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A 1.2 Petabyte Hard Drive?

Angry_Admin writes "Rather than spend millions of dollars for an array of hard drives when you can have all that storage on just one drive? A story at P2P.net US inventor Michael Thomas, owner of Colossal Storage, says he's the first person to solve non-contact optical spintronics which will in turn ultimately result in the creation of 3.5-inch discs with a million times the capacity of any hard drive - 1.2 petabytes of storage, to be exact. According to the article, In the past, data storage has only been able to orient the direction a field of electrons as they move around a molecule, Thomas said. "But now there's a way to rotate or spin the individual electrons that make up, or surround, the molecule," he says. He expects a finished product to be on the market in about four to five years, adding the cost would probably be in the range of $750 each."

37 of 431 comments (clear)

  1. Just A Second by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I think I've already got one of these. It's right between my cold fusion device and my copy of Duke Nukem Forever.

  2. That's a lot.. by swilde23 · · Score: 1, Funny

    Of pron... or maybe mp3's. Hell, I can afford to store both now.

    --
    There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand this sig, and those that beat up people who do.
    1. Re:That's a lot.. by Kenshin · · Score: 2, Funny

      MP3s?

      At that point, one has to ask why bother with compression?

      --

      Does it make you happy you're so strange?

    2. Re:That's a lot.. by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2, Funny

      Bah, 100GB. With all his other claims, I'm sure this guy already has the 100Tb network ready at that time. However, a few years from that, you'll not need it any more because you can get his great prediction program, which just will accurately predict whatever traffic you would get on your network, and therefore you can avoid to actually transfer the data.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  3. Blast from the past by suso · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sounds kinda like American Computer Company

  4. Star Trek? by 77Punker · · Score: 5, Funny

    "But now there's a way to rotate or spin the individual electrons that make up, or surround, the molecule"

    Yeah, they do the stuff with the electrons using Heisenberg compensators.

    1. Re:Star Trek? by cgenman · · Score: 4, Funny

      Looks legitamate to me.

      It is a simple question of getting your entangled particle encryption to spin your atomic holographic optical nanostorage drive in an accredited OLED Display_n_Store handheld device reader, thus creating standing quantum waves in the ferroelectric perovskite molecules. With sufficient surface conduction, why, you could induce resonant absorption excitation via plasmon photonic bandgap crystals. Just think of high-k dipole dielectric material that can then be made reversible with non-dissipative power, all thanks to the Einstein / Plank theorem of Energy Quantum!

      This unique nanotechnology will set the stage for the 5 exabytes of new data generated every year world wide and growing through molecular dissociation.

      This assumes, of course, that you have a capacitor of sufficient size to handle 1.21 jigawatts of flux.

  5. Yikes! by toupsie · · Score: 2, Funny

    Can you imagine what happens when this thing crashes? That is going to be one long restore...

    --
    Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
  6. To answer the question by harmonica · · Score: 5, Funny

    A 1.2 Petabyte Hard Drive?

    No, 640 TB should be enough for everyone.

  7. Re:A million times? by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


    Um... 1.2 PB is definitely *not* "a million times the capacity of any hard drive", unless you're still stuck with 1.2 GB hard drives.

    The author was probably using Imperial Petabytes, not Metric Petabytes.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  8. Obligatory Jokes: by thomble · · Score: 4, Funny
    "Finally, I don't need to trim down my porn collection!"
    "Finally, I can cache the internet!"
    "The hard drive racket will never let this see the light of day!"
    "RAI(E)D: Redundant Array of Insanely Expensive Disks."
    "Now, if he was talking about RAM, I'd be impressed."

    "B-B-B-But Moore said!...."

  9. Price by professorfalcon · · Score: 5, Funny
    the cost would probably be in the range of $750 each

    Is that before or after rebate?


  10. Who need so much data storage? by LinuxRulz · · Score: 2, Funny

    When they ship, I'll order 2 of them. They'll be perfect to make a backup of that /dev/random file.

  11. Cheap storage for the rest of us. by AHuxley · · Score: 2, Funny
    Finally cheap storage for all of us.
    We can now put all our data into 1 folder and run a p2p app.

    In capitalist west you backup 1.2 Petabyte of data.
    In Soviet Union KGB have same 1.2 Petabyte of your data.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  12. If 2. did occur by nightsweat · · Score: 4, Funny

    Would you then have a peta- cemetary for your data?

    --

    the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
    1. Re:If 2. did occur by StikyPad · · Score: 3, Funny

      I thought that's where animal rights advocates go to die...

    2. Re:If 2. did occur by Starcub · · Score: 2, Funny

      Not if the data could still be recovered by employing a peta-detective.

    3. Re:If 2. did occur by javamann · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just think, what would you call a really big jpeg.... a peta file.

  13. Re:1.2 Petabyte equals by SilentOneNCW · · Score: 1, Funny

    It's good to know that Data has enough space to store all of the files shared on Kazaa. Now, if only he had some speakers...

  14. Re:Predictions of "4-5 years away" never are by ThomK · · Score: 5, Funny
    how many times are we promised phenomenal increases in storage, processing power, batteries, etc that are only "4-5 years away"?

    117.
    --

    TK

  15. Re:1.2 Petabyte equals by geobeck · · Score: 2, Funny

    Didn't he say in the second episode of the first season (The Naked Now), something like...

    I am fully functional, and trained in multiple techniques...

    ...and give Tasha Yar a robotic ride?

    --
    Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
  16. Moving storage is the fastest way to move data by j-stroy · · Score: 2, Funny

    As data densities have increased, physically moving the storage devices has become faster than broad band transmission of data between storage devices.
    ie shipping hard drives rather than using fiber. (or for that matter using carrier pigeons and FlashRam.)
    How long will it be before we have a coast to coast pneumatic tube system to ship data?

    Or even better, an evacuated ballistic subway for delivering harddrives..

    Come to think of it, how about a continuous loop of "data tape" which encircles the globe at ground level, and orbits within an evacuated pipeline.

    heh heh. Its not really that far fetched.

  17. Just in time for MS Word 2010 to ship! by CFD339 · · Score: 2, Funny

    At least we'll have enough space to store it!

    --
    The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
  18. Just enough... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Just enough space for a Vista install!

  19. Yeah but after by hobotron · · Score: 2, Funny


    1.2 PB is all well and good until you format it and the fucker only has 300 Gigs.
    (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_drive#.22Market ing.22_capacity_versus_true_capacity/)

    --
    There is truth in humor.
  20. colosalstorage.com Credibility? by BigBlockMopar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh my... I just went to their webpage. I haven't clicked anything, but their lack of product and development focus and the sheer incredulity of some of their products is reminiscent of the stuff advertised in the back of Mad Magazine. All they need is X-ray glasses, sea monkeys and a secret decoder ring. And a hoverconversion kit for 1981-1983 Delorean DMC-12 sports cars.

    --
    Fire and Meat. Yummy.
  21. Silly, at best by Pres.+Ronald+Reagan · · Score: 0, Funny

    Think of the uses for which the average person uses his hard drive:

    Email; web; instant messaging. Twenty jigabytes at MOST.

    Now think of what the person who will fill this sized hard drive to capacity will use it for:

    Pirated music; pirated software; perverse poronographic imagery (most certainly pirated), and other anti-social material.

    There is absolutely no rational reason that any law abiding citizen could EVER need a hard drive of this size.

    In fact, perhaps there should be a law on hard drives over 100 GB; I know I certainly don't have over 100 GB of emails or IM logs or web cache.

    Just a thought.

    --

    Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born.
    --Ronald Reagan
  22. Re:Eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    2. So my PETABYTES of data don't all go down the tube at once.


    At first I was thinking about all the pron I could store on it and the agony of it all being lost at once. Then I realized it might be a bad idea to have porn on a petabyte storage device. They would have to be stored in files and they might be called petafiles. This would suck! All my pron is over 18 (as thier sites say) but i'm not sure if some bible thumping do gooder would belive me if I associated with known petafiles.
  23. Re:Backups, anybody? by jpatters · · Score: 3, Funny

    I really can't imagine filling a drive that's a thousand times the size of what I want until we have full-resolution movies for our 108" plasma screens that have the same pixel pitch as computer LCDs (so.. what... about 10800p?), encoded at something more or less equivalent to 45.1ch WAV audio and video as bitmaps reading at 60fps.

    1.2 Petabytes is enough for only 1.89 hours of 25,380 x 10,800 (2.35:1) video, at 16 bits per color channel, 120 frames per second (as long as we are being ridiculous, lets have an even multiple of 24 please), and with 400 separate languages each with 50 channels of CD quality audio. Uncompressed of course. That would be about 199 GB per second. Note that the audio here is less than 1 percent of the total.

    --
    "Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
  24. Re:Backups, anybody? by BlackSabbath · · Score: 2, Funny

    Don't worry - I've already backed up my petabyte porn collection - on a device called the Internet.

  25. Re:That's nothing by aventius · · Score: 5, Funny

    Chuck Norris has already invented all of these but is too humble to take any credit.

    --
    [insert lame joke here]
  26. Re:Eh? by TenLow · · Score: 2, Funny

    It'd be more fun to have RAID-0 and set some record for most data lost in a single powersurge.

  27. Larger storage devices are not the answer... by Ingolfke · · Score: 2, Funny

    I've been working on perfecting my algorithm for 1-bit compression and should have it ready to go in the next 3 to 5 years. Once released you'll be able to encrypt and compress all of your data down to a single bit. The algorithm will run effectively on processors found in most cell phones; it's not processor intensive. This will eliminate the need for big storage devices and high bandwidth connections.

    1. Re:Larger storage devices are not the answer... by rlp · · Score: 2, Funny

      Ingolfke wrote: I've been working on perfecting my algorithm for 1-bit compression ...

      Sorry, beat you to it. Check this out: '0'. Pretty impressive, isnt' it?

      --
      [Insert pithy quote here]
  28. Re:That's nothing by StikyPad · · Score: 4, Funny

    I tried cutting and pasting your comment into your sig, but it's not working.

  29. Re:Eh? by leonmergen · · Score: 2, Funny

    If I owned some giant company needing hundreds of terabytes of storage, I'd use these as economical backup storage. If you're storing terabytes, you can afford to throw away a few 750 dollar drives.

    I don't think the warez kiddo's are that wealthy... :-)

    --
    - Leon Mergen
    http://www.solatis.com
  30. Phantom? by cspring007 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I hear the makers of the phantom gaming system are going to use this in their product.