The First Terabyte Hard Drive Reviewed

mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech has a review and benchmarks of the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 1TB Hard Drive, which ushers in the terabyte age. It performs well on HDTach and PCMark benchmarks, though not as speedily as professional-grade drives. It could be just the ticket for digital media junkies. 'One of the first issues to note is that you may not see an actual one terabyte capacity on your system. First, the formatted capacity is always less than the raw space available on the drive. Directory information and formatting data always take up some space. Second, the hard drive industry's definition of a megabyte differs from the rest of the PC business. One megabyte of hard drive space is 1,000,000 bytes: 10^6 bytes. Operating systems calculate one megabyte as 2^20 bytes, or 1,048,576 bytes. Once installed and set up, Hitachi's 1TB hard drive offers up an actual formatted capacity of about 935GB, as measured by the OS. That's still a lot of space, by anyone's definition.'" Update: 05/17 21:52 GMT by Z : Adding '^s' missing from article.

Comments

Now I need faster broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

So that I can fill this new drive with pr0n ;)

Re:Now I need faster broadband

[lord_sarpedon]

No, it just means you'll get to consolidate what you already have ;)

New New Math?

[WrongSizeGlass]

One megabyte of hard drive space is 1,000,000 bytes: 106 bytes. Operating systems calculate one megabyte as 220 bytes, or 1,048,576 bytes. That was from TFA (not just the summary). I asked my calculator about that but it just got a headache.

why explain prefixes?

[Lord Ender]

Is there anyone out there who would be buying a 1TB hard drive who doesn't already know the difference between binary and decimal prefixes? I think their target market is well aware of the differences between GiB and GB.

Actually, it seems some Microsoft programmers still don't know the difference. At least most open source apps properly distinguish between binary and decimal prefixes. Not so for Windows...

Re:why explain prefixes?

[SEMW]

For an example of the difference, people don't say that they have a megadollar or a gigaduck (not normal people) Maybe not, but they do say "centidollar" -- at least in its abbreviated form, "cent".

I'd like to see the pedantic community start discussing things in mebimeters and gibiwatts before they start trying to change the computer community's standard meanings. Huh? There would be no reason for people to use mebimeters and gibiWatts, because metres and Watts are Metric units and thus are base 10. It would not make sense to use base 2 prefixes (mebi, gibi) in a base 10 system. It does, on the other hand, make sense to use base 10 units in a base 10 system such as the metric system, and likewise base 2 units in a binary system.

Re:106 bytes and 220 bytes, ???

[Roger W Moore]

They mean that superscript tags don't work when submitting stories to slashdot. If should read 10^6 and 2^20.

Re:Zonk

[ReverendLoki]

I see where they screwed up.. in this sentence:

One megabyte of hard drive space is 1,000,000 bytes: 106 bytes. Operating systems calculate one megabyte as 220 bytes, or 1,048,576 bytes.

"106" bytes should have been written as "10^6 bytes", and "220 bytes" should be "2^20 bytes". Either that or actually put the powers in superscripts.

Why is this still a discussion?

[Grelli]

Don't complain about the fact a megabyte isn't what you thought it was. Complain about the fact the industry still uses it for labels. But don't try and make the megabyte a mebibyte.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix vs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_prefix

Re:Why is this still a discussion?

[linguae]

The reason why nobody uses "mebibyte", "kibibyte", "gibibyte", and all of these other terms are because of two reasons: they are new and relatively unknown, and they just sound stupid and unnatural (try pronouncing them). It is commonly accepted knowledge in electrical engineering and computer science circles that we use 2^10, 2^20, 2^30, etc. when describing kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes, respectively, except when dealing with data storage capacities (which I feel is a marketroid invention and a sales gimmick. "10^9 vs. 2^30? Who'll know the difference?"). It's been that way since the 1960s. The new terms like "mebibyte," "gibibyte," and the rest of them just sound silly, hard to pronounce, and unnatural.

Re:Why is this still a discussion?

[jdgeorge]

Don't complain about the fact a megabyte isn't what you thought it was. Complain about the fact the industry still uses it for labels. But don't try and make the megabyte a mebibyte.

What!?! Next thing you'll be telling me is that a kilometer isn't 1024 meters long. Please, stop this madness before it spreads!

Re:Why is this still a discussion?

[Mattintosh]

The difference between the two numbers is due to this:

Manufacturers have an interest in you paying more and getting less, while computers do not. Manufacturers who are successful and have the cash to spend can then lobby international standards bodies to skew "standards" in their favor, regardless of historical context and practical day-to-day usage patterns (both technical and linguistic).

Don't side with "the man" on /. unless you enjoy tar + feathers, not even if it means bucking the "standard".

Re:Why is this still a discussion?

[trentblase]

Seriously, soon the packaging will be like: 1TB drive *


* 7 bit bytes

Re:Why is this still a discussion?

[blhack]

We could just simplify the process and start calculating drive space in libraries of congress * elephants of pressure per square postage stamp.

Re:Why is this still a discussion?

[fo0bar]

What!?! Next thing you'll be telling me is that a kilometer isn't 1024 meters long. Please, stop this madness before it spreads! Don't be silly. As we all know, God Almighty came down from the heavens to decree that Computers must use powers of 2 to describe international standard unit prefixes that were previously defined as powers of 10.

Of course, we all know this is an evil conspiracy by the hard drive industry. ... and the network card industry (I was shocked to find my gigabit card is not actually 1,073,741,824 bits per second). ... and the processor industry (2.4GHz? Hah, more like 2.23517GHz!). ... and the digital camera industry (blah blah megapixels. they're screwing me out of precious resolution).

Re:Why is this still a discussion?

[SEMW]

Don't try to invent a new notation to make-up for corporate marketing corrupting established and well-understood notation. I would point out the "mega" was an established and well-understood prefix for 10^6 well before the computer industry (sans hard drive makers) started to use it mean 2^20.

Re:Why is this still a discussion?

[dgatwood]

They are still wrong. The fundamental organization of computers is base 2. Ever try to design a processor that uses 1000 byte pages? Good freaking luck.

The purpose of SI units being in base 10 is because the number system that we use to measure things is ALSO in base 10. Therefore, the unit fits comfortably within mathematics associated with the relative fields. However, A base-10 numbering scheme basically does not exist in the computing world; obscure BCD hardware notwithstanding, all occurrences of base ten in computing are entirely a fiction created by the machine to try to make things more understandable to people used to base 10.

More to the point memory and storage are inherently organized in units of powers of two. Memory will ALWAYS be organized in power-of-two increments as long as computer operate based on the binary system. Why? Because this makes it possible to express divisions of memory in terms of bit boundaries. A power-of-10 memory organization would require computationally heavy division or multiplication operations throughout the memory management code, while a power-of-2 memory organization requires an extremely lightweight bit shift. For this reason, as long as we have binary-based computers, we are stuck with power-of-two units of RAM.

Similarly, a hard drive block will ALWAYS be evenly divisible by the size of a memory page or vice versa. If this were not the case, the complexity of writing an operating system would be beyond insane. Paging and memory mapping of files alone would be enough to make the engineers commit seppuku. Therefore, as long as RAM is organized into groupings based on powers of two, hard drives will always be physically laid out in blocks whose length is a power of two.

Because the fundamental organization of data in a computer is, by nature, organized into power-of-two units, describing storage in power-of-ten units makes no sense, as it will almost always be a crude approximation. There are probably exactly zero hard drives with an exact decimal gigabyte capacity. The fundamental storage in hard drives is a 512 byte block, and 512 does not divide evenly into most multiple-of-ten values. Sure, you could create a 512 decimal gigabyte drive, I suppose, but for the most part, the values just don't divide evenly by 512. Therefore, using a multiple of a power-of-ten number to describe the amount of storage will almost always be a very crude approximation, while using a multiple of a power-of-two number can be (and usually is) an exact value.

In other words, the idiots in charge of making up the SI units should have been taken out and beaten for "Gibibyte". There is one natural unit in computers, and that is the base-2-derived gigabyte. All base-10 units are inherently inaccurate, and thus a poor fit for computing. They should be summarily rejected by the industry, as they simply do not make any sense in the context of storage. Honestly, they don't make a lot of sense for networking, either for the same reason, but I'm willing to overlook that... for now....

Re:Why is this still a discussion?

[clem.dickey]

Ever try to design a processor that uses 1000 byte pages? Good freaking luck.

No, but these guys did.

Re:Zonk

[nine-times]

It was probably originally typed as:

One megabyte of hard drive space is 1,000,000 bytes: 10⁶ bytes. Operating systems calculate one megabyte as 2²⁰ bytes, or 1,048,576 bytes.

And then the tags got stripped somehow.

Re:Zonk

[OrangeTide]

It's not a race Zonk, you can hit the preview button once in a while.

From this day forward all badly formed posts shall be known as Zonks.

Re:Damn...

[NorbMan]

I still have a 10 Megabyte (yes, Megabyte) hard drive on an Apple //. It still isn't full.

First review? ummm... Anandtech, March 19th....

[Fallen Kell]

Initial review March 19th:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=29 49

Follow-up RAID performance April 19th:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=29 49

Follow-up to the follow-up April 23rd:

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=29 74

Sloppy editing.

[Gricey]

Come on, look what you're pasting. What you thought was a story about ponies could be the next AACS encryption key!

Wow, I love ponies.

Re:Damn...

[netscan]

I remember when I was 9 or 10 and the family computer could hold 10 gigs. That was nearly unfillable at the time. Sorry, just being nostalgic Okay, how many read this and said quietly to themselves "Man I'm old..."?

WOW, 1TB

[Anon-Admin]

I remember when I paid $150 for a 10meg MFM drive! (poke c800:50 ;)
I remember paying $1000 for my first 1gig drive!
I remember paying $500 for my first 1TB of drive space (6x300gb drives ok 1.8TB unformatted)
I remember paying $350 for my second 1.1TB of drive space (4x320gb Just last week)

I can not wait to get to my first 6TB system! I may have said, many years ago, that I would never fill 1gig, but I know I can fill 6TB It should not take me more than a couple of months.

Man how things have changed!

Then 8mhz, 640k ram and 10megs.
Now 2.4Ghz dual core, 2gig ram, 1.1TB HD

I wonder what we will say in another 16 years.

Re:WOW, 1TB

[Chandon Seldon]

What will you store on your 10 TB drive that will take up all the space?

High quality 1080p video. Animated textures for video games. A massive sample database for a voice synthesizer.

I'm not actually sure what you would do with a 10,000 TB hard disk - but 10 TB is well within the "use it up with some video" range.

Megabyte/Terabyte

[Bobb Sledd]

We can only guess what Zonk meant to say. But I'll try to make some sense.

First, hard drive manufacturers have always calculated drive space differently than the rest of the entire computing world. It allows them to say that a drive is bigger than it really truly is. They've been able to do it for years, and lawsuits have been lost and won on this very issue. But essentially, their use of the metric words "kilo," "mega," and "giga" are the literal meanings of "1000," "1,000,000" and "1,000,000,000" instead of the computing world's 1024 multiplier.

Therefore, a "kilobyte" to them is 1,000 bytes (as opposed to 1,024 bytes in real life), and a "megabyte" is "1,000,000" bytes (as opposed to 1,048,576 bytes [1024 x 1024]), and a "gigabyte" is 1,000,000,000 bytes (instead of 1,073,741,824 [1024 x 1024 x 1024] bytes in real life).

The real difference in a terabyte? Divide 1,000,000,000,000 by 1024/1024/1024 and you get 931.32 gigabytes. That's a theoretical limit, mind you, and there is overhead for cluster size, partition info, FAT tables, etc., so you really don't even get that.

Doesn't that byte?

Re:Megabyte/Terabyte

[init100]

Therefore, a "kilobyte" to them is 1,000 bytes (as opposed to 1,024 bytes in real life)

Actually, it is more like the "kilo = 1000" is the real life meaning, and the "kilo = 1024" is something dreamed up by some hacker in his own little world. I mean, one kilogram is 1000 grams, one kilohertz is 1000 hertz, one kilometer is 1000 meters, etc.

Re:106 bytes and 220 bytes, ???

[Mundocani]

Regardless of whether the original article had it wrong, someone at Slashdot should've read the posted summary text and noticed the error. You shouldn't be a "News for Nerds" editor and not immediately notice that the sentence makes absolutely no sense as written.

"...by anyones definition"

[Itninja]

hmm. I guess you could say that "935GB ought to be enough for anybody".

Note to future self: remember when 1 terabyte was considered a lot of storage? those were the days....

Re:Ahh Slashdot

[croddy]

eh, you're not missing anything anyway. TFA is just one of those meager gear review sites with 20 words per page spread out onto 8 pages all mostly covered with a bunch of empty rectangles.

what is the DEAL with all those empty rectangles anyway?

I look forward to more write-ups like this

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the next story on Bill Gates or windows might consist mostly of a paragraph explaining that Microsoft is a company.

SI prefixes are powers of thousand.

[Zarhan]

Cue the ensuing Mebi/Gibi/Tebi vs. SI notation fights.

While it's takes a while to get used to it, I actually prefer the Bi-units now. 4,3GiB or 4,7GB is already a huge difference when talking about DVD capacity. At terabyte, it gets enormous.

Linux already uses those units.

Only place where I still see a purpose for using binary units in computing is memory - address bus is still addressed exactly with n lines so memory capacity will be 2^n. For all other cases, it's not needed. Yes, the hard drives have 512 to 4096 byte sectors, but who cares when were talking about trillions of them?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix for more.

Windoze

[ksd1337]

Finally! Enough space to install Windoze Vista SuperUltimate Edition with SuperBloat64 and added memory mismanagement!

AACS Compromises

[MrSteveSD]

Hitachi probably say all the recent AACS compromises and thought "Well, people are obviously going to need more hard drive space now". Hitachi have their finger on the pulse :)

Re:Zonk

[elguap0]

He totally Schruted that summary.

New drive storage metrics needed

[PeeAitchPee]

In other news, Seagate announced that its upcoming line of hard drives will be measured using the new LoC (Library of Congress) storage units to avoid confusion. The advanced ST-54883432, weighing in at a monstrous .00000000000017 LoC, goes on sale June 14th.

I have one - this is what ext3 defaults too.

[Anonymous Coward]

df .
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb1            961432072    221096 912372976   1% /data

Re:SUP tag missing - 10^6 and 2^20

[trentblase]

Not much, ^{with you?}

Fix one or the other

[billcopc]

I can't help but feel cheated deep down when a gigabyte on the box is not a gigabyte in my PC. I know the numbers, I know the reasoning but wouldn't it be all much easier if we fixed one or the other ? Hard drives are sold in decimal gigabytes, so why does all the software report in gibibytes ? It's obvious that the easy solution would be to use gibibytes everywhere, since it's easier to change the printing on a box than it is to fix all the software in the world. Especially as sizes increase and the differential grows quite large, this becomes rather important.

I'm sure anyone who's ever been in a retail situation has had to deal with the ignorant yet logical customer that demanded a 7% refund on their undersized hard drive. In the case of this terabyte drive, we're talking about 70 gigabytes. Most people don't even have 70gb worth of data on their PC (excluding file hoarders)... that is one big marketing discrepancy. The bigger the gap, the louder and more frequently the ignorants will complain.

How hard is it, really, to just quote the proper number ? Or maybe just increase the actual capacity by 7% to avoid printing an odd number like 931gb.

Re:Deathstar

[Anonymous Coward]

* But there must've been a Death Star canteen, yeah? There must've been a cafeteria downstairs, in between battles, where Darth Vader could just chill and go down:

Darth Vader: I will have the penne all'arrabiata.
Canteen Worker: You'll need a tray.
Darth Vader: Do you know who I am?
Canteen Worker: Do you know who I am?
Darth Vader: This is not a game of who the fuck are you. For I am Vader, Darth Vader, Lord Vader. I can kill you with a single thought.
Canteen Worker: Well, you'll still need a tray.
Darth Vader: No, I will not need a tray. I do not need a tray to kill you. I can kill you without a tray, with the power of the Force, which is strong within me. Even though I could kill you with a tray if I so wished. For I would hack at your neck with the thin bit until the blood flowed across the canteen floor.
Canteen Worker: No, the food is hot. You'll need a tray to put the food on.
Darth Vader: Oh, I see the food is hot. I'm sorry. I did not realise. Ha ha ha ha ... oh ... tray for the ... yes. I thought you were challenging me for the fight to the death.
Canteen Worker: A fight to the death? This a canteen, I work here.
Darth Vader: Yes, but I am Vader. I am Lord Vader? Everyone challenges me to a fight to the death. Lord Vader? Darth Vader, I'm Darth Vader. Sir Lord Vader? Sir Lord Darth Vader? Lord Darth Sir Lord, Lord Vader of Cheem? Sir Lord Baron Von Vader Ham? The Death Star. I run the Death Star.
Canteen Worker: What's the Death Star?
Darth Vader: This is the Death Star! You're in the Death Star! I run this star!
Canteen Worker: This is a star?
Darth Vader: This is a fucking star! I run it! I'm your boss.
Canteen Worker: You're Mr. Stevens?
Darth Vader: No, I'm ... who is Mr. Stevens?
Canteen Worker: He's Head of Catering.
Darth Vader: I'm not Head of Catering! I am Vader, I can kill catering with a thought.
Canteen Worker: Wha'?
Darth Vader: I can kill you all! I can kill me with a thought! Just ... fine, I'll get a tray! Fuck it! This one's wet, and this one's wet and this one's wet. This one is wet. This one is wet. This one is wet. This one is wet. This one is wet. This one is wet. This one is wet. This one is wet. Did you dry these in a rainforest? Why, with the power of the Death Star do we not have a tray that is fucking dry? I do not ... no, no, no! I was here first!
Other guy: You have to form a queue if you want food. Can I have, uh ... ooo, penne all'arrabiata. That'd be very nice.
Darth Vader: No, no, no! Do you know who I am?
Other guy: That's Jeff Vader that is!
Darth Vader: I am not Jeff Vader, I am Darth Vader.
Other guy: What? Jeff Vader runs the Death Star?
Darth Vader: No, Jeff ... no, I run the Death Star.
Other guy: You Jeff Vader?
Darth Vader: No, I'm Darth Vader.
Other guy: Are you his brother? Could you get his autograph?
Darth Vader: I can't get his ... no, I'm Jeff ... all right, I'm Jeff Vader! I'm Jeff Vader!

Re:Damn...

[crabpeople]

I think I have files older than you...

Re:Zonk

[Gravol]

This hard drive will be a minimum requirement for the next MS Windows OS.

Screw the hitachi!

[AbRASiON]

The Hitach is a 1000mb drive with 5x200gb platters.
The Seagate (due soon) is a 1000mb drive with 4x250gb platters and (iirc) 32mb of cache.

The increased platter density will slightly increase performance and theoretically decrease cost, it'll slightly reduce heat and also power use too.

On top of this Seagate offer a 5 year warranty on all drives (Hitachi may also, sorry not sure) and Seagate used to be one of the quietest available to boot. (although I hear the 7200.10's suck for noise, apparently some kind of patent issue with using low acoustic mode - hope that's sorted?)

Anyhow, what this does mean for us end users is you'll see 2 platter, 500gb drives which weigh less, cost less, run faster and cost substantially less than the 1000mb models, also the glorious 750gb will become a 3 platter model instead of a 4 platter (my personal 'limit' is 3playtters - after that I find it too prone to noise / heat / failure rate)

I'd say we'll see 80$ (rebate) 500gb drives within 3 months and we'll see the 750's at 169$ or something soon(ish)

Re:Zonk

[Anonymous Coward]

This is still not really correct: One megabyte of hard drive space is 1,000,000 bytes: 10^6 bytes. Operating systems calculate one megabyte as 2^20 bytes, or 1,048,576 bytes.

It should read: Hard disk manufacturing company marketing departments define one megabyte of hard drive space as 1,000,000 bytes: 10^6 bytes. Fucking reality calculates one megabyte as 2^20 bytes, or 1,048,576 bytes.

Re:kibibytes & mibimeters

[Alioth]

It's common practise to use the highest number when representing something in an ad. Like for instance Cirrus aircraft advertise their aircraft's speed in MPH, when pilots actually use knots. This is because you get a number on the ad that's 15% bigger. And I bet Cirrus advertise the speed of their planes in Europe in km/h because this yields an even bigger number.

Personally, I wish we'd just get on with it and switch to base 16. It would be so much more convenient, and I'd be back in my early 20s again!

Re:kibibytes & mibimeters

[Alioth]

AC> Pilots are just nuts, with their knots and feet.

While the use of feet might be dubious, there's a good rationale for using knots. One minute of latitude is one nautical mile long. This makes it very easy to do quick measurements on a chart while in-flight - since however you have a chart folded, you'll be able to see a longitude line (which has latitude tick marks as it goes up the page).