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Terabyte Drive to Debut Later this Year

mytrip writes to mention the news that Hitachi will be releasing a terabyte storage drive this year. "These large drives also will get incorporated into televisions and personal video recorders. Hitachi, among others, already sells TVs with integrated hard drives in Japan and other markets. While large drives start out expensive, the price drops relatively quickly. Computer makers pay something in the 30-cent range for a gigabyte when buying hard drives, Healy said. The price at retail is around 50 cents or less."

131 comments

  1. Discs should catch up by Cybert4 · · Score: 1, Informative

    Some of these much-slower latency discs should catch up and overtake hard-disks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile _Disc mentions "a demonstrated maximum of 3.9 TB for 3 micrometer separation on a 12 cm disc."

    Finally we can start backing up our entire hard disks. Even these new ones!

    1. Re:Discs should catch up by abscissa · · Score: 0, Troll

      Am I the only one who remembers countless Slashdot stories about 50 GB discs, 500 GB discs, 10 TB crystal discs, etc.? Of course none of these products ever materialise.

    2. Re:Discs should catch up by Kyoushu · · Score: 1, Funny

      I not only do I remember them, I believed them. How foolish I was. I mean come on, 500GB hard drives, are we really going to see them in our lifetimes? Next they'll be putting up stories about how processors are going to get faster in the future.

    3. Re:Discs should catch up by C32 · · Score: 1

      He's right though; Harddrive and CPU capacity/speed has always moved steadily ahead while holodiscs are more like cold fusion - always around the corner, but never getting there..

    4. Re:Discs should catch up by JoshRosenbaum · · Score: 1

      I've been reading about holodiscs since about 1998. Back then they were going to get up to sizes like 500gb and such. Guess how many I've seen on the consumer market. 0. This may be of use to a corporation, if it finally comes out, but us consumers will not probably see this for a long time. Even the wikipedia article you point to says as much.

    5. Re:Discs should catch up by dbIII · · Score: 1
      Finally we can start backing up our entire hard disks. Even these new ones!
      Tapes still have not yet gone away and are not going to while they are still a good idea - it's just the drives are expensive for the large capacity formats and the media isn't paticularly cheap either.
  2. Gezzz. by WarlockD · · Score: 1

    Will there ever be an upper limit to hard drives? I know we just started using perpendicular technology, but there must be some kind of physical limit to the platters. Another question is why is it hard to find SCSI drives in these high capacities? Or at least in newer SAS drives.

    1. Re:Gezzz. by GigsVT · · Score: 2, Funny

      SCSI is basically dead. It's just a scam to get more money out of people that are stuck in 1992. Just ignore it and go with modern technology like SATA.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    2. Re:Gezzz. by Amouth · · Score: 3, Insightful

      not true.. SCSI is still alive an working and will continue for along time..

      SATA is just starting out and will have may years ahead of it - but it will have to prove it's self

      there hasn't been a worth wile SATA disk on the market long enough to prove the reliability of them above scsi.

      on top SATA lacks alot of the higher end functions that SCSI offers.. this is why for large amounts of storage via SATA to data centers you will see the SATA drives in a box that is then connected to the servers via iSCSI and fiber chanel.

      sure for the desktop/workstation/small server market yes scsi is going away but when you use the true abilitys of what makes SCSI great SATA drives have a long way to go.

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
    3. Re:Gezzz. by Anubis350 · · Score: 1

      SAS is current gen SCSI's sucessor and actually can use sata discs on a sas backplane (though not the other way around, and sas *is* faster albiet more expensive than sata). It scales up very well and is incredibly fast.

      --
      "goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
    4. Re:Gezzz. by WarlockD · · Score: 1

      Yea, its why I asked about it:P Biggest drive I have seen is a 300gb 10k RPM SAS drive. But havn't seen a drive bigger than that for SCSI or SAS.

      I deal with alot of Enterprise hard drives and its intresting to note that if you put a 300gb U320 Segate and a 300gb SAS Segate, they look exactly the same except for the interface.

    5. Re:Gezzz. by GigsVT · · Score: 3, Insightful

      there hasn't been a worth wile SATA disk on the market long enough to prove the reliability of them above sc

      What? I've got some pretty old SATA disks in some of our ACNC RAIDs. No failures out of 32 disks. Seagate 7200.7, Date code 04-167, 167th day of 2004 I guess. That's over 2 years old.

      The great part about SATA is that since they aren't a complete rip-off like SCSI, you can replace them every 3-4 years instead of running them until they fail and are stupidly small compared to modern disks.


      this is why for large amounts of storage via SATA to data centers you will see the SATA drives in a box that is then connected to the servers via iSCSI and fiber chanel.


      Yes this is a fine idea. I have no problem using iSCSI or fiber channel or even old SCSI for RAID->Computer interfaces. SATA doesn't have any sort of standardized external cabling standard for that use.

      But for the disks themselces, it's stupid to buy SCSI or SAS disks and pay 3 times more just for a name.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    6. Re:Gezzz. by doti · · Score: 1
      Will there ever be an upper limit to hard drives?
      Of course there is a limit. I has something to do with the number of elemental particles in the universe. Duh!
      --
      factor 966971: 966971
    7. Re:Gezzz. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      > why is it hard to find SCSI drives in these high capacities?

      SCSI/SAS/FC drives typically spin at 10k or 15k RPM, compared to 7.2k RPM for ATA drives. The higher rotational velocity means more work to keep the heads on track, so the data densities aren't quite as high. Higher rotational velocity also causes more aerodynamic turbulence at the platter edges, which can make the platters vibrate. Most enterprise 3.5" disks actually use 2.5" platters in order to keep the disk edges farther away from the case to minimize the turbulence.
      The enterprise class drives also devote more of the platter area to error correction. If you look at the uncorrectable error rate for enterprise class vs. desktop class drives, you will see about a 10x higher uncorrectable error rate for desktop class drives.
      So smaller platter, lower density, and more bits for error correction are the primary factors which cause enterprise drives to be lower capacity than desktop drives.

      -- Chris Caudle

    8. Re:Gezzz. by mrchaotica · · Score: 1
      I deal with alot of Enterprise hard drives and its intresting to note that if you put a 300gb U320 Segate and a 300gb SAS Segate, they look exactly the same except for the interface.

      That's likely because they are exactly the same except for the interface.

      Now, the reason you haven't seen any higher-capacity SAS drives is because they likely don't bother to make them in 7200 (or even 5400?) RPM versions, like the high-capacity SATA drives are.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    9. Re:Gezzz. by devilsammo · · Score: 0

      And because the SATA drives work in a SAS backplane....

    10. Re:Gezzz. by jabuzz · · Score: 1, Insightful

      So when I need a disk that spins faster than 7200RPM and has a capacity bigger than 150GB which SATA drive do you suggest that I buy? Or perhaps I need a drive that spins faster than 10K RPM, which SATA drive do you suggest I buy in that scenario?

      You buy a SCSI/SAS drive because you need the spindle speed to support the increased number of I/O's per second that the faster spindle speeds SCSI gives you. Do you need that on the desktop, probably not. Is it essential for large percentage of enterprise loads, absolutely.

      As a side note at the moment SAS drives are still quite a bit more expensive than your old fashioned U320 SCSI drives, so I am still buying U320 SCSI drives as I cannot justify the increased cost of SAS. I am sure it will change once the SAS volumes start to increase though.

    11. Re:Gezzz. by mqatrombone · · Score: 1

      Don't forget SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)! The greatness of SCSI with the cabling of SATA.

      --
      If 76 Trombones really led the big parade, why did they have anyone else in it?
    12. Re:Gezzz. by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      ...you might as well use SATA drives if you want high capacity (at the cost of performance), even in an otherwise-SCSI setup. Is that what you're getting at?

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    13. Re:Gezzz. by Amouth · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "That's over 2 years old"

      2 years isn't that long of a time compared to SCSI drives - life span is important, sure SATA drives are cheep compared to SCSI and can be replaced more often but do you account for the man hours and/or loss of production do too having to replace drives at the end of their life cycle.

      give SATA 5-6 years being stable in the market and i am sure that they will evolve and take over - i like the ideas that drive SATA but it has not yet proven it's self over SCSI yet, so when required to put something into production that needs max reliability people still use SCSI and they will.

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
    14. Re:Gezzz. by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      You need to ask the hard disk makers why they aren't making higher spindle speed SATA. The truth is so they can extract more money for the exact same product, but good luck getting them to admit that.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    15. Re:Gezzz. by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      You can have your 5 year old SCSI drives that are 1/20th the size of my new SATA drives.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    16. Re:Gezzz. by muldoonaz · · Score: 1

      you seem to be missing out on the key argument here. Drive capacity, speed, money... nothing matters when you're spending countless manhours repairing / replacing a failed HDD. SCSI has the reliability that SATA has yet to prove. If it was my choice for a mission critical server, I'd spend the $2k for a SCSI array instead of $600 on a SATA.

    17. Re:Gezzz. by WuphonsReach · · Score: 2, Informative

      Will there ever be an upper limit to hard drives? I know we just started using perpendicular technology, but there must be some kind of physical limit to the platters. Another question is why is it hard to find SCSI drives in these high capacities? Or at least in newer SAS drives.

      From what I've read over the past year, perpendicular recording supposedly will offer densities somewhere between 2x and 5x over existing longitudinal recording methods. That puts 3.5" SATA/IDE drive somewhere in the range of 1TB to 2.5TB before they hit the wall again. For 2.5" SCSI, 600MB up to 1.5TB. I suspect that things will top out around 3x-4x densities over existing drives. (GMR longitudinal recording was supposed to bring us greater gains then it did. You can look back at the original announcements of bit densities and then look at what finally made it to market at the high end.)

      SCSI drives are a different form factor. They use smaller platters inside to allow for higher rotational velocities (10k/15k RPM) and faster seek times. That limits their capacity per platter.

      (I did all the math about 3 months ago for another article, looking at existing bit densities vs what perpendicular recording bit densities were estimated to be at the upper end.)

      --
      Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
    18. Re:Gezzz. by Amouth · · Score: 1

      thank you... someone understands what i am trying to point out..

      manhour costs are far higher than drive costs

      --
      '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
    19. Re:Gezzz. by Wdomburg · · Score: 1

      SATA doesn't have any sort of standardized external cabling standard for that use.

      eSATA.

      But for the disks themselces, it's stupid to buy SCSI or SAS disks and pay 3 times more just for a name.

      Less stupid to pay 3 times more for speed and reliability.

    20. Re:Gezzz. by Maru+Dubshinki · · Score: 1

      Naw. After all, one could always concoct some theoretical solution involving virtual particles or pocket universes.

      Now, if you had said Planck-space (for density) and Planck-time (seek times?), then you'd be onto something.

      --
      Enquiring minds want to know!
    21. Re:Gezzz. by Grave · · Score: 1

      You do understand that the only difference between SCSI and SATA drives is the interface and controller, right (excluding capacities)? SCSI drives are typically certified for a longer MTBF, but plenty of SATA drives are being certified for equal durations.

      The only reason to stick with SCSI is if you already have a huge investment in the infrastructure and cannot afford to transition to SATA. The increased capacity available and reduced cost makes a pretty compelling argument.

    22. Re:Gezzz. by Lucractius · · Score: 1

      The presence of an established investment in scsi actualy is the reason it remains popular.

      SataII is by far the best youll get in your desktop, massive drives, good prices, and if you realy need it, a solid hardware raid controler for them (at the moment my favourite is an 8 way sata2 raid controler that uses a PCI-e 4x slot :) ) to enable larger array sizes (2TB arrays for movies or whatever else) and delivers phenomenal performance.

      In an enterprise situation though. these drives, havent been available long enough, sata2 has only JUST gotten close to catching up to scsi feature wise, with the NCQ and other features its definatly a worthwile interface for new servers. But If your filling a rack with hardware, You cant limit yourself the way sata does. Sata with its one drive per connector, prevents large scale connectivity needed in high throughput and reliablitity focused servers.

      I have an old PCI SCSI controller and i could attach in the very least 14 drives on it, shared between internal and external connectors over 2 chains. scis still has major territory on sata in this regard, storage density and scalability.

      Sata has improved and scsi is no longer an order of magnitude better than destkop drives in terms of performance. But scsi was never all about the drives, the other technology in scsi is what keeps it in the enterprise arena, external connect interfaces, higher drive per controler ratio, etc.

      But beyond this, If you have a scsi datacenter, with hot swapable arrays of hard drives that have been running for the last 2 years... yould be mad to switch drive techs, thats why scsi remains entrenched in enterprise, cause its been there working quietly for this long that its a Known factor in large contingency, budgeting, and capacity calculations used by big buisness bean counters.

      --
      XML - A clever joke would be here if /. didn't mangle tag brackets.
    23. Re:Gezzz. by hedwards · · Score: 1

      Yes and no. When each bit could be made out of the smallest particle and on a sufficiently large platter you would reach a limit to the physical capacity of a hard disk.

      At which point, there would be the potential for using what would at that point be obscene clock speeds for processors and huge amounts of ram to compress everything down to a tiny hash; then reverse the process when needing to use it.

      Well, if you can fantasize so can I. OTOH, how many times have people said something couldn't be done and been wrong. Hopefully I will be wrong about this being impossible in the next 20 years.

    24. Re:Gezzz. by Agripa · · Score: 1

      As the magnetic domains written to the disk become smaller in volume the particles making up the magnetic media on the disk have to become smaller also. The super paramagnetic limit is reached when thermal energy alone is enough to alter them. Perpendicular recording makes better use of the available volume of material and lowers the surface area needed for each written domain.

      Enterprise drives are optimized specifically for low access time which requires higher rotation speeds to lower latency and smaller platters to lower seek time. Since they are typically used in large arrays to further raise the number of operations per second, storage capacity is secondary.

    25. Re:Gezzz. by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      What manhours?

      I haven't replaced SATA drives any more than SCSI. We have about 40 of them in RAID service and none of us remembers ever replacing any of them.

      PATA is another story, we have some PATA RAIDs in the past and those did see higher drive failure rates. It still wasn't terrible, maybe 2 disks a year out of 50.

      As for mission critical, if the choice is between a single SCSI RAID, and triple redundant mirrors with SATA for the same price, I'll take the triple redundant SATA in a heartbeat. I guess if you work for the government or something so you are wasting other people's money, it doesn't matter if you spend $200,000 on what you could get for $15,000.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    26. Re:Gezzz. by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      That's cool. 2 meters might be a little constraining, but anything's better than paying $250 every 3 months for a new external SCSI cable, because they mysteriously just start acting up.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    27. Re:Gezzz. by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      You cant limit yourself the way sata does. Sata with its one drive per connector, prevents large scale connectivity needed in high throughput and reliablitity focused servers.

      If the cabling is a problem, there's plenty of backplane based SATA RAIDS. SATA connector is designed like SCA SCSI, it's inherently well suited for backplane use.

      If you mean something like a shared SCSI bus situation, I think those are going to be a less common requirement. Besides you can get SATA->iSCSI RAIDs if you want something SAN-like.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  3. Idle speculation by Red+Flayer · · Score: 3, Insightful
    FTA:
    Drive density effectively doubles every two years and increases steadily over the two-year period; hence, a terabyte drive is on the horizon, Healy said.
    What a waste of space. This is not about a product to be released, it's just a way to fill some space so that maybe someone will click on some ads.

    The only thing of interest in the entire article is at the end, when it mentions that the hard drive is reaching its 50th birthday/anniversary/whatever you want to call it. More interesting might have been a brief timeline showing hard drive advances over that half-century.
    --
    "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  4. regardless by krell · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Regardless, I know as soon as I get one, I'll have it filled within 8 months.

    --
    Where were you when the voynix came?
    1. Re:regardless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It takes you an entire 8 months to collect a terabyte of porn?!? Most slashdotters could fill that u[ in a couple weeks!

  5. HDD 50th by Enoxice · · Score: 2, Informative

    I could've sworn that...oh, that's right: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/ 30/2124225

    --
    Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
  6. Sure, It's Big... by Steendor · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...but at not quite 0.91 TiB, I couldn't help feeling gypped if I bought one of these.

    1. Re:Sure, It's Big... by ragefan · · Score: 1
      ...but at not quite 0.91 TiB, I couldn't help feeling gypped if I bought one of these.

      Plus, something tells me we might just need those 0.09 TiB for the Vista SP1 update.


  7. Terabyte? by another_fanboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Are they referring to a terabyte as 1000 or 1024 gigabytes?

    1. Re:Terabyte? by AcidLacedPenguiN · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      does that extra 24gb of ladies' naked bodies really make a difference anyway?

      --
      disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
    2. Re:Terabyte? by jo42 · · Score: 2, Funny

      This is in marketing Terabytes, so 999.99 gigabytes.

    3. Re:Terabyte? by Dasaan · · Score: 1

      1000 Gigs, unformatted.

      --
      XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
    4. Re:Terabyte? by DanQuixote · · Score: 2



      The formal Metric definition of Tera is 1,000,000,000,000 - or 10^12

      Please ignore the "artistic license" that computer scientists have taken with regard to 1,000 almost equals 1,024.

      --
      "We think people rightly feel that once they buy something, it stays bought," --Suw Charman, Open Rights Grp
    5. Re:Terabyte? by Zippy_wonderslug · · Score: 0

      1000 gigabytes, so we have to wait for the 1.5 TB or so drives to have any thing to get excited about.

    6. Re:Terabyte? by Clover_Kicker · · Score: 3, Funny

      > does that extra 24gb of ladies' naked bodies
      > really make a difference anyway?

      Yes. Yes it does.

    7. Re:Terabyte? by gstoddart · · Score: 1
      Please ignore the "artistic license" that computer scientists have taken with regard to 1,000 almost equals 1,024.

      It's not artistic license. It's about even powers of two and not wasting any bits/having anything which has a logically valid ID but no physical correlation that you have to remember to prune.

      You'll notice people haven't started rounding down memory sizes.

      Cheers
      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    8. Re:Terabyte? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just don't use a prefix like 'tebi' or anything so ridiculous.

    9. Re:Terabyte? by BlackCobra43 · · Score: 1

      You must be new here.

      --
      I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
    10. Re:Terabyte? by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 1

      It's not artistic license. It's about even powers of two

      It's about using base-ten prefixes to describe base-two values. It's not "artistic" license, just the etymological kind.

    11. Re:Terabyte? by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      And are those gigbytes 1000 or 1024 kilobytes? And are those kilobytes 1000 or 1024 bytes?

      Since it's probably the former, this drive is likely 10^9 bytes rather than 2^30, shortchanging us by 73,741,824 bytes (or 73.7 GiB)!

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    12. Re:Terabyte? by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      Doh! Make that 10^12, 2^40, and 99,511,627,776 (99.5 GiB) respectively. (Stupid exponents...)

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    13. Re:Terabyte? by Valthan · · Score: 1

      I think you mean, "Are those GB 1000 or 1024 MB? And are those MB 1000 or 1024 KB? And are those KB 1000 or 1024 B? etc.

      --
      --Valthan
    14. Re:Terabyte? by AcidLacedPenguiN · · Score: 1

      flamebait for asking a deeply philosophical question? What is slashdot coming to?

      --
      disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
    15. Re:Terabyte? by another_fanboy · · Score: 1

      Whether it's 73.7 or 99.5 GiB, it's still a good chunk of space.

    16. Re:Terabyte? by swillden · · Score: 1

      Are they referring to a terabyte as 1000 or 1024 gigabytes?

      I really hope they mean 10^12 when they say terabyte, because it'd be confusing as hell if they meant 1024 * 10^9.

      Just for clarification:

      • 1 terabyte (1 TB) = 10^12 bytes = 1000 GB
      • 1 tebibyte (1 TiB) = 2^40 bytes = 1024 GiB
      • 1 gigabyte (1 GB) = 10^9 bytes = 1000 MB
      • 1 gibibyte (1 GiB) = 2^30 bytes = 1024 MiB
      --
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    17. Re:Terabyte? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      does that extra 24gb of ladies' naked bodies really make a difference anyway?

      Well, you know what they say, "if you've seen one, you want to see them all"

  8. Gezzz-Set post for 400 degrees. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "SCSI is basically dead. It's just a scam to get more money out of people that are stuck in 1992. Just ignore it and go with modern technology like SATA."

    Oh lookie everyone. It's a SATA vs SCSI flamewar post. Line right up for your turn.

  9. Mmmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    10e12 bytes of pr0nographic goodness.

    1. Re:Mmmmmm by more · · Score: 1

      1e12 != 10e12

      --

      -- Imperial units must die --

  10. Inevitable by Kelson · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I remember seeing a 500GB drive at Fry's a few months ago. As soon as I saw it, I knew that terabyte drives weren't far off.

    Looks like the typical user is going to have to learn some more terminology soon.

    1. Re:Inevitable by WuphonsReach · · Score: 1

      Um, 500GB drives have been available on the market for about 10+ months now (maybe a bit longer). They represent the upper end of what longitudinal recording was capable of packing into a 3.5" form factor.

      The advent of perpendicular recording from multiple vendors (Hitachi has been dragging their heels on a 3.5" PR drive) will hopefully drive prices down on the 500GB and 750GB drives. Or at least accellerate the price drops.

      --
      Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
  11. What's wrong with IDE? by WilliamSChips · · Score: 1

    SCSI causes nothing but trouble. When I had a SCSI drive it caused all sorts of weird failures--so much that I had to reinstall Linux about 30 times because the drive would report itself as full even though I had barely used it. Now I'm using an 80GB IDE drive which never has any problems whatsoever for me.

    --
    Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
    1. Re:What's wrong with IDE? by laffer1 · · Score: 1

      That is your experience. Many people have good experience with SCSI drives. I'm using one right now in my desktop. Its fast and reliable. You either had a bad drive which can happen on any interface or the driver for your controller was not very good. I've seen disk corruption in FreeBSD using an nforce2 nvraid sata controller in 5.3 as well. As soon as I submitted the pci id, it was fixed. My guess is that linux didn't support the controller at the time or as I said before bad disk.

    2. Re:What's wrong with IDE? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny that this is always the hardware fault in the eyes of the zealotes. Could not this be Linux fault or is Linuzzzz so perfect that there is not a minimal posibility of that?

    3. Re:What's wrong with IDE? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      I've been using SCSI since before IDE existed, and now everything new that I have is IDE. Why? Because UDMA came along and erased my major objections. The only thing SCSI has going for it over anything else today really is the number of devices you can have per controller. SAS is pretty compelling, simply because you can use these newfangled SATA drives in such a system. (After all, even modern PATA systems have command queueing, and some of the other nifty features.)

      My only sorrow is that firewire has never managed to take off as a native interface. It has very low overhead, is very cheap and simple to implement, can be used much like SCSI (down to dual-attach interfaces) and uses a serial cable for connection.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:What's wrong with IDE? by Wdomburg · · Score: 1

      Do you have any good datum suggesting that the electrical interface on the drive was at fault, because that's hardly the likely candidate in that scenario. Especially considering you can find plenty of people running hundreds of SCSI drives without issue.

    5. Re:What's wrong with IDE? by WilliamSChips · · Score: 1

      Well, considering that Linux worked much better after I used a different hard drive, nope, it's not Linux's fault that the hard drive sucked. Funny that Linux has to be what's at fault to the Windoze zealots so afraid of change.

      --
      Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
  12. TB is fine but.. by eebra82 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    We always hear about AMD and Intel giving out tons of information on roadmaps and what we're expected to see in the near future but hard drive development is a relatively silent business. Does anyone know what we can expect to see in tomorrow's hard drives? What's scheduled for the next two years?

    Measuring the amount of TB in future disks is easy. The capacity doubles every x months and so and that's probably not going to change for some time, so I frankly don't care too much about hard drive space as it has never been an issue to me. What I do care about is the other technology inside of a hard drive. Seek times, write/read speed and throughput. How's that going? Are we eventually going to see some major difference between SATA150 and SATA300? If so, when?

    I am not sure about you guys but I am growing increasingly dependent on fast hard drives rather than a shitload of space. My workstations are usually bundled with a fast Raptor disk combined with a Seagate at some 250 to 500 GB, so I put the big who-cares-about-speed files on the big one while my operating system, applications and games rest on my Raptor.

    So once again, does anyone know what we're going to see in 2007 and 2008?

    1. Re:TB is fine but.. by stienman · · Score: 2, Informative

      Onboard flash caches and larger ram caches are going into the next generation of hard drives. Other than that, nothing much is going to change in the near future.

      When the OS is aware of the flash and ram caches on the drive, it will instruct the drive as to what to cache so when the computer is started up next time 50% of the boot code is in the flash and starts running very quickly while it loads the rest of the boot code into ram and feeds it out. Beyond that there isn't much the hard drive can do differently to speed up normal use unless you parallel more platters (which raises heating, noise, energy use, and weight of the servo arm (which slows it down)). In most cases it's better to use several drives in a RAID configuration to obtain the same benefit. You should also consider getting a system that can support 8GB of RAM and loading it up with fast ram so it never has to page to the hard drive. Unless you use photoshop. Then you're out of luck - RAID is as fast as you're going to get.

      It's going to be a bumpy start, but flash caches will significantly speed up the hard drive during boot up and a few other times.

      The limiting factor is the speed of the mechanical parts, and you can only get very tiny incremental improvements in speed for each large improvement in the mechanical structure. So they are pursuing other methods to raise the apparant speed.

      -Adam

    2. Re:TB is fine but.. by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      Where SATAII shines is with the port multipliers. That way, you only need one data cable between a computer and a five drive cage and it's faster than Gigabit Ethernet and even Fiberchannel, though there probably is a 4gbit and higher fiberchannel, they are a lot more expensive.

  13. regardless-Fill'er up. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Regardless, I know as soon as I get one, I'll have it filled within 8 months."

    That's a lot of semen.

  14. good by Walter+Carver · · Score: 1

    Good, good... Now I can save all the text files I want.

  15. new names? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    we all refer to GB as gigs... "I have a 300 gig drive." What do we call the Terabyte drives? Ters? Tbs?
    "I have a 2 tera drive" does not have the same flo?

    1. Re:new names? by gebbeth · · Score: 1

      tees. I have two tees worth of data.

      --
      A closed mouth gathers no foot.
    2. Re:new names? by PhraudulentOne · · Score: 1

      tees. I have two tees worth of data

      Exactly.

      --
      You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
    3. Re:new names? by Sexy+Commando · · Score: 1

      Kilogigabytes (KGB), of course. "I have a 2 ka-jib drive"

  16. TB is fine but..TP is better. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "So once again, does anyone know what we're going to see in 2007 and 2008?"

    TerraPorn were the entire drive is consumed by one extremely high-poly model. Were one can fly in and out of various openings (ala descent), and guys regularly get lost because they don't stop and ask for directions.

    --
    My confirmation word is "inject". :)

  17. RPM more important by onlyjoking · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is anyone else tired of hearing about yet another x00Gb extra storage capacity while the the RPM remains the same as it has for the last 5/6 years, ie. 7200rpm. When are we going to see affordable 10,000rpm disks fer kreissake? The 150Gb WD Raptor at £175 is not what I call competitive pricing. We have more than enough storage. What we need is faster, energy-efficient disks.

    1. Re:RPM more important by timeOday · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Higher density does translate to higher transfer rate, since you read more with each revolution. I fired up an old 8.5 GB 7200 rpm drive the other day and was surprised it only pushes 10 MB/s. That would be pathetic nowadays. My laptop drive, which is also 7200 rpm, gives 50 MB/s on the same benchmark.

      Granted, access times probably haven't declined like transfer rates.

    2. Re:RPM more important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or even do what we have done to nearly every other part of the computer.

      We have two CD/DVD drives per case often
      We have two or more IDE/SATA controllers per motherboard
      We have four or more USB ports per motherboard
      We have multi-port NICs
      We have dual GPU cards and SLI
      We have dual and quad core CPUs

      When can we get dual read/write head sets on intepended arms. Those 7200rpm disks could then start acting almost like 14.4krpm disks, but keeping it at the 7200rpm sound level.

    3. Re:RPM more important by eratosthene · · Score: 1

      I think one reason we haven't seen too many consumer-grade 10000 rpm drives is because, as far as I have experienced, they're really damn loud. I can't imagine a non-geek being happy with a drive whose spinning noise drowns out the people in the room talking to each other.

      --
      -- There, everybody likes a gorilla.
    4. Re:RPM more important by napir · · Score: 1

      Buy two disks.

    5. Re:RPM more important by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      I wonder if there's something that happens at 10k RPM. The 10k drives I have are a bit louder, though not terribly so, in my opinion. My 10k drives aren't Raptors.

      The 15k drives that I have are very quiet. I'm only rarely more aware of them than my Seagate 7.2k drives, and those are pretty quiet too.

    6. Re:RPM more important by partycrasher · · Score: 1
      Actually, the latest generation of Raptors are quite quiet. I was pleasently surprised it doesn't make any more noise than a typical 7200rpm drive.

      StorageReview agrees: http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200601/WD150 0ADFD_7.html

    7. Re:RPM more important by onlyjoking · · Score: 1

      Not so with a decent case. I have 3 SATA WD Raptors in a £99 Anctec P150 case and they're as quiet as a mouse.

    8. Re:RPM more important by tchuladdiass · · Score: 1

      I think the early Tivo hard drives had two arms, so it could record & play at the same time (this was when drives were much slower). I think they were custom-made by Toshiba, if I remember right.

    9. Re:RPM more important by Nutria · · Score: 1
      I wonder if there's something that happens at 10k RPM. The 10k drives I have are a bit louder, though not terribly so, in my opinion. My 10k drives aren't Raptors.

      The 15k drives that I have are very quiet. I'm only rarely more aware of them than my Seagate 7.2k drives, and those are pretty quiet too.


      How hot are they? How much cooling is needed?

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    10. Re:RPM more important by WuphonsReach · · Score: 1

      Granted, access times probably haven't declined like transfer rates.

      Access time is closely coupled with the rotational velocity of the platter (how long before the sector comes under the read head) along with how fast the head can move from track to track (seek time). Not exactly sure where the latency term fits in (whether it's coupled with the rotational velocity of the disk or a combined value of seek time + rotational latency).

      The 10k Raptors have a pretty decent seek time (I think they use the 2.5" form factor platters instead of 3.5" form factor platters) and a lower rotation latency.

      Not sure why head seek times haven't improved. Maybe they're already fast enough to be in position before the sector comes around the bend.

      --
      Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
    11. Re:RPM more important by WuphonsReach · · Score: 1

      I think one reason we haven't seen too many consumer-grade 10000 rpm drives is because, as far as I have experienced, they're really damn loud. I can't imagine a non-geek being happy with a drive whose spinning noise drowns out the people in the room talking to each other.

      The newer FDB gets rid of a lot of the whine of the older drives. But you still have the head chatter which seems to be a bit sharper (noticable) on the WD Raptors.

      The bigger issue, I'd imagine, with 10k drives is heat. Which requires either heatsinks, better case design, or a dedicated fan to move air across the drive.

      --
      Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
    12. Re:RPM more important by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      My 15k drives aren't terribly hot, but my computers happened to be designed for them. It has a three drive holder mounted transversely in front of the power supply intake, with maybe 3/8" space between each drive and vents on the cage sides. That power supply intake is handled with a 12cm fan. It's not a fast 12cm fan, which helps the accoustics, and it's doing a decent job of moving air.

    13. Re:RPM more important by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      Basically, it's a niche product.

      Raptors are more or less enterprise drive mechanisms with a SATA connection, which doesn't help the cost. With proper use and some air flow, they are probably going to be more reliable than consumer drives. The platters are smaller on 10k+ drives, so that helps the seek times. There are supposedly issues with "wobbling" on drive platters when spinning so fast, what I've heard is that this is why the 10k and 15k drives use small platters.

    14. Re:RPM more important by tokul · · Score: 1
      Article on IDE

      I think you are comparing ATA-2 drive with ATA-6 or ATA-7.

      7200 rpm drives can push up to 60-70 MBps sustained. Speed hasn't changed for years. 10K rpm drives push up to 85 MBps.

  18. proper use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    We're starting to reach the point where hard drives are so large we're not sure what to put on it. Well, lots of people will; they're a boon for people doing video editing and they'll keep you in episodes of the Sopranos for months. But drop one into a regular desktop PC and your typical average user simply won't be able to fill it up; or if they do, they'll already have reached a point where they don't know what 80% of the data on the drive is.

    As a sometime hardware tech, I'd really love to see the manufacturers using some of this capacity for redundancy, rather than sheer space. Run the drive as a RAID unit, with each surface being one "drive", and use two of the surfaces for parity. You'd lose up to 40% of the capacity of the drive but it would become much more reliable. Sealing off the platters from each other might take up so much space you'd lose one platter, and might mean more expense since you'd need multiple head units, but again, the reliability would improve enormously. While this still isn't quite as reliable as having multiple separate drives RAIDed together, it would be convenient and transparent to the user, and make dead drives (mostly) a thing of the past.

    1. Re:proper use by nFriedly · · Score: 1

      I have probably half a terabyte of hard drive space total and I fill it up and have to delete some things every now and then.

      But a good friend of mine is a pro photographer. He shoots 10 GB worth of photos in a day easily. 20 GB some days. Plus he touches up a lot of the shots and saves the .psd files, the origional .jpg's and the final .jpg's.
      He just finished building a system with ten 300 GB sata drives all in RAID 1 for easy recovery from a failure. This sits beside his system with more than a terabyte of nearly full drives as well as stacks of burned dvd's. And I have no doubt that he'll have it full and be looking to buy more drives on down the road.

    2. Re:proper use by non-poster · · Score: 1
      ten 300 GB sata drives all in RAID 1
      Whoa! 300GB capacity, but lightning fast read seeks!

      Seriously, with 10 drives, there's gotta be something better for him that still provides the fault tolerance he needs.
    3. Re:proper use by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      Some capacity on a drive is already used for redundancy and the techniques used are far more powerful than simple mirroring or XOR that RAID uses. In fact, RAID 1, 4, and 5 take advantage of the fact that such redundant coding exists, otherwise there would be no method of detecting certain kinds of failures. RAID 2 and 3 are unpopular but they do include such error detection capabilities.

      It would be INCREDIBLY stupid to implement RAID parity across platters of a single drive. The result would be entirely useless, wasteful, and would slow the drive to a crawl. Leave the design of these things to people who know what they are doing. What you desire is already done inside all drives and in a manner far superior than you suggest.

    4. Re:proper use by Wdomburg · · Score: 1

      My running prediction is that you'll see a move toward 2.5" drives. In the business desktop market, large drives are typically just wasted space anyways, and a power saving of ~ 10W per seat is a big win. On the server side, blade servers are hot, and typically use 2.5" drives (unless you're booting from a network or a SAN) and 1U servers are hitting the market using them now too.

      In the consumer market 2.5" drives are already "winning" since notebook sales are outpacing desktops. I suspect that unobstrusive, quiet and efficient would sell well into the remaining desktop market. Especially since USB 2.0, eSATA, and Express Card offer compelling expansion options that don't require cracking open a case.

    5. Re:proper use by man_ls · · Score: 1

      I assume by RAID 1 he means RAID 0+1, where he could lose at most 50% of his drives and still be okay (although, if a single drive at the same position failed on both sides of the mirror, he'd be SOL and have lost the entire thing...so it does have a catastrophic failure at onyl 20%.)

      A RAID 6 array with two hot spares would be better...7 drives in RAID + Parity + 2 SPAREs, means the catastrophic failure situation is the same as his 0+1 array, but he has 2100GB instead of 1500GB of available storage space. Hot-spares on hand would also mean that in the event of a failure, his array would rebuilt itself to "safe" status relatively quickly.

    6. Re:proper use by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      That is incorrect. A 5+5 mirrored array can tolerate, at most, 1 arbitrary drive failure. A correct alternative would be RAID 5 in a 9+1 configuration. Capacity would be much higher with RAID 5 but write performance would suffer. Write performance probably doesn't matter in a professional photographer's application however.

      Hot spares only make sense in a system that can tolerate little or no downtime. Such would not be the case in a workstation so drives dedicated to that would be wasted.

      Assuming 1500GB was the desired capacity, the right choice currently would be to use 500GB spindles in a 3+1 RAID 5 configuration. Much smaller, cheaper, quieter, cooler, and more reliable than what was done. The RAID 6 config with hot spares is a total waste of money. If performance is a concern, a 3+3 mirrored array would be an alternative.

    7. Re:proper use by man_ls · · Score: 1

      Thanks, I did my calculations using numbered boxes on the back of a magazine, and skipped a couple important parts. :p

      You're right.

    8. Re:proper use by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      First off, he needs to shoot more selectively and learn how to cull. I've worked with professional photographers (and have been one) and they know not to keep everything they shoot. There are tools specifically made to help the issue. There is no need to keep images you know you'll never use (and it's easy to know) especially in a capacity-intensive application.

      Second, write performance of RAID 5 is certainly adequate for the application and larger spindles would have been a far better choice. He could have achieved the same capacity with 3 or 4 drives and still had totally adequate performance.

    9. Re:proper use by WuphonsReach · · Score: 1

      Um... RAID6 uses (2) disks for parity instead of just one. So that's actually 7 data disks, 2 parity disks and 1 hot-spare. The advantage of RAID6 is that if you lose one disk, you degrade to a RAID5 array (I think). That gives you time to get that hot spare worth of parity back up and running before another two more disks fail.

      (Versus racing the clock in degraded RAID5 where one more disk going will take out everything.)

      --
      Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
    10. Re:proper use by eightball · · Score: 1

      A Raid 0+1 can tolerate at least 1 arbitrary drive failure. This brings down one stripe set and so you are running essentially on a non-redundant volume. In the mean time, there are 4 disks running that also could fail with no additional consequences and 5 drives that would take down the volume.

      Now, a better way availability wise against 0+1 would be 1+0. Drive failures wouldn't destroy all of the redundancy and there are better odds that the next drive failure would not bring it down.

    11. Re:proper use by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      "A Raid 0+1 can tolerate at least 1 arbitrary drive failure. This brings down one stripe set and so you are running essentially on a non-redundant volume. In the mean time, there are 4 disks running that also could fail with no additional consequences and 5 drives that would take down the volume."

      RAID 1 (which includes RAID 0+1 and 1+0 except for the unintelligent) can tolerate precisely 1 arbitrary drive failure, no more and no less. It can tolerate perhaps more than one non-arbitrary failure but you can't choose which ones fail. The difference between 0+1 and 1+0 is internal implementation and the better choice is to stripe across mirrored pairs. Read the original RAID paper and you'll see that there is no reason for 1+0 or 0+1 termnology. That was invented by stupid programmers and marketers.

      "Now, a better way availability wise against 0+1 would be 1+0. Drive failures wouldn't destroy all of the redundancy and there are better odds that the next drive failure would not bring it down."

      You need to read up on RAID. There is no functional difference between those approaches and no need to even discuss them separately. The only possible outcome of distiguishing is being forced to do far more reconstruction work should a drive fail and your implementation is flawed. Read optimization may be harder as well. Ever written RAID firmware?

  19. Great comment! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Spoken like a true person that's never stepped foot inside a data center.

    1. Re:Great comment! by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      Keep your SCSI out of my data center.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  20. Crash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It would suck royally to have one of these crash when near capacity. Even with a backup. That would be a long restoration process.

  21. good idea! sadly the faiure point is something els by NevarMore · · Score: 1

    IIRC most drive failures are not in the platters but in the controller. Would you duplicate the controller as well? Would disk makers start offering new control boards to fix broken drives?

  22. Re:good idea! sadly the faiure point is something by jabuzz · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not the ones that I have seen. There are basically two main failure modes on a hard disk. Either the bearings on the motor give out, or the reserved area for mapping out bad sectors fills up and you see bad sectors. Controller failer is *much* rarer than either of these two events. If you ask me controller failures are more likely to be down to people not taking proper ESD measures.

  23. It's all relative by Overzeetop · · Score: 1

    Why do I care if it's 1TB or 0.91TB? I mean, really I'm going to be comparing it to the 200-300GB drives I've got now and seeing if I can replace them. Hmmm....three 300G drives will easily fit on TB drive. Two 200s and two 300s will fit, too. Why? Because somewhere across those four discs, there's probably going to be 2% of space that's not used. If it were, I'd probably have more than four drives, so I'll need 2 TB drives.

    Of course, this is even less critical when you transfer within orders / 1 GB - 999 GB has no loss, just as 1TB to 999TB doesn't, so we won't have to worry about it until we hit PB drives. And don't even think about bitching about your .gif porn collection you still store on the 300MB drives you got with your Gateway2000. If you're crossing two 1000/1024 barriers, I'm guessing you don't have to worry about "enough" storage on the new drive.

    I think its time to get over the 2^10/10^3 debate, and realize the most people are getting relative storage, and nobody is getting cheated.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  24. One thing article left out... by darthservo · · Score: 3, Funny

    With hard drives getting this much capacity, which term would most accurately describe them - a truck or a series of pipes?

    --

    Prove it.

    1. Re:One thing article left out... by crhylove · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's a series of tubes, dummy. Pipes is a totally wrong metaphor.

      --
      I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
    2. Re:One thing article left out... by Ruie · · Score: 1
      With hard drives getting this much capacity, which term would most accurately describe them - a truck or a series of pipes?
      A truck full of tapes.
  25. Tomorrow? I can buy a 1TB disk today! by Doctor+Memory · · Score: 1

    Right here: http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=1018 8. Sure, it's probably not a real 1TB drive, but it's in an external box and plugs into a USB port, so what's the difference between it and a single-drive solution? For most people, probably none at all.

    Anybody know if a USB 2.0 drive is fast enough to keep up with video playback? If so, then I may have to pick one of these up for the HTPC...

    --
    Just junk food for thought...
  26. Re:good idea! sadly the faiure point is something by HockeyPuck · · Score: 1

    When the controller/circuit board is mated to the platter assembly it is programmed for that specific set of platters and any anomolies on those platters. This is why you cannot take a circuitboard/controller from one drive and put it on another one.

  27. Re:Tomorrow? I can buy a 1TB disk today! by smbarbour · · Score: 1

    USB 2.0 is faster than FireWire 400 (which is generally used for DV content), so I'd say that it is fast enough.

    Of course, it all depends on how fast the data needs to be consumed. I don't know if it would be fast enough for high-definition content.

  28. Re:Tomorrow? I can buy a 1TB disk today! by Mr.Sharpy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Sure, it's probably not a real 1TB drive, but it's in an external box and plugs into a USB port, so what's the difference between it and a single-drive solution? For most people, probably none at all."

    It's twice as likely to fail.

  29. Re:Tomorrow? I can buy a 1TB disk today! by WuphonsReach · · Score: 1

    USB 2.0 is faster than FireWire 400 (which is generally used for DV content), so I'd say that it is fast enough.

    That's arguable (and a bit of a holy war). Looking only at the 480Mbits of USB 2 vs Firewire's 400Mbits glosses over the differences in the two protocols. In reality, both are usually constrained by the speed of the disks, which are identical for both implementations.

    But if you're a determined fence sitter, go with a dual-interface external enclosure such as the BYTECC ME-835U2F enclosures. They offer both USB 2 and Firewire 400 and include a fan inside that moves air directly over the hard drive (which will extend the life of the hard drive). This enclosure also has an internal PSU so there's no special wall warts to lose or misplace.

    (We've got 8 of these enclosures in service and we haven't heard any complaints in the past few months.)

    --
    Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
  30. Re:good idea! sadly the faiure point is something by WuphonsReach · · Score: 1

    The primary mode of failure that I've seen is heat death. Which probably means that the controller chips have baked themselves due to inadequate airflow. (All it takes is a minor amount of forced air movement across the surface of a drive to keep it cool.) I'm pretty sure that the platters are not affected by heat or are at least resilient enough to handle temperatures higher then what would kill the controller silicon.

    Do newer FDB drives suffer the same issues as the older ball bearing designs? (Not that I've ever seen a drive die because the bearings on the motor gave out.)

    --
    Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
  31. Re:good idea! sadly the faiure point is something by WuphonsReach · · Score: 1

    When the controller/circuit board is mated to the platter assembly it is programmed for that specific set of platters and any anomolies on those platters. This is why you cannot take a circuitboard/controller from one drive and put it on another one.

    You didn't know that data recovery services do take platters from a dead drive and mount them in an identical make/model that works in order to recover the data? While you may not be able to arbitrarily take platters from designs other then the same model line and place them in a different system, platters are not specifically tied to the controller/circuit board that they were originally mated with.

    (This is why data recovery companies tout their access to a clean room, so that they can do these transplants without introducing dust onto the surface of the platters.)

    --
    Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
  32. Re:Tomorrow? I can buy a 1TB disk today! by Mattintosh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Correction: USB 2.0 has a theoretical peak higher than Firewire 400. The difference in real speed lies in the isochronous mode that USB lacks.

    Basically, USB allows one device to talk on the wire at a time. So if you have a USB 2.0 HDD and a USB 1.1 mouse on the same bus, they get equal time, but the mouse wastes 99% of the bus for 50% of the time, for an overall loss of about 49%. So you only get half the speed you're supposed to get.

    Firewire's isochronous mode allows devices that use more than their fair share (they max out the bus and beg for more) to "borrow" the unused bandwidth during the time slot belonging to a device that doesn't use the full bandwidth. So while a FW scanner might only use 50Mbps, a HDD on the same bus might be transferring a file and "borrow" the other 350Mbps, even during the scanner's time slot. This is why Firewire outshines USB in raw data transfer in all but the most scripted of Intel's tests (Intel invented USB).

    So, the moral of the story: If the HDD is the ONLY thing connected to that USB bus (that port and probably the one next to it on the PC), then, yes, it might be a bit faster than FW400. If it's sharing a USB bus, it's going to be much slower, and may not be fast enough for video.

  33. INFORMATIVE??? by Khyber · · Score: 1

    Excuse me? Read the second post there in that forum - the one attached to the highest poster's comment (If you keep your /. defaults at default, that is,) I've got only 200 gigs of space on an 80 and 120 gig drive. I have the bare minimum CD-burner from 1996 running at 4x (I'm too fucking oldskool, I know, don't bug me about that, I've got reasons,) and even with the games I play (note my last post concerning the main systems I run for comparisons of programs,) I've still not run out of pr0n, games, music, and even stupid fucking LJ full-copies because people are too fucking stupid to keep shit screened/friends-only.

    Every disk gets full after 1-1.5 months my mother-fucking ass. I guess this stupid person never ran anything before DOS 6.22?

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    1. Re:INFORMATIVE??? by Red+Flayer · · Score: 1

      Nah, that idiot spends all his time collecting videos he'll never watch, and music he'll never listen to. Because more is always better, right?

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  34. Interesting... by mbessey · · Score: 1

    Do you happen to have a reference you can cite for this? I've done controller board swaps in the past, and been successful in recovering data, but perhaps more modern controller boards are more finicky. I can certainly believe that some amount of the bad sector mapping is done by the controller board, but my impression was that most of that information was encoded in the servo tracks on the platter itself.

    -Mark

  35. Re:Tomorrow? I can buy a 1TB disk today! by dbIII · · Score: 1
    Some people call the beige box on the floor with cables plugged into it "the hard drive", but in any discussion that requires detail they are completely wrong and make us poor moorlocks cringe. You could put an exernal RAID array into the same catagory as the external disk described above.

    I suppose it comes down to form factor and connectivity - if you can connect to it by SCSI, SATA, IDE etc and it fits in the space a current drive occupies then it gets called a hard drive no matter how many platters it has or even if it is an IDE flash disk with no moving parts.

  36. warning about Lacie by Travoltus · · Score: 1

    I've never seen a Lacie hard drive product that has more than a 1 year warranty. This product you mentions, has a 1 year warranty. I had a 500GB Big Disk die after 1 year. Upon opening it I saw that it was two 250gb drives linked via Raid 0 (sp?). When one drive failed, almost all data was lost. I recovered data from one drive but I was way beyond the warranty so there I was. With a LaCie 1TB drive? You're REALLY screwed if they've got 2x500gb drives in there.

    Having backups of stuff on a drive is essential, but even more essential is the ability to replace the drive when it dies: in addition to losing my data, I don't want to have to shell out hundreds of bucks for a new drive.

    A 3 or 5 year warranty doesn't mean the drive won't wait until 3 or 5 years to die, but if it is defective it might die in a year and I'll get a new drive for free under MOST hard drive warranties (assuming I don't drop it). I've lost a 500gb Seagate drive and got a new one for free, so yes, these warranties work. A drive with a one year warranty is a recipe for disaster.

    Me? I'll wait for Seagate's version.

    --
    --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
  37. Re:Tomorrow? I can buy a 1TB disk today! by Mistah+Blue · · Score: 1

    Frankly, I've moved on to eSATA. I've got an Express/54 RAID-1 card from Siig I use to back up my Lenovo (two 500 GB drives in a hot swap enclosure), as well as a Cardbus card to use on my PowerBook to connect to a 500 GB and a 300 GB drive. Beats the heck out of Firewire and USB.

  38. Some stuff going on there by Cybert4 · · Score: 1

    I think it's IBM working on something insanely large for tapes. 10+ TiB.

  39. Re:Tomorrow? I can buy a 1TB disk today! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, if you assume each individual drive involved has the same failure rate, then the 2 drive setup isn't _quite_ twice as likely to fail, but close.

    Hint: If both drives fail, the system only failed once, not twice.