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The Past and Future of the Hard Drive

Posted by chrisd on from the 120-tb-and-only-a-bernoulli-for-backup dept.

Snags writes "Brian Hayes of American Scientist has written a nice little historical review of hard drive technology, from the first hard drive (nice pic) made by IBM in 1956 to what may be available in 10-15 years. He muses on how to fill up a 120 TB hard drive with text, photos, audio, and video (60,000 hours of DVD's). Kind of ironic that this came in my mailbox today considering IBM's announcement."

1 of 223 comments (clear)

  1. 120 TB == one snapshot by Gis_Sat_Hack · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There are already a number of Terra satellites downlinking data at about 4GB/hr, circling from pole to pole in orbits lasting under 2hrs.

    There are multitudes of airborne surveys churning out digital snapshots at 400MB a frame.

    Mosaiced together at 1m resolution with R,G,B and mean height above sea level, how much storage will a single global snapshot of the earth take ?

    Then consider for historical and environmental reasons, most urban/semi rural areas deserve a mosaiced snap at least once a year.

    120 TB is just the start . . .