? Imagine no MP3, but WMP. Imagine MSPr0n! (eewwwww)

    --

    --- "1.21 Jigawatts!" -Doc

  95. Re:Clarification by ReelOddeeo · · Score: 5

    Honestly, though, who needs a petabyte of space?

    You, sir, have obviously not tried to install the latest betas of Windows XP.

    --

    --

    Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
  96. Re:Clarification by egarland · · Score: 1
    I wouldn't worry too much about drives not getting big enough. Today's 40 Gig/platter drives are based on 32Gb/sqin technology. 150Gb/sqin would yield 180 GB/platter technology. If IBM revives it's 5 platter 3.5" drive design that's 900 GB in one 3.5" drive. People don't want that much storage. They are happy with their 20 gig drives. In three years they will be happy with their 100 gig drives.

    I don't think we'll be going back to 5 1/4" drives any time soon. On the contrary, I believe we will start seing 2.5" Serial ATA drives becomming common in desktops within 3 years. IBM's Travelstar 48GH only has an areal density of 22Gb/sqin. With 150Gb/sqin technology you could get a 300 GB 2.5" hard drive. 3.5" drives are too big already. The market only want's 20 gig drives but the manufacturers can get 40 gigs per platter. Thats why you get aberations like that new Maxtor line that in it's largest capacity only has one head! To get the cost down any further they will have to switch to a smaller form factor. 2.5" seems the likely candidate.

    I predict that in 3 years (Summer 2004) we will have 100-200 gb 2.5" drives that cost less than $50 and they will be the most popular form of storage for new desktop computers (if there even is such a thing anymore.)

    The best part will be you will be able to create RAID arrays that hold 8 2.5" drives in a full height 5.25" drive bay. There is where you will get your speed and size. 8x200 gig = 1.6TB raw (1.4TB in RAID5.) I think a really clever designer could put 24 2.5" drives in a single 5.25" drive bay. That would be 4.8TB raw (4.4 TB in a RAID 5+0 config).

    That's 4.4TB of fault tolerant storage!

    In your desktop!

    Sign me up.

    --
    set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
  97. The eye can't detect detail for moving objects by yerricde · · Score: 2

    currently, movies are at 24 fps, so thats 3.7GB per second of uncompressed video

    The eye itself spatio-temporally compresses data as it is sent to the eye, apparently using a wavelet multiresolution. The eye and brain also can't see as much detail on a moving object as on a stationary one.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  98. Re:This doesn't mean... by talonyx · · Score: 1

    It gets increasingly ahrder to find information as you have most of it already on your hard drive. Eventually I won't be able to find any pr0n I don't have, at least without paying for it. Same with warez, etc....
    At the point when you can't find anything else, you only need like three more gigs for personal stuffs. I think a terabyte would be enough for me.

  99. This doesn't mean... by talonyx · · Score: 5

    ...that we'll run out of space.
    Look! We will have 200GB drive soon, right, there was a /. article about that.
    We'll have 400GB drives in 3 years, maybe a nice round number like 512GB will be the upper limit. Maybe 256GB.
    But then you think... I can have a PHYSICALLY BIGGER hard drive! A full-height 5 1/4 one, like the old IBM PC ones, but with superdense and 10000RPM spinning platters.
    So that could bring me up to maybe 512GB, or more.
    Then I could have an even bigger one, two-times the height, with a terabyte on it.
    And who the fuck can fill up a terabyte in an appreciable amount of time? I know I could fill up 100GB in a week or so but a terabyte? It would take a long time to find enough pr0n and warez to fill up all that space.

    Relax, people, we're coming to the point at which things are going to slow down a bit. Compression technology is getting more advanced, and there's plenty of room an a 1TB hard drive for some 1GB DivX ;-) movies. Never mind the fact that DVD burners are coming down in price to provide us with an acceptably-sized external storage medium.

    There's no crisis here. Companies will still sell hard drives. The spice will still flow.

    1. Re:This doesn't mean... by joto · · Score: 2
      I can have a PHYSICALLY BIGGER hard drive! A full-height 5 1/4 one, like the old IBM PC ones, but with superdense and 10000RPM spinning platters. So that could bring me up to maybe 512GB, or more.

      Remember, big means slow, as they will tear apart if you run them too fast. It would be better to add more platters.

      And who the fuck can fill up a terabyte in an appreciable amount of time?

      Well, what's the write speed of the disk?

      Seriously, if you are working with seismic data, it's obviously not a problem. I guess experimental nuclear physicists and radio-astronomers feel the same way. And, as storage capacity increases, I can certainly not see the media industy having problems using it all up (I guess Industrial light and magic already do).

      Even for home users, it is hard to see an end to the cry for storage space. Ok, you can store a lot of mp3's now, but not really that many DVD-quality movies. And DVD is certainly not the end of the search for better quality. Remember the hype around VR a few years ago? How much storage will your average Holodeck need?

    2. Re:This doesn't mean... by Magius_AR · · Score: 1
      You seem to assume that as hard drives are getting bigger, data is remaining constant. Back in the day, games were ASCII, etc, and the largest were a couple megs big. Most you could fit on a disk. The latest game I played (Baldur's Gate 2), doing a full install takes approximately 2 gigs of space. As for compression, it may be getting "more advanced", but even that has limits, and size is still shooting up dramtically. My movies collection over the years has shifted from realplayer to asf to avi to divx. The pr0n trend has been moving from 1kb jpgs and gifs to full length 650 meg movies. People are _using_ that extra space to do nifty things in quality enhancement (or feature bloat). Otherwise, those divx files wouldn't take up 1 gig, they'd take up the 20 or 30 megs my old real player files do. You think this trend towards better quality at expense of space is going to suddenly halt? Data size will continue to grow, maybe not in direct correlation to HD space, but it will grow nonetheless. By the time we have terabyte drives, I doubt it would take you long to fill it up.

      Magius_AR

    3. Re:This doesn't mean... by Junnonen · · Score: 1

      1TB can hold only ~150 DVD movies, which isn't very much.

    4. Re:This doesn't mean... by evocate · · Score: 1
      This reminds me of the legendary quote from our favorite prima donna programmer...

      "640K of memory should be enough for anybody."

    5. Re:This doesn't mean... by jordandeamattson · · Score: 2

      And wasn't it Bill Gates that said something along the lines of, "I can't imagine why anyone would want more than 64K of RAM?"

      Let's be clear: people will always want more space, performance, and frames per second. We will always be pushing the limits.

      If you think things are slowing down, just take a look at the various curves related to number of transistors in a cubic centimeter, density of bits in various storage devices, etc. The singularity is still coming sometime between 2025 and 2035.

    6. Re:This doesn't mean... by Zeinfeld · · Score: 2
      The quote was "Nobody needs more than 640 K of RAM."

      And like all the best quotes Gates never said it.

      What he did say was that 640K would be enough for most people using the original IBM PC, which had a 16 bit microprocessor running at 8 MHz, no memory management and a hard limit of 1Mb of addressable memory. 640K of RAM cost several times the price of the machine at that time.

      Given that the 286 was comming down the pipe and that at the time nobody knew that Intel was going to screw up the memory management it was not a ridiculous design choice which was made by IBM in any case.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
      Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
    7. Re:This doesn't mean... by Dolly_Llama · · Score: 2
      And who the fuck can fill up a terabyte in an appreciable amount of time?

      64k should be enough for anyone...

      --

      Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan

    8. Re:This doesn't mean... by glyph42 · · Score: 1

      there's plenty of room an a 1TB hard drive for some 1GB DivX ;-) movies

      There's room for about a thousand 1GB movies in a 1TB hard drive. A buddy of mine was thinking about buying a 3TB hard drive, and he said "That should last me a while. Let me do the math. My current hard drive is completely filled with MP3s and stuff. I bet with my new hard drive I'd collect DVD rips and DivX ;-) movies too. I could get about... oh, crap. Yeah, I'd fill 3TB pretty quick."

      I don't doubt him for a second. But you're right that companies will continue to make bigger, cheaper storage solutions. But 1TB is today, not 3 years from now :) I want my 240TB drive!!

      --
      Music speeds up when you yawn, but does not change pitch.
    9. Re:This doesn't mean... by stebalo · · Score: 2

      you dont' even need 5'1/4" drives again (slower rotation).

      all you need to do is add extra 3.5" platters. go back to 3.5" full height drives with 10 platters. You'll still have 7200 RPM

      --
      "I drank what?" - Socrates
    10. Re:This doesn't mean... by Guppy06 · · Score: 1
      "And who the fuck can fill up a terabyte in an appreciable amount of time?"

      *cough* Microsoft *cough*

      Seriously, though, if operating systems and other applications continue their trend of bigger = better, this can be a real problem. Most apps have been steadily doubling in size pretty quickly in the past decade, and I don't see them slowing down very soon as companies continue to weigh down everything from text editors on up with 3-D animated AI help agents and digitally-recorded audio help.

  100. The most common post on the topic of storage. by AnarchoFreak_00 · · Score: 1
    I can't say how close I was to moderating this as 'redundant' or 'troll'.

    Everytime there is a artical about storage. This question always comes up, and the argument ends up taking 50% of the posts (exaguration, but you know what I mean).

    This time. Could everyone please rememeber that other technologies will also always advance.

    Either, more storage will be possable, and people will find new ways to fill it. Or people will find a new way of doing something, more make something new, that will require more storage.

  101. Re:A new law of computers by olman · · Score: 1

    4. And his brother owns an air conditioning fab and his aunt a construction agency.

  102. Trends by mszeto · · Score: 2

    Something I've found interesting is the trend of storage media. Take a look at the floopy. At first, you had a 5 1/4 inch disk. Then you had programs and spanned multiple 5 1/4 inch disks. Then 3 1/2 became very popular. Then programs spanned (spun?) multiple 3 1/2 inch disks. (Insert talk about densities as well)
    Now we're coming to multiple CDs. Soon we'll be receiving programs on DVD technology.

    Maybe the hard disk industry will act in the same way. We've now pushed this type of media to the limit, perhaps another will emerge.

    Unless this talk of bit-flipping is not a result of how our disk drives work . . . can anyone clarify?

    1. Re:Trends by Thing+1 · · Score: 1
      Soon we'll be receiving programs on DVD technology.

      The latest SuSE Linux 7.2 comes on 7 CDs and 1 DVD.
      --

      --
      I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
    2. Re:Trends by Chakat · · Score: 1
      Now we're coming to multiple CDs. Soon we'll be receiving programs on DVD technology.

      SuSE linux already comes on DVD. Incredibly useful for installing; you can do that full, multi-gigabyte install while you're out seeing a movie.

      Unless this talk of bit-flipping is not a result of how our disk drives work . . . can anyone clarify?

      What's happened here is that we've got the drives spinning so fast, it gets hot enough, and is dense enough for the magnetic "bits" to change polarity and thus, value. We can get it more dense, but the reliability of such a system is nil.

      So it looks like we may be moving back to the 5 1/4" form factor drive, at least temporarily.

      D - M - C - A

      --

      If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.

  103. Holographic storage? by ostawookiee · · Score: 1

    Articles posted here earlier in the year said holographic terabyte storage would be available to the masses in a couple of years. Plus, there's always the good old RAID method. I don't see any problems.

    1. Re:Holographic storage? by quinto2000 · · Score: 1

      What do you mean? No Such Agency

      --
      Ceci n'est pas un post
    2. Re:Holographic storage? by 3am · · Score: 1

      i hate to sound the conspiracy theorist, but didn't holographic storage get an influx of money from the NSA? I mean, given what I know about the NSA, one might call them secretive. I understand that a lot of the mathematical work done there remains unpublishable for quite a while, even when done by visiting academics... and in a field which is usually incredibly open to publishing and collaberation... could there be any progress which just isn't being terribly publicized?

      this really is a grab for information, i'm curious about the subject, and hadn't heard an news lately. hoping it's not all smoke and mirrors (no pun intended?)

      --

      A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
  104. Re:Who cares? Nanotech will take over. by geekoid · · Score: 1

    Other things I 've where 5 years away:
    cold fusion
    anti-gravity
    Humans on Mars
    of course I've been hearing that these are 5 years away for 25 years now....
    I care about magnetic drives, because thats what we're using now.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  105. 5 years by Agthorr · · Score: 1

    Oh no! You mean, 5 years from now, I'll be stuck buying measly 4 terabyte drives? [1] Gasp! Whatever will I do?!

    I mean, with those, me and 4 friends would only be able to personally store the entire contents of today's Gnutella network. That's going to be so disappointing to be able to store only everything every produced by the RIAA in one's home, and not everything produced by the MPAA too.

    Jeez, how will we ever manage to deal while we wait those 5 additional years until the super-cool new technologies trickle down and we can velcro wireless digital video recorders to our children, record everything they do for their entire lives, and never need to erase any of it?

    -- Agthorr

    [1] = The article says that drive space grows at a rate of 120 percent annually. 80 gigabytes compounded at 120 percent for 5 years is approximately 4 terabytes.

  106. Re:It just does not matter. by Lozzer · · Score: 1

    20Mb, you don't know that you were born. My first computer had no drive at all. It could fit about 40kB of data on a C5 cassette tape. And I'm only in my (late) 20s. I'm sure some real old timers had it worse. Probably had to punch cards by hand, and their machines that only had 7 bytes of memory.

    --
    Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
  107. It just does not matter. by www.sorehands.com · · Score: 1
    No matter how much storage that we have, we will always exceed it. We just have to be smarter on what data that gets stored and how we store it (compression, format, etc).

    Us old timers remember when a 20MB drive was lots of space.

  108. Re:New storage tech? by ennuiner · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I was going to point out a story in today's New York Times about Holographic storage. It appears that they may be making some breakthroughs that will enable them to bring the technology to market.

    Sounds like you could get hella storage for your mp3 player, if holographic disks are only 2-3cm in diameter. ;-)

    --
    Somebody please, tell this machine I'm not a machine.
  109. Cost by oman_ · · Score: 2

    So maybe the drives will not get bigger but I'm sure they can always be faster, quieter and cheaper.

    --
    Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
  110. Not a big deal by genka · · Score: 1

    May be hard drives will not become larger, but I am sure they will be cheaper, may be under $100 for max capacity. Unless a protable platform is involved, there is almost always a room for another drive. Or we might see return of 5 1/4" wide and 1" high drives.

  111. Re:A new law of computers by mcrbids · · Score: 1
    Watch it - I'm in California!...

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
  112. Clarification by AntiNorm · · Score: 5

    Specifically, they all think that in about 3-5 years, the superparamagnetic limit will kick in and current technology will stop getting better

    Clarification: It's not that hard drives won't keep getting bigger and bigger. It's just that you'll have problems fitting more data into less space. The result of this is that when the 1 TB hard drives come out, they will of course be larger in size than the 80 GB hard drives of today, despite the advances in technology that will no doubt be available by then.

    ---

    --

    I pledge allegiance to the flag...
    of the Corporate States of America...
    1. Re:Clarification by loraksus · · Score: 1
      Jesus Christ. I'm sure somebody can design a stronger motor.

      The slashdot 2 minute between postings limit:
      Pissing off coffee drinking /.'ers since Spring 2001.

      --
      1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcfv gbhnjmk,l.;/
    2. Re:Clarification by Abreu · · Score: 1
      IMHO, the colors in a 32bpp are fine... The resolution in a modern monitor (72dpi) is still far from acceptable, compared with the resolution in a normal printed piece of paper (circa 600dpi)

      ------
      C'mon, flame me!

      --
      No sig for the moment.
    3. Re:Clarification by AaronStJ · · Score: 2

      Honestly, though, who needs a petabyte of space?

      Really. 640k should be enought for anyone.

      --
      Stupid like a fox!
    4. Re:Clarification by UberLame · · Score: 1

      Just wait till you try to save HD-TV streams to disk. Those things (even w/ mpeg 2 compression) are so fat that a DVD-R will seem about as usefull as a zip disk is now.

      --
      I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
    5. Re:Clarification by RALE007 · · Score: 1

      They are saying "future" disk space restraints. You are right, 80GB should tide just about any normal person over.... for now. It's going to continue as it has, more disk space as faster hardware comes out to compute it. The statement in this article is there might be a block in the road to disk space keeping up with hardware. You and I both know that 2-3 years down the road 80GB isn't going to be jack for hard drive space. The point of the article hints at the fact that hard drive size and capabilities might reach a temporary limit as other methods of storage are developed.

      --
      Beware blue cats moving at .99c
    6. Re:Clarification by X86Daddy · · Score: 1
      Even when we do hit the size / resolution limit detectable by the human eye (or sound range dectable by the ear, etc...), sometimes twice or more of the resources used to display that information can be used to acheive special effects!
      3D is the best example:
      • positional audio technology: if you include more information about the audio, it takes more space and processing (simple stereo vs. stereo plus fade doubles the info)
      • shutter glasses: you have two images being displayed instead of one to get a single stereo image.
      • antialiasing: not specifically 3D, but you double the resolution of what you're seeing and work on that
      As we get more and cooler output peripherals, the processing and storage requirements will increase, even beyond what it takes to simply store what we can "see." If we ever get some nifty neural interfaces going, the quality of information delivered will have another opportunity to increase. We will never run out of a need for higher capacity!
    7. Re:Clarification by Kowoika+Dzeshamista · · Score: 1

      I'd agree with you here, aside from the fact that I'm a fan of Jack L. Chalker (long live Nathan Brazil! oh wait... he's immortal, he WILL live forever). The reason I mention JLC is because of his trilogy The Wonderland Gambit - which has a near-infinite storage system (the Brand Box), and this amount of storage is needed because it's storing information on almost everything. Once we hit the human-body resolution limits (until neural implants become possible), the major selling point of games will be realism. Realistic weather, realistic behavior simulations, etc. The next advance in storage isn't space. It's speed. Over the next five years after we hit the wall, watch for 10KRPM drives to become more and more common, and then start watching for 20KRPM and higher speeds. Firewire will definitely start coming into its own soon... though I wouldn't be surprised if a 1Tb/sec technology is hiding out there for when these high-speed drives come out. I can't wait until swap space is as fast as onboard memory...

      --
      Hold it in your hand and watch it disappear - set it free and watch it remain.
    8. Re:Clarification by Kowoika+Dzeshamista · · Score: 1

      The only thing beta that I have on this system is MAME and Win98SE.

      --
      Hold it in your hand and watch it disappear - set it free and watch it remain.
  113. What about solid-state? by Pinball+Wizard · · Score: 1
    I thought that was going to be the future of non-volatile storage. Magnetic disks with moving parts is getting to be an outdated technology.

    Can anyone comment on the limits of solid-state?

    --

    No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?

  114. Assumptions by fm6 · · Score: 2
    So just because technology X is new and "better" than technology Y, nobody should care about Y any more? That's pretty simplistic.

    Even if Millipede does come to market (a big if) and does so in a predictable time frame (even bigger if) and actually does perform as promised (I won't even go there), there will be a transition period, during which both technologies will compete. During that period, it will be very stupid to say, "Millipede is better, let's not even look at magnetic disks." Predicting what will happen during that period requires an understanding of both technologies.

    Consider monitors. The standard technology is still the CRT. These devices practically define "klunky" and "old fashioned". (Even the name is klunky and old-fashioned. They're called "Cathode Ray Tubes" instead of "Electron Beam Tubes" because the basic technology predates the discovery of the electron!) LCD technology is clearly "better": clearer display, less energy, fewer strained backs... But CRT monitors persist because for most of us, the price/performance level just isn't there.

    __

  115. A more technically detailed article by StCredZero · · Score: 2

    A more technically detailed article can be found at Scientific American. This is not really new news.

    If we hit the limits of current technology in 5 years, and the new stuff is 10 years away, we'll just have drives getting bulkier for 5 years. No big deal.

  116. Efficency? by FortKnox · · Score: 2

    You mean we have to worry about space (might as well add cpu/memory) efficency?

    If you ask me, we shoulda been worrying about even when the technology was/is cheap.....

    --

    --
    Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
  117. Some poeple never have enough by Alien54 · · Score: 3
    I know one guy, now that he has a gigahertz machine and 100 gig of hard drive and a 1.5 gig of ram, chokes it all with 200 to 300 meg graphics files. And complains that he never had this problem with slower machines.

    So in a way, this will be good becauase it will make people program without the potential of infinite expansion.

    Yes the guy is clueless.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  118. DVD-R drives might be getting cheaper... by WuTangClanner · · Score: 1

    ...but the damn media is still as expensive as ever!

    :(

  119. out of space?? by DamienMcKenna · · Score: 1

    RAID? Striping? Network storage servers?

  120. Re:Slowdown, man! by Sayjack · · Score: 1

    I guess I'll stop allocating my swap partition at the outer edge of the platter then :-)

    - Pat

    --

    -- Good judgement comes with experience. -- Experience comes with bad judgement.

  121. Jeesh by milkmandan9 · · Score: 2

    150Gb/in^2 seems like a lot...but let's see here.

    3.5" drive which has a platter radius of about 1.5"...minus an 0.5" spindle gives us a size of 6.28"^2 per platter. At 4 platters per drive (it's normally 4, right?) and two sides per platter (right?) that's 50.24"^2.

    Now, assuming we can safely put 135Gb/in^2 (90% of the superparamagnetic limit), we're looking at 6782.40 Gb/disc==847GB.

    Assuming I can stash three or four hard drives per commodity PC box, that looks like 3.4TB of pr0n^H^H^H^HMP3s.

    And that sounds like a lot. But then again, where would I put the 150 circa 1996 500MB drives that I would need to hold my 75GB of crap, eh?

  122. Plenty of space? by zzen · · Score: 3
    Actually, if 1TB is the possible ceiling for a personal HD in several years - I think we are not talking as much about how to FILL 1TB of data rather then how to MOVE IT arount.

    Because while the HD capacity doubles every time and then, take a look how much the drive throughput developed in the last decade - while we have Ultra160 SCSI or UltraATA 100, the drives don't deliver more then some crawling 20MB/sec, anyway. And they have been at these speeds (orders of magnitude) for a long time.

    So - 1 TB of data is rather problematical to use, without heavy indexing - and even then. Because the biggest bottleneck right now is not the processor, not the HD capacity - but the system throughput (IO,motherboard,RAM etc.)

  123. space will still become cheaper by leuk_he · · Score: 1
    Exactly my point. If you read the article (i think few people do actally read the article) they talk about SAN units and how it would help.

    Somebody made a joke about doublespace, but better storeage algorithms do help to fil up the disk. i.e. ReiserFS does not use 4Kb for every file if the file is 10 bytes. Compression becomes more used if the CPU time to do it becomes cheaper.

    Development does not stop, however you will not have a 1 GB drive in your watch the next 10 years.

    +disclaimer: No I am not comparing ReiserFS with doublespace, reiserfs doesnt have compression in its stable tree (last time i looked)

  124. Re:Absolutely Not True by Junnonen · · Score: 1

    Sure, but competition ensures that solutions are actively being searched for.

    If there weren't any competition, THE harddrive manufacturer most certainly wouldn't throw as much money into research.

  125. Re:Not Andrews - by GroovBird · · Score: 1

    Everyone who's been a kid knows this is from Mary Poppins!

  126. Re:New storage tech? by bbh · · Score: 3

    A number of storage manufacturers have been working on holographic storage along with DARPA and many universities. DARPA has the the Holographic Data Storage System (HDSS) consortium and the PhotoRefractive Information Storage Materials (PRISM) consortium, and IBM, Rockwell and another companies have been working on this. Here is a Scientific American blurb about it:

    http://sciam.com/2000/0500issue/0500toigbox5.html

    Also here is IBM's page about it:

    http://www.almaden.ibm.com/st/projects/holography/

    bbh

  127. Re:Absolutely Not True by quinto2000 · · Score: 1
    There was a great Heinlein story about very long-lived people. Actually, in many of his stories. Anyways, the people were long-lived because they bred themselves to be long-lived. But when they were discovered by the society as a whole, the society thought that they had some secret medical advantage. In the end, with the joint effort of the world, they had found the "secret" -- actually inventing a new method.

    The point is, we can usually find a way around any limit, even if our convictions that we can are not based on reality.

    --
    Ceci n'est pas un post
  128. Back to full-height? by aussersterne · · Score: 2

    How many platters are in the current 3.5"x1" ATA 80GB drives? Seems like just by going back to the 5.25" full-height format we could hit 250-300GB with today's technology. I don't see that as too big a sacrifice.

    A 4-bay RAID case for FH 5.25" drives is about the size of a mini-tower. That's 1200GB in a PC-size format. That's not too bad... And a desktop mid-tower could probably hold two drives. So I think it wouldn't be too hard to keep home users in 1000GB or so without needing lots of extra space.

    Isn't 1000GB on a desktop system enough to hold us for 5 years or so?

    --
    STOP . AMERICA . NOW
    1. Re:Back to full-height? by aussersterne · · Score: 2

      Why do we need 10,000 RPM? What about 7,200 or even 5,400? I've seen 5.25" drives at both of these rotational speeds.

      The current DiamondMax 80MB drive is a 5,400 RPM drive and it still gives transfer rates good enough for full motion NTSC (720x480) video at 2:1 compression. And I get 30+MB/sec sustained out of my 7200RPM IDE drives that are (now) a generation old.

      With such high data density, I don't see the speed issue, especially since even PCs are now starting to use RAID-0 or RAID-5 on a regular basis.

      --
      STOP . AMERICA . NOW
    2. Re:Back to full-height? by jmccullough · · Score: 1

      angular velocity = v/r

      for a 5.25" drive
      angular velocity = 10 000 rpm * 2 pi = 62 832 rad/s
      62 832 rad/s = v / 0.0635 m (0.635 m = ~2.5 in for the radius of the 5.25 drive platter)

      v = 3990 m/s = ~8925 mph


      for a 3.5" drive
      62 832 rad/s = v / 0.0381 m (0.0381 m = ~1.5in)

      v = 2393 m/s = ~5355 mph

      so the 3.5:5.25 ratio for the speed of the particles on the outter edge of the disk is around 1:1.67

      that doesn't seem like much but there's a %463 increase in the kinetic energy of the platters flying around ( assuming the 5.25" platters are 1" longer that the 3.5").

      my math could be wrong (I'm figuring the integral from 0 to the radius 1/2 * (62 832 * r) ^2 * 2 pi dr).

      If I figured that right (going on highschool calculus here, further education comming in a few months) then I'm not sure I'd want something like that spinning around next to me. Imagine if a platter shattered by some freak accident. If the computer fell over or moved significantly the angluar momentum could do some weirdness to the hard drives.

  129. Realistic needs? by sdo1 · · Score: 2

    I think unlike a few years ago, we're at a point now where storage capacity is cheap and overabundant. Most new systems come with 40+G drives and 95% of the people who buy them probably never use anything more than 10G... ever.

    Am I reading the 120% rule correcting in saying that the INCREASE in drive capacity per year is 120% or that the next generation will be 120% of the current generation (ie, 20% higher). If the former, then in 3 years we could be seeing 850 GB drives for the consumer. That would pretty much hold all of my CD and DVD collection.

    -S

    --
    --- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
  130. Not that big of a deal for manufacturers by ageitgey · · Score: 3
    All of the computer makers are currently facing declining sales. Some is to blame for dot coms folding and less businesses buying computers, but many feel that comsumer sales have slowed because that 500hz computer they bought last year is just fine. It's not like the days of 286s where each jump was a major improvement for end users. Most people aren't having a problem reading mail or browsing the web with an "obsolete" 500mhz computer. They just don't see the need for a 1.5ghz model. What does this have to do with hard drives?

    Well, the average user just isn't filling up an 80 gig drive. They don't want 200gig drives. So even if we hit a brick wall in terms of storage per inch, I just don't think the commodity market will be harmed. Once 256gig drives and the like are avaliable to end users, I don't think much more will be needed until more people start using their computers for video recording and other high storage requirements. And if the embedded device manufacturers have their way, that will never happen. Remember the niche markets like video editing don't drive the commodity market.

    Maybe an upper limit on drives will just decrease the number of models a retailer has to sale and thus increase profit. Plus maybe this will give researchers more time to focus on speeding up existing drives and improving reliability.

    --
    Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
    1. Re:Not that big of a deal for manufacturers by CrackElf · · Score: 2

      Hmmm ... well, I am no good at predicting the future, but I remember when people used to say the same thing about 1 gig, and then 10 gig drives. And the consumption has increased as the size increases.

      -CrackElf

      --
      "Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
  131. Who cares? Nanotech will take over. by mookoz · · Score: 4

    IBM's Millipede project is supposed to be viable within the next 5-10 years. So who cares about the clunky old magnetic technology anymore?

  132. Re:Not Andrews - by limejuice · · Score: 1

    In the movie, yes. However, Julie Andrews was the original Eliza Doolittle when My Fair Lady first opened on Broadway. I believe that was her first big break, if I'm not mistaken.
    --

    --
    Daniel J. Kelly
  133. Re:Not Andrews - by limejuice · · Score: 1

    Refer to this.
    --

    --
    Daniel J. Kelly
  134. The mother of ***** by Traicovn · · Score: 3

    Necessity is the mother of invention. Limits are there. We will eventually reach them
    But we will advance, just like we have before. I remember the over-used phrase '28k oughta be enough for anybody.' Nowadays your considered insane to try to run ANYTHING on system with less then 48-64mb. Your considered legacy hardware. As the need advances the technology will. The more IN DEMAND something is, the more R&D dollars that will be spent on it, the more important it will become. There are alternatives out there, and we will eventually find them. We just have to keep looking.

    I'm personally surprised that we are still using magnetic storage. A few years ago people were predicting that OPTICAL would be the way to go. But apparently it wasn't. Magnetic devices prices got driven down as the technology became cheaper and more in-demand.

    Who knows where we may be five to ten years from now, perhaps everything will be stored at a remote location for most people and it will be accessed via thin-clients. Perhaps everyone will have their own miniature raid-aray. Perhaps everything will be stored on miniature removable media, but applications will be served from the net. It will be interesting to find out. But I don't think that we need to worry, as long as we continue to inovate, we will find a solution.

    [Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]

    --

    [Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
    {Traicovn}
    1. Re:The mother of ***** by Zeinfeld · · Score: 2
      Sorry, I have to nit-pick. The more in-demand something is the higher the price will be; it's a simple supply/demand curve

      Only if the supply is fixed, which is not the case. The principal cost of any high tech gadget is the technology. The more buyers those costs are spread over the lower the cost per item. Competition will drive prices down to the cost of production.

      Perhaps US schools should stop teaching economics altogether since a little learning appears to be more dangerous than none. Or maybe economists should stop calling their theories 'laws' as if they were doing physics rather than soft science.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
      Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
    2. Re:The mother of ***** by Genyin · · Score: 1

      Umm... nowadays, 'innovate' means to crush one's competition by means of embrace and extend or other such IcroSmofty ways...
      IcroSmoft has made 'innovate' down there with @#$& and @&*# in /. society, probably lower
      Sorry, couldn't resist ^_^

  135. Re:Not good news for M$ Bloatware.. by srichman · · Score: 2
    Gee, that's a whole new twist on "2010: A Space Odyssey."
    Not to be a mega nerd nitpicker, but Arthur Clarke titled the sequel "2010: Odyssey Two." The cinematic adaptation was "2010: The Year We Make Contact."
  136. A new law of computers by dasunt · · Score: 5

    Your comment gave me a wonderful burst of insight, which I will state as follows:

    Dasunt's Law - Everything inside a computer will evolve to a state where it requires active cooling.

    1st Corollary - Computers will replace furnaces as a source of heating in the home.

    2nd Corollary - Within ten years, computers will come with air conditioning, and will require ducting to the outside.

    3rd Corollary - The richest man in the world in the next century won't make his fortune from software, but from the sale of electricity.

    1. Re:A new law of computers by mlafranc · · Score: 1

      This man lives in British Columbia, Canada

    2. Re:A new law of computers by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 1

      Commentary on the 3rd Corollary - This man is currently selling electricity to California.

      --
      Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
  137. Limits? I don't need your stinking limits. by perlchimp · · Score: 1

    Why is this worrysome? New technology will come along, it always has and always will. Until we are storing bits on superstrings, or whatever the smallest unit of anything in the universe is, I am not going to worry about limits.

  138. The many uses of 150Gbit/square inch by TigerBaer · · Score: 1

    1. Storing the library of congress
    2. Storing the library of congress w/images
    3. Storing the library of congress w/images & korean translation
    4. Storing the library of congress many times in many languages, with true color bitmaps and wav files for those museum handset thingies

    1. Re:The many uses of 150Gbit/square inch by Mr.Pumpkin · · Score: 1

      I've got news for you... The LOC is already using herds of the EMC Symmetrix units mentioned in the article. So yes, they surely could use the 150Gbit/square inch capacities, stuffed into tons of huge arrays. These guys eat storage for breakfast, and they get hungrier all the time!

  139. Interesting...kinda by Smegma4U · · Score: 1

    While I think this article brought up some important points, I think it would have helped if it had looked at more alternative options than just the virtual disk solution.

    Also, the author seems to have this "the sky is falling" mentality in the article - why? It's not like this problem with storage space is going to effect the average user anytime soon. Large corporations will be the ones who are really affected, and if it actually becomes a problem, they'll invest enough money in research to solve it, and we'll break another "impossible" barrier just like we've seen happen time and again in computing. They used to say it was impossible to run a 4 minute mile...and now it's done routinely. So much for predictions from the so-called experts.

    --
    If it's supposed to move and doesn't, use WD-40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape.
  140. You should have seen it coming. by Martigan80 · · Score: 1

    The technology behind the typical HD has been around for a long time. Sure there have been advancement on size and speed, but it is too mechanical for the speeds of todays computers. Now the RAM and processors are puming 1's and 0's faster than a HD can even dream of spinning. Lets delve into biochemical storage, or even 3D storage.

    --
    This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
  141. One good thing comes out of this... by WIAKywbfatw · · Score: 1

    At least it will put a temporary halt to "my hard drive is bigger than your hard drive" arguments.

    Or should that be "my areal density is denser than your areal density"?

    (Is it me or does areal density sound rude?)

    --

    "Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
  142. Re:Not good news for M$ Bloatware.. by eWulf · · Score: 1

    Not to be a mega nerd nitpicker?

    Be proud of being a mega nerd nitpicker dammit!

    --
    "If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" - Will Rogers
  143. Re:Who cares? Nanotech will take over. by 3am · · Score: 1

    not really, i hear those little cantilevers can wear out the storage medium pretty efficiently.

    --

    A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
  144. It doesn't matter by retro128 · · Score: 1

    Technological pundits have been theorizing the crux of any given technology for decades. If you told someone in 1960 that in 40 years everyone would be able to get 40GB drives for $100 in a 3.5" form factor, and 1GHz processors for the same price, and 256MB memory for $40, they'd have you committed. During my time in the computer field I have heard many statements saying that processors will only be able to go so fast, and hard disks will get so big, yadadada. All of these "limits" were imposed by physical limitations just as superparamagnetism is. But then someone (usually IBM) comes out with this whizzbang technology that changes everything, just like the article said. Unlike the article, I don't think that superparamangetism will be any different. A new technology will be out that will address the issue. I trust Moore's Law more than I do the words of doomsayers.

    --
    -R
  145. Re:Not good news for M$ Bloatware.. by TheAwfulTruth · · Score: 1

    Actually any post with "M$" in it should be modded down automatically...

    --
    Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
  146. Bigger Devices? by famazza · · Score: 2

    I don't know if I am being too simplist. But for me, the solution is bigger storage devices, if we can't put more bits on a surface, and we need to store more bits, let's build a bigger surface.

    Please, correct me if I'm being too simplist


    Don't worry, I'm too simplist [to|every]day

    --

    -=-=-=-=
    I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
  147. Slowdown, man! by famazza · · Score: 2

    A full-height 5 1/4 one, like the old IBM PC ones, but with superdense and 10000RPM spinning platters.

    Watch out! Bigger drives, at bigger RPM values, means much higher linear speed near the disk border. Don't forget we have momentum and inertial forces involved. That might be the problem!

    --

    -=-=-=-=
    I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
  148. So no, this is NOT a problem. by CathodeJack · · Score: 1

    Once the storage capacity of a hard disk can only increase by adding platters, large raid arrays are going to get huge fast. Massive databases will take up huge amounts of physical space, eat up a ton of power to run, and that is really, really expensive.

    They already do, but not because of the limitations of drive size. RAIDs are used for redundancy, not just capacity. Case in point: the company I work for manages several relatively large databases. Some of them are over 300GB. Yet none of the drives that hold these databases are over 20GB in size. There are larger drives available, but we have specifically decided to limit our RAID member size to less than 20GB. This is not to consume more power and space but because of the relative risk of drive failure. It takes a lot less time to rebuild the data on a 20GB member drive than a 50GB or larger drive.

    Even though drive size keeps increasing, we will probably continue to limit our RAID member drives to 20GB or less (at least until we can no longer buy drives as small as 20GB). Given the choice between a small, cheap, power efficient 560GB single drive or a big, power hungry, expensive 32 member array of 20GB drives, I'll take the array any day. If one of the array drives fails, I just have to restore 20GB of data before I'm back up to speed, and in the meantime, the database can still service requests. If the single 560GB drive fails, the database is out of action until I can restore all 560GB of data.

    It's really just a question of how much data you're willing to entrust to a single drive.

  149. Just so long as prices keep dropping. by CathodeJack · · Score: 5

    The result of this is that when the 1 TB hard drives come out, they will of course be larger in size than the 80 GB hard drives of today

    The way I see it, only laptops and other small physical footprint devices will be affected by this. For the rest of us, this will just mean the ressurrection of the 5.25" Full Height drive bay (Remember those?).

    The article, as far as I read it, makes no mention on what's most important to most drive purchasers: the price. Most computer users out there look for storage solutions that will fit within their budget, not just their computer case.

    So long as the $/MB ratio keeps dropping even after the physical size restriction is reached, I'll still be pretty happy. And I can see no reason why it shouldn't. Once the maximum paramagnetically allowed data density has been reached, the only venue for drive companies to compete with each other will be drive price.

    I also suspect the drive manufactures will start concentrating on making their drives faster as another field of competition. So instead of seeing more and more sodding enormous drives, we'll start seeing merely huge drives that are either really really cheap or really really fast. And that's just fine by me.

    1. Re:Just so long as prices keep dropping. by RALE007 · · Score: 1

      Amen brother. That was the most intelligent thing I've read all day.

      --
      Beware blue cats moving at .99c
  150. Not so fast... by powerlinekid · · Score: 1

    *Warning: Master of the Obvious Statement* All this means is that we have to look outside magnetic disk as storage medium... which from what I've understand we've been able to accomplish and should be available just before we top out our magnetic disk. Some examples: Optical Storage, holding 1 terabyte per square centimeter . Or how about organic storage. Don't forget about the storage capablilites of beowulf clusters and server farms (granted that can get very expensive very quickly). And god only knows what IBM is working on. All I'm saying is that before anyone panics(then again this problem is more aimed at entities such as the IRS, places that need that much storage and not the typical pc user), just take a look around to see whats out there.

    --

    can't sleep slashdot will eat me
  151. But I have... by kypper · · Score: 1
    and tho I might have a lot of porn, there is not a pedobyte of space ;o)

    Windows XP comes with your own free gallows though! Now THAT is a good use of space!

    Screw 3...

  152. Absolutely Not True by andres32a · · Score: 1

    I dont se how hardisk manufactures can agree on this. Its actually very simple... whoever solves the problem will sell more disks and then get copied by everyone else. And someone WILL SOLVE THE PROBLEM... why??? its called competition!

  153. Limits oh Hard-disk space? by 10Ghz · · Score: 1

    No problem. If you can't make hard-drives with more density, then just get more. If the limit is say 500gigs, then just get two 500gig hard-drives, problem solved! Alot more room for all that pr0n (not that I have any, no sir-ree!)

    --
    Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
  154. Re:Limits of Hard-disk space? by 10Ghz · · Score: 1

    I had a 10Gb HD, but as it got full, I added a 30Gb ATA100 HD. Hmmmm... I guess third HD wouldn't hurt. My Windoze is on the 10Gb HD, and all those games are eating up alot of space!

    --
    Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
  155. Standardize man! by Floin · · Score: 1

    It seems like the big companies like IBM and EMC need to collaborate and come up with a standard for array controllers.
    The array controllers are where they make the majority of the money from selling the arrays, but they also keep the prices of the arrays high.
    By standardizing, instead of selling hundreds of systems a year for $450,000, they could sell thousands at $45,000

    --
    -1 X -1 = +1 is stupid and evil. --Gene Ray
  156. Re:Who cares? Nanotech will take over. by FriendlyPrimate · · Score: 1

    I've read articles on this technology before. The media can be erased by applying heat to the platters. The indentations simply 'melt' away. However, I don't know how simple it is to selectively erase individual bits...

  157. Not good news for M$ Bloatware.. by Unknown+Bovine+Group · · Score: 2
    Good Lord! We'll all have to buy RAID arrays just to install Windows 2010!

    --
    m00.
  158. Who needs the space, anyway? by Tuxinatorium · · Score: 1

    Even if magnetic hard drives max out around 300 GB or so, how could you possibly need more space than that? I've managed to survive with a 6 GB hard drive this long. What useful purpose, if any, could an average person have for a terabyte or larger hard drive?

  159. oh no...superparamagnetic by sewagemaster · · Score: 1

    quick, rouge, i need your help. magneto has beaten me in battle again :)

  160. T1m3 to ImProVise by D1ScDuC3 · · Score: 1

    If the technology wont keep up w/us then we will have to inprovise ... Its ALL Ab00t the multiple Hard Disk arrays.. and Raid cant hurt either.. ...--||--..To MucH T3cHn01g13 n0t enough 71m3..--||--... After all how much space is not enough space 80GB??

    --
    "Well, if you don't want your relatives and friends to die, help me spread the news." -Alex Chiu
  161. New storage tech? by O'doyle · · Score: 1

    If they knew that this limit was coming up inevitably due to physics, why didn't one of these storage manufacturers start working on holographic storage more seriously?

  162. Use For One Petabyte Storage... by CptDrake · · Score: 1

    Anyone Read A.C. Clark's "3001: Final Oddesy"? (SP) In His Notes At The End, He Mentions An Article (Where He Gets His Whole "Storing A Lifetime's Experiances On A Petabyte Storage Device") That Has Some Possiblities. I'll Dig Up My Copy Later & Quote That Section (Along With The Info On The Original Article)

    --
    Chaos, Panic, Disorder!?!? My Work Here Is DONE!