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2.3TB drives for $50

Posted by Hemos on from the and-it-has-HAL-inside dept.

Nate Fox writes "Finally all the mp3 storage I want: TechWeb has a lil story on 2,300GB solid state drives available within 2 years. " Interesting stuff-but as always, I'll wait to see it in the proverbial flesh.

172 comments

  1. I'm buyin one! by big_hairy_mama · · Score: 0

    That's all I got to say. I'll gladly pay 50 bucks (not), but I'll still pay the 500 or so they'll probably going to charge if I can get a couple TERRABYTES out of it!

  2. Re:hmmmmmmmmmm by BugMaster+ChuckyD · · Score: 1

    Shamless BeOS plug: not only does BeOS have a 64 bit fs which would have no problem addressing 2.3 TB its a journaling FS that doesn't need fsck.

    Seriously tho, by the time this technology is available linux might well have SGI's XFS available which is a journalling fs also. In anycase the access times of a solid state drive could well be orders of magnituted faster than a conventional HD, so the fsck time need not be any longer than it is now for your 3.2 Gig HD

  3. Re:Got a problem with the Register? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    --I appologize if that hurts your feelings, personally I don't have an opinion on the Register, I don't really read it. However, the reason I made that comment was because a lot of slashdot readers seem to hate the Register, hence 'much hated Register'. It's similar to saying: "The often misquoted Bill Gates". It doesn't mean *I* misquoted Bill Gates, it means that he is often misquoted. (And no, I don't think he is often misquoted, its just an example.) sheesh.

  4. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Scurrilous+Knave · · Score: 1

    I'm surprised anyone would ask this question. If, in two years, 20tb drives are available for reasonable prices, then they will be half-filled by a full load of Microsoft Windows 2002 and MS-Word. And, sadly, probably by Linux 4.0 plus KnomeDE and SunOffice 8. The Peter Principle applies to software, too.

  5. *THE* MP3 archive from hell by MuppetBoy · · Score: 1

    This is going to be one hellish invention for the music industry...

    I can fit about 350 songs onto a gigabyte at a reasonable quality. but let's just go with 200 assuming a little better quality. 200 * 2300 = 460,000 songs on a credit card. so then the problem for the music industry is that a copy of everything they own could get out and it might fit in your wallet. whoops!

    only problem is that at 100Mbit/sec or 12.5Mbytes/sec one of these puppies would take a *while* to copy. 12.5Mbytes/sec is "only" around 45 gigs an hour. so 2300 gigs would take 51 hours (a bit more than 2 days) to copy!! (that is, if i did my math right... ;-))

    and what the heck kind of file system is this going to run? i can just see it now...

    C:\>dir

    Volume in drive C is BOOT
    Volume Serial Number is C09E-B641

    Directory of C:\

    08/25/99 10:54p 6 foo
    1 File(s) 6 bytes
    2,300,000,000,000 bytes free

    C:\>

    sheesh!

    i can just see the error messages now...

    please free up some disk space. NT workstation requires 1.5 terabytes to install. thankyou.



  6. Re:Microsoft and disk space by gavinhall · · Score: 1

    Posted by Synsthe:

    Okay, we'll narrow the search on the windows system a bit. I'll just peer at \Windows\System and \Windows\System32

    Well, well, still almost 200 megs. (well, okay, to be fair it's only 156).

    Now I'll try and even it up a little more, and include /dev in the above equation. That sill only adds another 18 megs, bringing it to a total of under 25 megs on the nix box.

    Of course the comparison will never be completely fair, they are two completely different operating systems. The point I was trying to prove was that this person obviously isn't doing their homework though if they think a base install of Linux is more space intensive than that of a windows box.

    --
    Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)

  7. Two Words: Holographic Video by MuppetBoy · · Score: 1


    According to the MIT research below...
    Each fringe pattern (frame) is about 6MB and that's in a highly *compressed* form. When you uncompress it, it's about 36MB per frame. It'll be a couple of years still, but this *certainly* should suck up most of that space! i always mess up the math, but here goes...

    6MB * 30 f/sec = 180MB/sec
    180MB/sec * 3600 = 648GB/hr

    so your 2.3TB disk will only hold about 3.5 hours of holographic video. so this miracle disk is already too small to hold the holovideo of branaugh's hamlet...

    guess you'll just have to switch disks... ;-)

    http://www.media.mit.edu/groups/spi/holovideo.ht ml
    http://www.media.mit.edu/people/lucente/holo/hol ovideo-timeline.html
    http://lucente.www.media.mit.edu/people/lucente/ holo/PhDthesis/contents.html
    http://lucente.www.media.mit.edu/people/lucente/ holo/papers.html#SIGGRAPH95


  8. pity a good place like techweb were fooled by Chocboy · · Score: 1

    i mean when slashdot posts things like this its not always news.. just 'this could be cool'...and again about the price of course i'd like to only pay $50 i'd be really willing to pay whatever they would ask for it.. even $1000 or more... i mean.. when will ya ever need to buy a new one...
    altho a 100G watch would be cool... save carrying all those zipdiscs around...

  9. You won't pay... by Graymalkin · · Score: 1

    50$ for the disk, thats how much it costs them, it costs about 70$ to manufacture a P3 600 yet it sells for many hundreds. Regardless of retail price, I would love to have 2 terabytes of raw storage. But what I wonder about is the overhead for such a huge disk capacity. Not only do you need space for ECC but then theres the question of access time, not to mention file system for one of these. Would it have a super low latency and high bandwidth where I could use it as a giant boot ROM or would is have a much higher latency similar to a CD-ROM or M/O disk? If it is commercial viable I would hope that it is fast enough and manageable enough to use for more than an archive backup system.

    --
    I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
  10. Re:Addressing 2.3TB with current OS'es by ggeens · · Score: 1

    I thought the limit for ext2fs was 2TB. (Haven't checked, though.) But that still isn't quite 2.3TB.

    Anyway, if those drives become available, they will provide a nice test case for the new fs SGI has contributed.

    --
    WWTTD?
  11. Re:2.3TB is small! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are not right for NTFS.
    NTFS is designed with 64bits values everywhere, but relies on the partition table at the beginning of the hard disk.
    The partition table uses 32bits values to define the position of each partition in sectors. 2^32 sectors of 512 bytes is 2 terabytes.
    So, unless there is support for >512 bytes sectors in the BIOS, NTFS will not support drives larger than 2Tb on the Intel platform.
    Read http://support.micro soft.com/support/kb/articles/Q114/8/41.asp

  12. Re:The access is a nightmare. by Roundeye · · Score: 1

    At that size and cost (yeah I know there's
    no way they'd only charge $50 for 2.3TB *if*
    they're for real (they've already got a cadre
    of VC sharks ready for IPO)), you could quadruple
    mirror on the drive. Surface scan? who cares.
    If it's bad go get another copy and throw this
    one away.

    :-)

    --
    "Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
  13. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Chandon+Seldon · · Score: 1

    Your memory'll fit in GIGABYTES?

    Arthur C Clark says Petabytes, and he's obviously clueless (On this subject, otherwize, he's brilliant).

    I'd need at least a couple of Extabyte chips to fit my memory in!

    --
    -- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
  14. Re:hmmmmmmmmmm by edgy · · Score: 1

    Hopefully by then we'll get our journaling filesystem under Linux. It's enough of a hassle fscking 16GB... :)

  15. Yeah, its not nearly enough (seriously) by joss · · Score: 2

    I for one would like to be able to remember everything I see hear or touch.
    At least with 2.3TB I could remember everything I hear for about 4 years,
    (add speech recognition to make it searchable).

    Imagine how great that would be in arguments:
    "You said this software would be completed on time"
    "No, I said it was a complete waste of time - I'll play it back for you"

    And it would be really handy with the wife too...

    Bring on the implants.. preferably before I go senile.

    --
    http://rareformnewmedia.com/
  16. Re:MST3K!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I would trade one kidney and 3/4 of my liver for one of these with every MST3K on it. (Not that I'm addicted to MST3K.....)

  17. Re:2.3TB is small! by Serfer · · Score: 1

    FAT32 can address up to 2 terabytes i beleive, and NTFS can go up to like 2 or 3 zetabytes (or something like that) some absurdly large number, so i don't see it being a problem. if i recall correctly, ext2 can only address up to 1 terabyte...

  18. 100 Mbps? by CaptainSuperBoy · · Score: 3
    One thing that stands out in this article - the "data access time" is quoted as 100Mbps. However, data access times aren't measured in megabits/sec.. they are measured in milliseconds, or hopefully for this invention, microseconds (do microseconds come after milliseconds?). 100Mbps could be the data transfer rate. If that's correct, this device is actually really slow - 12.5 MB/s. much slower than both IDE and SCSI's current speeds.

    This means it probably wouldn't find its way into servers until its speed problems were corrected.. It'd even be a little slow for PCs..

    and about what we'd do with it. Back around 10 years ago when 30 meg hard drives were roomy, nobody could think of what we'd do with PCs that had 20,000 megs of storage like today's PCs do.. I'm sure we'll find ways to use the extra space.

    1. Re:100 Mbps? by Lxy · · Score: 1

      I agree that 12.5 m/s is pretty slow for a drive of any interface. The thing to remember is that for a prototype that's screaming. This drive definitely has uses even at its slow speed. It's faster than a CD-ROM drive, and if you look at the price on the drive (which will be highly inflated at first because it's new and cool, but will settle down)it far outweighs 7/14/21 drive tower assemblies. If you store all your CD-ROM's on this thing you will have a REALLY SUPER FAST Cd-ROM drive. And because it's a hot new prototype, many companies will try to grab their technology and create similar products with a lower cost, more space, and higher speeds. If nothing else, this drive creates competition in the drive market and that's really where this drive has its place. (for now at least)

      --

      There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
      :wq
    2. Re:100 Mbps? by theonetruekeebler · · Score: 1
      100Mbps could be the data transfer rate. If that's correct, this device is actually really slow - 12.5 MB/s. much slower than both IDE and SCSI's current speeds.

      So plunk down $450 for nine of them and build a raid-5. Sheesh.

      --

      --
      This is not my sandwich.
    3. Re:100 Mbps? by theonetruekeebler · · Score: 1

      Or $400 for a mirror and four stripes. Bet that's pretty peppy. I don't know why, but I'm of the opinion that $400 is a reasonable amount to spend on 9.2TB of 200ns-seek-time storage that reads at 100MB/s and writes at 50MB/s. Well, I'd probably want a / partition of 200MB, and maybe splurge for a GB or so of swap on there, too. I wonder how much a card-changer for "tape" backups will go for, 'cause the DAT drive's going out the window.

      --

      --
      This is not my sandwich.
    4. Re:100 Mbps? by skyte · · Score: 1

      The question was about data _access_ times not transfer rates.
      The article states "The data-access time for the new storage technology is predicted to be around 100 Mbps." Access times are not measured in Mbps, Id like to see an access time in milliseconds.
      Id guess that the mechanical parts in this design would limit access times to pretty much the same as current HDs, or even greater as there is a need to focus something to read the multiple layesrs.

    5. Re:100 Mbps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      12megabytes/sec slow? common get real. If its too slow for you then run 4 of thses babies in parelell, and dont forget this is Version 1.0 thats 100mbps.

  19. Could be a problem... by Mindwarp · · Score: 1

    ...for all those old FAT16 formatted systems. The sector size is going to end up a little unwieldy!

    :-)

    --
    The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
    1. Re:Could be a problem... by Mithy · · Score: 1

      I can see it now:

      mithy:/dev> ls wd0*
      /dev/wd0s0
      /dev/wd0s0a
      /dev/wd0s0c
      /dev/wd0s1
      .
      .
      .
      /dev/wd0s976

      I think a rethink of partition tables might be necessary at that point. Unless people have a LOT of nested extended partitions or something.... which is pretty bad, as an extended partition wastes at least one cylinder IIRC.

      "What do you want to boot today?"

      --

      --
      "This isn't the post you're looking for. Move along."
    2. Re:Could be a problem... by SmokeyDP · · Score: 1

      I can see it now 2MB sectors, now running a defrag program will be really useful!

    3. Re:Could be a problem... by Lxy · · Score: 1

      Actually, FAT 16 only supports 2GB partitions. You'd need 1,150 partitions to make full use of the space. That's a lot of drive letters :-)

      --

      There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
      :wq
  20. I'll buy It by El+Puerco+Loco · · Score: 1

    even if it's $500.00 and the size of a dishwasher.
    ^. .^
    ( @ )

    1. Re:I'll buy It by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even if I need to build an extension to my house... ;-)

  21. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Install Xanadu and permanently save every single version of every document.

    Archive the video streams of a zillion public webcams, keyed by eigenfaces so you can track people's movements (may take more than one card)

    Build very large fast data warehouses with lots of precalculated aggregates

    Set up webcams all over the house and archive every little thing Junior does without having to grab the camcorder all the time

    Record all your romantic phone calls so you can relive the whole sorry mess when she dumps you

    Download the complete text of every online news site for full-text indexing (no more "This story is archived, pay up to see it")

    Download some innocuous content to mask your subversive secrets. Add lots of random bits. Attach a digital signature to every bit on your drive--one signature for innocuous content, another for secrets, and wrong signature for random bit. When goons ask for encryption key, give them innocuous one. (see ron rivest, chaffing and winnowing)

  22. Re:Got a problem with the Register? by jamesbrown1000 · · Score: 1

    right on brother (or sister). the register is a much more informative site, and i don't have to worry about morons posting crap, either, though said crap is fun to read.

    --
    Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
  23. Re:40% ECC Overhead? by ggeens · · Score: 1

    First of all, a CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) is not ECC (Error Correcting Code). A CRC is some kind of checksum that allows you to check whether a chunk of data (typically a single sector for a hard disk) is correct or not.

    ECC adds more functionality to this: it provides information about which bits are incorrect. (And, since there are only two possible values for a bit, replace it by the correct value.) I'm not an expert, but I can believe a decent ECC algoritm requires 20-40% extra.

    How many ECC bits are used depends not only on the algoritm used, but mostly on the expected frequency of errors.

    Interleave, is something completely unrelated: it refers to the bits in between the sectors that the drive uses to position and synchronize itself to the data on the surface.

    --
    WWTTD?
  24. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You should know that quote is complete and utter bullshit. Bill Gates never said such a thing, nor would have he had the oppurtunity to. As was said, he didn't write DOS, or design the IBM PC. But the 640K limit was mostly a limitation of the *Intel* 8086, which could only address 1MB (and did a poor job of that). In that 1MB you definitely need a reserved space for various purposes, and 384K is reasonable.

  25. yay. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    --I don't want to be a complete downer, but wasn't this just posted with regards to an article in the much hated 'Register' a week or two ago? It seems no less vaporware now than it did then under the '3D memory' name. Now.. I don't doubt that if it becomes more, we'll hear about it... but it seems that bringing it back so quick with the same info is kind of sucky. /me ushers in the nay-sayers...

  26. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ignoring flamage, I'm just going to straight out tell you that Gnome will not be incorporated into KDE: it will die. Open-source projects are winner-take-all. And StarOffice will not go anywhere further, because it's a piece of crap. Being owned by Sun won't change that. Koffice still has a chance to not suck, as do a few others, we'll have to see. I can see the future ;), mark my words.

  27. Re:Microsoft and disk space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, ignoring the other comments, the real reason is that even a minimal Linux installation of most distributions does an incredible amount more than even a complete win98 install. It's just a matter of what's considered "minimal". "bloat" is too low usefulness/byte, not too many bytes. For example, most people don't consider a fully functional C/C++ development environment to be a part of a "complete" Windows installation, but only rarely do you see someone install Linux without gcc/egcs.

  28. The article says $50 is cost of manufacture... by Chris+Worth · · Score: 1

    ....and not recommended retail price.

    --
    - Read fiction at www.espressostories.com
  29. $50 is a nice dream by _J_ · · Score: 2

    I think that we all know that any company that releases this technology will be charging far more than $50 for 2.3TB of storage. It's not that they have to, but that they can to maximise their profit.

    And that's not necessarily a bad thing either.

    I predict that 2.3TB will be above $400 in two years IF this technology holds water

    IMHO of course.:)

    J:)

    --
    Oh well, no point in steering now.
    1. Re:$50 is a nice dream by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Read the article dude - it says 'production costs for a 2,300-Gbyte credit-card-sized memory will be less than $50'. That doesn't mean that it will cost $50. With marketing, packaging, distribution and all the R&D that went into developing this new technology, the cost to you will be much, much more... RTEFA AC

    2. Re:$50 is a nice dream by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The thing to remember most is vendors and OEMs love making things propietary, forcing you to buy their components in order not to void the warranty. So these will cost far more than $50 per, wouldn't be surprised if they were $5000. Then add propietary X and Y, raising it to $8000 or whatever.

      I recently gave a resounding 'No' to IBM. Their propietary voltage regulator on the Netfinity M5500 raised the price of a PIII 500MHz Xeon w/ 1M L2 by $2200, more than doubling the price of the CPU. (I'm currently in talks with VA, though too bad nothing they have comes in stealth black cube form).

      Sure, you can pay $5000, but that'll void your warranty. I don't care, as do other geeks (we do it our way!), but corps get screwed a lot this way. Course, at the size of a credit card... wouldn't be hard to find room for a few exabytes.

      r

    3. Re:$50 is a nice dream by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The thing to remember says that they plan to license the technology given the cut-throat competition that currently exists in the storage market, with companies selling hard drives near or at cost, I doubt that if this technology turns out to be genuine, that the drives will cost obscene amounts of money. If they only cost $50 to make, and say $70 to put on store shelves, how long can the prices stay in the hundreds and hundreds of dollars before competitive price cutting drives the prices down to levels affordable to virtually anybody?

    4. Re:$50 is a nice dream by DeadSea · · Score: 1

      I'd think so too. Especially if the access speed is faster than disks today. Everybody will want one.

      Remember, they said that the production cost will be around $50. Put patent royalties, and profit margins on top of that and you would be looking at major bucks.

      If they price it anything like chipmakers have done, the price will start at two grand and eventually fall to the $50 production cost within a few years....

  30. 90 GB vs. 2.3 TB hrm.. by stingray · · Score: 1

    90 GB Solid state HD for $815 or $50 for 2.3 TB, both of which i question.

  31. Re:100MB/sec smokes current high-end by flatrock · · Score: 1

    The article said 100 Mbps (Mega bits per second) which is more on the range of 10 MB/s. Currently the high end SCSI drives can sustain throughputs of around 18 to 23 MB/s. To get the throughput up to a reasonable rate you would have to stripe it across multiple devices.

    As for current technology handling the bandwidth, Fibre Channel can currently handle 100 MB/s and 200 MB/s isn't that far out on the horrizion. The biggest problem is that your standard 33 MHz, 32-bit PCI bus only provides 132 MB/s of bandwidth, and the implementation on a lot of systems provides much less. Some systems (I think a Sun Ultra 60 for example) do have a 64-bit PCI bus, but it's hardly the norm.

  32. Big claims .. I'd be worried for my head by SirSlud · · Score: 3

    You know, I have a feeling this isn't total vapor-nonsense. If I were a scientist who had discovered a storage technology with these kind of metrics (3,600 GB, 100Mbs!!), I'd be awfully worried about blathering these kinds of astronomical numbers unless I was fairly certain I could do it.

    Curiously enough, I work at a company that develops medical imaging software. We have a product that is bundled by a large supplier of MRI machines with their machines. The connection being that the scientist in quesiton here also led the team that invented the MRI machine.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
    1. Re:Big claims .. I'd be worried for my head by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahem.. cold fusion?

    2. Re:Big claims .. I'd be worried for my head by SirSlud · · Score: 2

      There no corperations claiming to have cold fusion ready within 2 years. Or were there?

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    3. Re:Big claims .. I'd be worried for my head by Sagev · · Score: 1

      100Mbs isn't really a good data transfer rate. Assuming I'm reading it right (100 megabits per second.. I think megabytes per second would be MBps). Current EIDE/UDMA drives get about 11 MBps. And this is only 10MBps? (Note: hdparm -t /dev/hda3 tells me my drive is currently doing 11.35 MBps.) If it is 100MBps, well... then.. bathe it and bring it before me.

      As a slight side note, I gotta say I think all the talk of this being vaporware is kinda silly. Firstly, so what if it is? You'll go on living in your day to day 6.3GB world and be as happy as the proverbial clam. Secondly, why would they do that? Do they have any competitors to crush by doing it? Do they really stand to gain anything with it? No. Investors would want to see a prototype in action before they'd give it any money, and all the big tech companies have bigtime badass doctors of engineering to go over the reports they've been given and see if it's feasible.

      --Me

  33. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >>Sure, large web servers and other massive >>database-driven information repositories will be >>able to use it, but what about the home user? >>15,000 hours of MP3s? Not likely.

    Really not likely!!!!!

    A. Who wants to have compressed lower quality
    music when there is enough space for real shit!

    B. Who wants simple stereo anyway???? I am still
    waiting for that octeo sound!
    Imagine a good smoke and pink floyd in octeo!
    That would kick minds!!!!!



  34. Hmmm... $50 is too expensive! by Sun+Tzu · · Score: 2

    I think I'll wait *3* years when these babies are obsolete and pick them up for $10 each! ;)

    --
    Geeky modern art T-shirts
    1. Re:Hmmm... $50 is too expensive! by cswanson · · Score: 1

      I'm with you. I am not in such a hurry to jump on a bandwagon I've lived this long without.

    2. Re:Hmmm... $50 is too expensive! by IRNI · · Score: 1

      You are forgetting that after y2k nothing will
      really matter. And 5cents will be too expensive because our economy will colapse.... more prozac please.

    3. Re:Hmmm... $50 is too expensive! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why I have a huge jar full of pennies. I'll be rich!

  35. Re:Porn. You can never have enough porn. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    long live porn!

  36. Re:Selling for $50 would not be practical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We-ell.. That's common, as in typical, business sense as far as the last couple of decades goes, lock in your customers and bleed them dry, but it's not the only way to be successful. At the most basic level, the ideal is to sell things in the middle of the price/popularity curve somewhere - you make a lot more money selling to a billion people for almost cost than to a couple of dozen at a huge killing. And the potential marketplace for such a massive leap forward in technology would be absolutely vast. Handheld supercomputers, digital cameras, VCRs, televisions, whatever. $50 for 2.3T probably means $5 for a Gig or so. I suspect they'll go for the sell billions at practically cost angle.

  37. 20 years ago... by ForceOfWill · · Score: 1

    A FOAF said that hard drives would all be solid state and extremely cheap. I don't think this is what he meant by "solid state" though...

    To me, it sounds more like those memory crystals on Star Trek and in so many other sci-fi stories.

    --

    --
    Seeing is believing; You wouldn't have seen it if you didn't believe it.
    1. Re:20 years ago... by IronGorilla · · Score: 1

      Well you see, that's the trick. Technology has this weird way of following what science fiction predicts.

      Case in point, on some episodes of the original Star Trek series, Spock had little data units that were, basically, 3.5 inch multicolored thin squares. That episode was made in the 60s (I think, I could be wrong) but the little data units or whatever they called them were identical to modern 3.5" floppies, and the slot he put them in looked alot like the corresponding floppy drive. It even had an eject button.

      I'm not saying fall on your knees before star trek or anything, just using them as an example of how technology tends to follow what science fiction authors predict/make up. Life imitating art and all that.

    2. Re:20 years ago... by QuMa · · Score: 1

      I thought the crystals stored energy in phasers, and the memory banks where isolinear rods?

      Oops, I finally revealed myself ;-)

    3. Re:20 years ago... by MrCreosote · · Score: 1

      IIRC, they called them 'tapes'

      --
      MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
    4. Re:20 years ago... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Close enough, ones disc shaped, the other is stream shaped. Still the same (basic) material though (not completely, but sort of)...

  38. historical perspective sought by timothy · · Score: 2

    As some writers have pointed out, some things that are not widely available and cheap would have seemed like an impossible pipedream just a few years ago ... even given that storage space has gotten cheaper, it always seems that the curve has to level out soon.

    I wonder if there is a site (or if I can intrigue someone into creating one) that shows a curve representing the falling cost of storage space, as in

    "X: Time

    Y: Cost of 1 MB of (hard drive or equivalent) storage, in constant dollars (how about 1999 just for current easy-ness)"

    Similar charts would be great / neat / mind-blowing for both RAM and 'processing power' (though deciding on the unit to measure might be tricky, since processors are not a strict 'x amount of processing' ...

    Maybe this should have been an Ask Slashdot question instead, but it's this topic which reminded me of this idea which has been brewing a few years.

    Just a thought,

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
    1. Re:historical perspective sought by Rational · · Score: 1
      Similar charts would be great / neat / mind-blowing for both RAM and 'processing power' (though deciding on the unit to measure might be tricky, since processors are not a strict 'x amount of processing' ...


      Why not MIPS per $? That sounds like it would be fair enough...

      --
      "Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
    2. Re:historical perspective sought by teraten · · Score: 1

      I bought my 8.4 gig this year for $60 including s&h.. and prices don't go down at a constant rate, they go down at an exponential rate, because technology is advancing. Everyone is thinking in terms of cost per megabyte, but that's completely linear thinking. Technology advances, it doesn't just get bigger! For instance, a DSL connection right now would cost this household less than our two internet connections, three phone lines, and two 14.4k(yeah, 14.4, it would still cost less) modems! It would also support a hell of a lot more.

      --
      ** Hit any user to continue **
    3. Re:historical perspective sought by nakaduct · · Score: 1
      I wonder if there is a site ... that shows a curve representing the falling cost of storage space,

      Not a curve, but I have two relevant bookmarks, both found while looking for something else: Historical Cost-of-Storage Data, and a great article about trends and such by a storage engineer at SGI. cheers,
      mike

    4. Re:historical perspective sought by Trepidity · · Score: 2

      Well, I remember when buying a computer in 1994 that most hard drives were around 50 cents per megabyte. I bought my 8.4 gig last year (march 1998) for US$180, which is around 2 cents per megabyte.

      This is why that 2.3 TB drive for $50 looks unreleastic. That'd be around 0.00002 cents per megabyte. In five years we've gone from 50 to 2 cents (25 times less), so I doubt we'll go from 2 to 0.00002 cents (100,000 times less) in a mere two years.

      I, too, would like to see a chart with something more accurate than my anecdotal evidence =)

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  39. damn that's big by gnark · · Score: 1

    man how long would it take to format one of your new 2.3TB drives? :)

  40. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? - Movies by MindStalker · · Score: 2

    No thats a double sided, double (or is it triple?) layered disk that hold that much. I believe the typical 2 hour movie not including all the little extras you get is around 1.5GB (THIS IS A VERY ROUGH ESTIMATE, so don't get on my case about the numbers I don't really have the time now to look them up)

  41. Re:Digital VCR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This has big implications for TiVo and ReplayTV (guess their respective URLs). They can only record a few hours on their current HDDs. This tech, if real, could explode that market.

  42. 2000+ Gigs? Cool by Ken+Broadfoot · · Score: 1

    I am more curious how Micky$oft will expand Win2002 to use up MOST of that space just for the OS.

    Ken

    --
    Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
    1. Re:2000+ Gigs? Cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your point? normal install of windows, 290megs, normal redhat6 350+ when u can make normal statement, come back

    2. Re:2000+ Gigs? Cool by Jason+Skomorowski · · Score: 1

      Ah, but now your 350MB RedHat install has enough
      compilers and libraries that said system could compile itself.

      Now, how much space would it take for all the junk used to compile windows above and beyond the existing space taken up. Will it all fit in the extra 60MB? Doubtful ...

  43. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "what will we do with the space? " I had the same feeling when I got my first double sided floppy. All that space. All that freedom. No need to worry. Double sided!! The good old days-)

  44. One word: Cache. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cache.

  45. Re:One word, vaporware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not necessarily. There was an article about this in the Business section of a brit paper a couple of weeks back. I've been looking for articles online since I stumbled across it. Has anyone here actually -seen- one?

  46. People with small minds think small... Big minds.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What is wrong with you people? someone puts a HD with 2.3 TB before you and you think MP3?!?!? You could store all the music known to man in MP3 format on one of these babies. Why not one up the new DVD audio format and go for 6 channel extremely high resolution audio? Solid state HDTV recorders? I think everyone should, well, think different. (sorry I just had to)

  47. Well, the University think it's real. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.keele.ac.uk/research/cmrkeele.htm

  48. Large enough. Not fast enough. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If what I've heard is true it won't be fast enough. At 100MB/s it won't be fast enough to serve up 30fps. Even if the media couldsupport that throughput, 180MB/s would require some special support equipment since the latest incarnation of SCSI doesn't even come close.

  49. Re:Microsoft and disk space by ucblockhead · · Score: 1

    An example of why this is still not a good comparison:

    Under Windows, the C runtime dynamic link libraries are in \windows\system32

    Under Linux, the equivalent libraries are in /usr/lib, which you did not list.

    \Windows\system32 usually ends up being a dumping ground for every third party dll. Again, not a good design, but this means that you should at least include /usr/lib in your comparison.

    --
    The cake is a pie
  50. Re:The access is a nightmare. by Macdude · · Score: 1
    ...if you are trying to do anything like perusing a database using a field which isn't indexed, it's going to be glacial.

    Glacial? This is a RANDOM access system, not linear. There is no need to scan the entire 2.3 TBs unless your database is that big, and if your database is that big you'd better index anything you want to search for.

    It would make much more sense to have 100 23 GB drives than 1 2300 GB drive for a great many purposes...

    I would rather have one 2,300 GB drive than 100 23 GB drives... I can partition the 2.3 TB drive anyway I need (say to store that 24 GB movie file) without worrying about RAID configurations. With your 100 drives you've just increased the likely hood of a drive failure by a factor of 100. I'll gladly take two 2.3 TB drives and use one as a backup (mirrored) over trying to find room on my desk for 100 drives...

    --
    "Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
  51. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? - Movies by Macdude · · Score: 1
    No thats a double sided, double (or is it triple?) layered disk that hold that much. I believe the typical 2 hour movie not including all the little extras you get is around 1.5GB

    A single-sided single-layered DVD holds 4.6 GBs, enough space for a "normal" two hour movie. If the movie is less than two hours, or the compression ratio is better than "normal" there will be room left over for extras.

    --
    "Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
  52. KnomeOffice by Scurrilous+Knave · · Score: 1
    Ignoring flamage, I'm just going to straight out tell you that Gnome will not be incorporated into KDE: it will die.

    Sorry to say, you're wrong. I don't see KDE or GNOME dying. Becoming more and more alike, yes. But enough of us hate and fear C++ to refuse to use it, and when your base toolkit requires C++, you lose a lot of potential talent. I don't mind using KDE, though it feels to me to have less coherence and depth than GNOME in general, but I certainly won't be coding for it.

    I also dispute your assertion that "Open-source projects are winner-take-all." Where did you get this? Actually, I take that back--the winner does take all, and with open source and free software projects, the users are the winners. But the zero-sum competition models that have prevailed so far in the commercial software world are outmoded and are dying.

    I agree that StarOffice is in trouble. I haven't tried KOffice, so cannot speak to its potential. I wish it all possible success. The more choices I have, the better.

    You say, "I can see the future ...". I don't know what it is that you're seeing, but it isn't my future. Lessee ... does it have a lot of lint on it? Are you sure it isn't the inside of your belly-button?

  53. Vaporware due to commercial "interests" by Tuross · · Score: 1

    I'm related to the scientist who discovered the technology that makes this possible. Actually the real storage size possible is much much greater.
    The trouble is that there are rather large companies like Seagate, Quantum, et al who, like oil companies with superior car propulsion systems, have vested interests in making this technology never see the light of day.

    I don't know about you but I'm growing tired of watching the advancement of the human race being held back by greedy, selfish corporations.

    --
    Matt
    1. Read Slashdot
    2. ???
    3. Profit
  54. XFS by halbritt · · Score: 1

    It's certainly time that Linux got a journalling file system. fsck's are not only much faster, they're unnecessary. In the event of a crash the file system checks for any writes that were open but not committed, eliminating the necessity to check the entire volume. XFS also has support for 9 million terabytes which should suffice for the next few years. check out the white paper.

  55. The access is a nightmare. by Tau+Zero · · Score: 1
    Did you read the article? Access speed of 100 mega-something per second; it was not immediately clear to me if this was bits or bytes. Assuming this is bytes, the 2300 Gb drive would take over 6 HOURS to be read from one end to the other.

    The conclusion I draw from this is that such devices are either

    1. Going to require large increases in access speed, such as multiple read/write heads, or
    2. Going to require serious application of database technology with comprehensive indexing
    to store things usefully. The days of grepping your hard drive for things you lost will be gone, gone, gone.
    --
    Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
    1. Re:The access is a nightmare. by Macdude · · Score: 1
      Assuming this is bytes, the 2300 Gb drive would take over 6 HOURS to be read from one end to the other.

      For a system that would hold 500 (SSSL) DVD's worth of data this is bad how? Besides if 12.5 MBps (MegaBytes) isn't fast enough, stick six together in a stripped array... 13.8 TB at 75 MBps... That should be fast enough for most anybody...

      Frankly, latency and seek times are more of a concern that raw throughput.

      --
      "Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
    2. Re:The access is a nightmare. by Tau+Zero · · Score: 1
      For a system that would hold 500 (SSSL) DVD's worth of data this is bad how?
      Not necessarily bad, just cumbersome. The capacity/read speed quotient of these things makes mag tapes look like speed demons, and the time to scan a significant portion of the contents is going to be way up there. If you are trying to replace a DVD jukebox with one of these this is not a factor, but if you are trying to do anything like perusing a database using a field which isn't indexed, it's going to be glacial. It would make much more sense to have 100 23 GB drives than 1 2300 GB drive for a great many purposes, and some of those purposes are likely to be yours at one time or another.
      --
      Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
    3. Re:The access is a nightmare. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's called partitioning. Look into it.

    4. Re:The access is a nightmare. by quadong · · Score: 1

      Either way, a surface scan would be a real chore (day? weeks?). Even a standard scan disk (scan card?) would take a long time for the whole thing, and you would still have to check each of your partitions for errors.

  56. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Shotgun · · Score: 1

    Think of what the government and all the corporations could do with this amount of memory. And you thought data-warehousing was a big thing now. With storage this cheap and small (one of the biggest problems that the government has is where to store millions of CDs and reals of tape) you'll have your whole life recorded and indexed whether you like it or not.

    Revelations talks of a beast that will know the whereabouts of every person on the planet. Is that where all of this technology is headed?

    --
    Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
    Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
  57. Re:Possible Gotchas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dream Time: If this is true and it can keep all stored info when it is turned off, the tempreture might not be a big deal. Here is why: If this thing has a high transfer rate, close to that of L1 or L2 cache or RAM then you could make a SIMM sized CPU/MEMORY card. The Linux kernal is stored on one partiton, swap on a second and RAM on a third. Now hopefully the current Kool technologies the /.ers have posted can cool the box low enough to allow some of the higher tempreture superconduters to be used to make the CPU instead of Copper or Aluminum. It might be worth it for some compaines to make these superconduting multi-multi cpu boxes. It could be cheaper the some of todays super-computers. One can dream right?

  58. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? - Movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Double sided, dual layer (four layers total) is 17GB. Although most movies right now don't use more than 4GB, it's possible (from what I understand) to use all 17GB and zero compression. This should yeild a quality better than LaserDisc. Anyway, the point is that with 2.3GB, you could fit a couple hundred movies at high quality.

    Beware TPB

  59. 40% ECC Overhead? Not. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1
    From the article:
    According to the company, an additional advantage over existing data-storage systems is that only 20 percent of the total capacity is needed for error correction, significantly less than the 40 percent now needed for hard disks and the 30 percent needed for optical storage.

    There is no way hard drives have 40% overhead for EDAC. More like 4%. Say four bytes per interleave, four interleaves, and a word for CRC. So 4*4 + 2 = 18 bytes added to a 512 byte sector for only 3.4% overhead. It can get more or less efficient, depending on the sector size.
    1. Re:40% ECC Overhead? Not. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure you can. Of course they're not using Hamming codes to do it.

      The ones I've worked on used Reed Solomon codes and they do indeed perform error correction with only 4% overhead. On top of the R.S. is a CRC to reduce the chances of a undetected miscorrection.

    2. Re:40% ECC Overhead? Not. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're talking error detection. There's no way you're going to do error *correction* in only 4% overhead.

    3. Re:40% ECC Overhead? Not. by K-Man · · Score: 1

      I think it refers to the physical layout of the bits in the material, and the amount of "empty space" between them. There are also things to help locate the beginning of each block as it passes under the head, and generally to reduce positional error, which may be all that they mean here.

      --
      ---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
  60. Re:MST3K!!! by miahrogers · · Score: 1

    ok MST3K == mystery science theater 3000 right?
    I love that show!! I even found the poster for the movie in the reject bin at my local movie store and i now have it on my wall. I wonder if its worth anything?? I'd be willing to trade it for one of those harddrives.

  61. $50 is the _PRODUCTION_ cost by Stiletto · · Score: 1

    Read it again. At a production cost of $50, you will expect to pay at least $500-$600 for one of these as a consumer.

    Not that that's bad for 2 terrabytes! :)

  62. Yes, drive letters will be hell. by Myself · · Score: 1

    Right now, my physical devices are up to N: (That 7-disc CD changer really did it, not that the Zip, Sparq, and Cd-rw were helping things)

    I can just imagine partitioning this thing. Screw that! I'd rather see it as one of those "plug in and forget" network-ready storage toasters. Just NFS-mount the damn thing and forget about the partitioning limitations of our current OS's.

  63. Re:40% ECC Overhead? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Disk drives often have both a CRC and error correction codes. I was aware of the difference and you will note I counted them seperately.

    Interleave, in this context, is accurate. The 512 byte sector might be split into 3 or four interleaves, each interleave has it's own ECC redundancy symbols. The technique increases the number of sequential bits that may be corrected.

  64. Vaporware == venture capital fraud by crow · · Score: 2

    This sort of thing could easily be a scam to get some venture capital. If it were IBM saying it was five to ten years out, I would believe them.

    It would be interesting to see who the people behind this are, and what they've done in the past.

    Disclaimer: I have no evidence, only suspicions.

    1. Re:Vaporware == venture capital fraud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, it's the guy who invented the magnetic resonance scanner. Allegedly, of course. Anyway, this is a UK university we're talking about, they don't do that sort of thing, surely? Sounds un-British to me.

  65. Hmm. Privacy Implications.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Imagine the scene. GEV Port customs, East Coast, hundreds of people swarming through with 8Tb palm computers in various places about their persons, containing amongst other things a cache of every web site they ever visited. How do you spot check -that- for 'illegal data'? It'd be like everyone was walking through green channel with one of those omnipresent little 'Pouch of unfeasable roominess' that always turn up in Tolkien clones..

  66. I'll wait and see... by Millennium · · Score: 2

    If they can do this for $50, I'll buy five.

    If they can do this for $200, I'll still buy one.

    Personally, I think it'll be significantly more expensive than that, but the prices will eventually come down. I think it can be done; this guy has one hell of a reputation that he has to uphold. Consider that he said production costs were $50 a drive. The hard drive companies will likely start by charging thousands for the devices, because people will pay for that much storage.

  67. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by SmokeyDP · · Score: 1

    You sound like Bill Gates..."640K will be more than enough for anyone"
    Also, im shure those of us running a Dual Boot Winblows and Linux will need the space, cause just think 3 years = 2 releases of Windows later, and if you think Windows 95/98 is Bloatware...just wait.....you will be out spending $100 to get two of those little suckers.

    nuff said

  68. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? - Movies by dirty · · Score: 2

    I think they're about 4gigs for a standard movie. Since most discs are double sided, w/ widescreen on one and fullscreen on the other (cuz companies are too dumb to use the built in widescreen to pan&scan features of dvd) you have about 8gigs per disc.

    --

    -matt
  69. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    for something like that you'd need at least 5 petabytes

  70. This is "solid state" the way hard drives are. by Christopher+Thomas · · Score: 2
    Now, the solid state bit is an interesting spin, but think about it: 1. How much faster than 10K RPM can we spin drives?


    Actually, according to the article they'll still need actuators to move the read/write head over the material... which is starting to sound suspiciously like an ordinary hard drive (actuators move on one axis and the disk medium spins on the other). Solid state starts looking like a bit of a misnomer here.


    AFAICT from the article this is just a device working much like a hard drive with multiple layers per platter that uses a magneto-optical system to do layer selection (much as DVDs can focus on different layers). Where they get their size, cost, and capacity numbers from I'm not sure.

  71. Re:2.3TB is small! (for BeOS) by Ryanwoodings · · Score: 1

    BeOS can access something like 18 Petabytes on a single volume! Someday I'm sure that number will sound so small, but for now, I'm sure that should be enough storage for any computer on the planet.

  72. hard drive cost by timothy · · Score: 1

    The reason I'd like to see a chart that shows the price curve on hard drive space cost is just this ... so I could tell how linear / what tendency the line is / has. Even if in 5 years we have hard drive space that is 25 times cheaper, that would mean your USD 180 could get you 200 gigs-plus ... and that's room for ... well, for a lot.

    Though I hope we really do see that kind of increase, from the middle of 1999 this still seems like a crazy one. It wasn't long ago that I was stunned that my computer had an entire gig (!) of hard disk at all.

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  73. Re:100 Mbps? Not slow! by ricOS/2 · · Score: 1
    This isn't exactly fast, but it's about the same speed of many of today's 10K rpm drives (probably the smaller ones - lower densities). A SUSTAINED transfer rate like that is pretty respectable. I believe that you're comparing it to the IDE/SCSI controller/protocol rates... (generally 66MB/s IDE and 80 (maybe higher now?) MB/s for scsi are the current limits). However, disks don't spin that fast... (They can burst it from their caches ... woooo... that's useful...)

    You will get higher rates out of current-day disks since they have such high density... but you still have several ms of access time... THIS is what kills us... 99% of the time, I'm not reading huge sequential sections off of the disk! Solid state would virtually eliminate the access time...

  74. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Revelations talks of a beast that will know the whereabouts of every person on the planet. Is that where all of this technology is headed?

    Yep. I'm going to go get me a sandwitch.

  75. A new FS by ocie · · Score: 1

    I think that a lot of the assumptions that go into today's filesystems make them something that wouldn't work too well on this drive. If the seek time is negligible (it isn't on disks), then you could use a really braindead allocation algorithm that wouldn't bother to keep files contiguous.

    --
    JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
  76. Maxtor uses 10.5% ECC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Well, a quick check at the Maxtor site reveals a whitepaper on MaxSafe, their latest and greatest ECC scheme. The document clearly states that MaxSafe uses 430 bits for a 512 byte sector, or approximately 10.5%. (512 bytes * 8 bit = 4096, 430/4096 = 0.1049804... etc.)

    There's no date on the article, but they mention the "new" DiamondMax Plus 5120, so whenever that drive came out has gotta be close. As hard drive density has increased, it was my understanding that ECC was getting larger and larger, to the point that on the largest drives, there's virtually never a sector that comes in clean. But this is rumor: can someone else track down any whitepapers or more specific details?

    I'll point out that if someone had looked at the Maxtor site, read what it said, but missed the bits vs. bytes part, well, 430 would look darn close to 40% of (512 + 430) now wouldn't it? (It's actually 45.6% of 942...) Think someone misread bits for bytes somewhere?

  77. Re:Microsoft and disk space by skyte · · Score: 1

    I'm not a regular redhat user, but Id like to bet a "minimal install" doesn't include Gnome, KDE + Enlightenment.

  78. Re:Microsoft and disk space by gavinhall · · Score: 1

    Posted by Synsthe:

    Lay off the fumes man, you're starting to see cross eyed.

    If I wander over to the windows 98 machine I have in this house, and click properties for both the System and Windows folders, I get a combined size of just over 600 megabytes. The Windows folder is such a mess because of a poor set up on their part that I don't even want to bother trying to clean it up anymore.

    If I however run a couple quick ``du -sh'' comands on my nix box, I come up with a combined size of under 5 megs for /boot, and /etc. The kernels less than a meg of that, around 550kb to be exact.

    So what kind of weird hallucinagens have you been taking today? It looks an awful lot to me like the core operating system size differences are quite exponentially different, in favour of Linux being the more compact and less bloated.


    --
    Mark Waterous (mark@projectlinux.org)

  79. 50Gig Cache drive Re:100 Mbps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If the main terabyte storage is slow, just set up a few in a RAID array, with a fast, cheap 50 Gig disk or RAM drive as a cache.

  80. Microsoft and disk space by Wonko42 · · Score: 1
    It's nice to see so many people don't have a clue what they're talking about...

    From what I see, my Linux installation is using quite a bit more hard drive space than my Windows 2000 installation, and my Windows 98 installation doesn't come anywhere near the size of Linux. This would seem to imply that Linux would be the one to take advantage of the extra terabytes, wouldn't it?

    1. Re:Microsoft and disk space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Besides, a "minimal install" of redhat is not exactly the smallest distro possible. Try a minimal install of Debian, for example (about 30 megs). Or use one of those 2-floppy Linux distributions like Trinux.

    2. Re:Microsoft and disk space by HaKn5La5H · · Score: 1

      It's hard to compare a Win98 installation to a Linux installation. Win98 is really a given size (+ or - about 100MB of options), but linux comes in packages between a meg and few gigabytes. When you say Linux is bigger than Win98, what distribution, what packages, were appz included?

    3. Re:Microsoft and disk space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know how much space their Linux install is using?

      It's nice to see so many people don't have a clue what they're talking about...

    4. Re:Microsoft and disk space by ucblockhead · · Score: 1

      That is not a good comparison. Looking at my WinNT box, I see that the \Winnt directory includes such things as:

      My browser cache.
      All of my e-mail, including attachments.
      Help files for much of the system.
      A couple of third party applications.
      Anything stored on "the desktop".
      Everything in the "personal" folders for all users.
      Dynamic link libraries for many third party apps.

      \Windows holds much, much more than "the core operating system".

      Now granted, this sort of organization sucks rocks, but to say that this is equivalent to /etc and /boot is, at best, extremely misleading.

      --
      The cake is a pie
    5. Re:Microsoft and disk space by Wonko42 · · Score: 1

      I'm referring to a minimal installation of RedHat 6.0. By default, Gnome, KDE, Enlightenment, and some services and other accessories are installed. In the case of Windows, one has to keep in mind that a zillion accessories get installed along with the OS. Oh, and I meant Windows 2000 Server, not Professional, and IIS is installed. (Apache was not installed on the RedHat box)

  81. Re:MST3K!!! by crayz · · Score: 1

    There are people who have almost all the episodes on tape, and trade to get more. Unfortunetely I don't have any Comedy Central ones on tape, and they won't trade for other things. There's also an MST3K VCD project, but I'd rather have tapes.

    If anyone knows a good place with someone nice enough to just take maybe 2 or three tapes and then send one back w/ episodes on it, I'd love to find it. Lets start a Slashdot MST3K tape trading club.

  82. Error correction in 4% overhead possible by roystgnr · · Score: 2

    You just have to pick the right code. With ideal block codes (which exist, for certain block lengths), every two parity symbols gives you the ability to correct one symbol error. So if you've got a medium with a low enough error rate (and aren't hard drives less than 1e-6 error probability?), 4% overhead can be more than enough.

    So anyway, it's possible; as to whether that's how much is actually used, your guess is as good as mine.

  83. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Forget jpg's, gif's, and zip files. Finally after many years of being an intermediate format the .bmp will rule again. Backwards, upside down and padded for 4 byte alignment in memory, the worlds craziest graphics standard will rule once again!

  84. 2.3tb....scandisk and defrag would be a week long. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It would take forever to run defrag on this kind of drive, also you guys are forgeting something. The drive is scalable so a 50gb drive would be what $5.......

  85. 100MB/sec smokes current high-end by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, at least Ultra2 SCSI, which tops out at 80MB/sec (multi-channel striping would obviously get around this, but that also takes up a lot of space and power, generates heat, etc.) per channel, which no hard drive I am aware of can put out. Also consider that 50 gigabytes is considered to be a large hard drive. 2.3TB is 46 times (unless the caffeine is wearing off) that. Of course it's going to take a lot longer to read/write the whole thing.

    1. Re:100MB/sec smokes current high-end by SaDan · · Score: 1

      Wasn't the speed listed as "100Mb/s"? That's roughly 10Megs a second, not 100Megs a second.

      Still, it isn't shabby, and if they can do it for $50 I'll buy a dozen.

      :-)

  86. Re:Addressing 2.3TB with current OS'es by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hopefully SGI's port of XFS to Linux will be done by then. It can access "millions of terabytes, millions of files, and a million files per directory", and is journalling so you never have to run fsck.

  87. galactica by RoLlEr_CoAsTeR · · Score: 1

    In Star Wars, there are Holocrons that are tiny, wafer thin (from what I can tell) crystal-like squares that store immense amounts of data, mostly in the form of diaries, histories, etc.. legends, training, wisdom, and skills of the Jedi that are passed down from generation to generation. I realize that some might think that, well, if it's only history.. i.e., paperwork type stuff, it might not take up that much space, but you also have to remember that, as far as I know, the holocrons could also display video (holograph-projection, maybe?), and play sound. Of course, not too sure, I'll have to check my "Weapons & Technology" book again, but you get the idea. Pretty cool, IMO.

    --

    Insert mind here.
  88. ummmmmmmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Billy Didn't write DOS, nor did he engineer the IBM PC...

  89. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bitmaps are not a storage format. Don't complain about the size.

  90. ight you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While I love Linux and hate Winblows, I just put up a Red Hat 6.0 server (no X, but with the kernel source). I did what I considered a minimum installation, and it came to more than 300MB (I had to spend a lot of time deselecting packages I didn't want, also). This looks bloated to me.

    1. Re:ight you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      picky picky! with 18g drives so cheep who cares??? are you a poor slum from bagladesh?

  91. What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Matrix42 · · Score: 2
    Well, if this is true (and I haven't made up my mind yet; the lack of technical details was disturbing), what will we do with the space?

    Sure, large web servers and other massive database-driven information repositories will be able to use it, but what about the home user? 15,000 hours of MP3s? Not likely.

    I'm not going to make the mistake of saying it will be more than enough for anything; I'm sure in 10 years 2.3TB will be pitifully small, but I would like to know. In retrospect, it's easy to see how we can use more than 640KB RAM, but what retrospectively obvious things are we going to do to fill these drives?

    Speculations, anyone?

    1. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by jms · · Score: 2

      This would store approximately 3888 hours of UNCOMPRESSED true CD-quality music.

      2300 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 / (44100 * 4 * 60 * 60) = ~3888

      Stick a little microprocessor on it (it wouldn't need much of one!), add a DAC and ADC, and suddenly you have a portable audio recorder/player with some amazing muscle!

    2. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Frobean · · Score: 1

      That should be just about enough space to install the next version of wndows, office 2002, IE6 and a couple of games... ;)

    3. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A couple years ago an engineer at a hard drive company asked me if I thought there'd be a market for cheap (like $100-$200) 10G, 20G, or 30G drives for the Average Joe.. He didn't seem too convinced when I blurted 'Hell yeah!' Of course, at the time I was in nirvana with my vast 2G drive, wondering how I'd fill it.. Fer chrissakes..we'll need that space once everyone has DSL/Cable. Porn, TeeVee shows, WAVs (forget MP3)..build it and they will fill it.

    4. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by ocie · · Score: 1

      This could help to solve NASA's storage problem. I've heard, maybe even on /. that they get so much data that there is really no way to archive it. Other groups also generate this kind of data. There will always be projects that will use large amounts of storage -- buildings of file cabinets, vaults of punched cards, paper or EM tape, hard drives, hard drive arrays. If the price is right, there'll be someone who wants to store an arbiutrarily large amount of data.

      --
      JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
    5. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by schon · · Score: 2

      Hmm.. I don't know what I would do with all that storage, but I can imagine the average 'doze user could use it to install Office 2001...

      ... and have almost 100MB of space left over to store a document :o)

      (sorry, gratuitous MS-bashing... you could see it coming, couldn't you? :o)

    6. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? by Bokonon · · Score: 1
      Well, I'd wait a year until the capacity got up to 3-4 Tb, and then remap my entire memory in to the system... IMMORTALITY!!! :)

      -Bok

  92. Porn. You can never have enough porn. by grytpype · · Score: 1

    .

    --

    - Have a picture

  93. Possible Gotchas by bperkins · · Score: 3

    I was thinking about this, and I wonder if any of the following might be true:

    a) It's volitle
    b) It has to be kept at 4 kelvin
    c) It's volitle and has to be kept at 4 kelvin

    I always thought it might be funny to have a computer that ran on cryogens. Imagine coming in the morining and doing a liquid helium transfer before getting to work.

    Or perhaps a 5000 Watt dishwasher sized helium compressor sitting next to your credit card sized hard drive.

  94. Addressing 2.3TB with current OS'es by sugarman · · Score: 2

    Just a quick question regarding this topic, but how are todays' OS'es set up to handle 2.3 TB of memory on a single drive?

    I seem to recall something in the BEos bible regarding the addressing of this much memory, but, truth be told my eys start getting glossy when there's lots of '0's.

    I'm assuming that Win9X will suck hard at this, but I'm not sure. Would Linux and the BSD's be able to manage this? Are there any other issues for dealing with drives this large?

    --
    --sugarman--
    1. Re:Addressing 2.3TB with current OS'es by Trepidity · · Score: 2

      BeOS can handle this, NT can handle this, and I assume the commercial UNIXes can.

      Windows9x may or may not be able to handle it. The FAT32 maximum is somewhere above 2 TB, but I'm not sure how far above.

      Linux will indeed "suck hard at this," due to ext2fs's maximum of 1 TB.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  95. Those who cannot remember the past... by the_tsi · · Score: 3

    4-5 years ago, when 1GB drives first started dropping under $1000, I would have laughed out loud at anyone who told me that you'd be able to buy a 4GB drive for under $100 by the end of the century, nor that new PCs would be shipping with 23+ gigs as standard. I have very little doubt that in 2 years, we'll see multi-terabyte drives shipping for consumer-friendly prices. Now, the solid state bit is an interesting spin, but think about it: 1. How much faster than 10K RPM can we spin drives? Not particularly that much before we have overheating and wear-and-tear issues to deal with. 2. Sure, we can have penny-sized CD that holds umpteen zigabytes of data, but when dealing with magnetic disks, we're going to run into physical issues soon with data density. 3. Power. 10K drives need more current than 7200 or 5400rpm ones, and to go faster we'll need to suck even more. In today's world of green PCs, faster conventional hard drives aren't gonna do it. I think this article is completely legit. Granted, I'm all with CT on the "believe it when I see it" issue, but I don't think it's completely off-the-wall. -Chris

    1. Re:Those who cannot remember the past... by Trepidity · · Score: 2

      I'm still skeptical. The historical numbers you posted are exactly why. Apparently you forgot to do the math on those numbers =)

      5 years ago 1 GB drives were just starting to come down in price, and I got an 810 MB hard drive for around $300. Now the best you can get for $300 is around 30 gigs. That's an increase of around 40 times the storage capacity/dollar over 5 years.

      On the other hand, if a 2.3 TB drive were to ship for $50 in two years, that'd be an increase of around 500 times the storage capacity/dollar over two years.

      I don't think that's going to happen. Perhaps in two years we'll see 300 gig hard drives, or possibly 500 gig hard drives at decent prices, but i doubt we'll see 2300+ gig hard drives for under $5000, let alone $50.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    2. Re:Those who cannot remember the past... by PanDuh · · Score: 1

      Well, technological advancement is not necessarily a smooth linear or even logarithmic curve, it can be a stepped curve where new technological breakthroughs can shoot it straight up.

  96. Those who cannot remember the past... by the_tsi · · Score: 0

    4-5 years ago, when 1GB drives first started dropping under $1000, I would have laughed out loud at anyone who told me that you'd be able to buy a 4GB drive for under $100 by the end of the century, nor that new PCs would be shipping with 23+ gigs as standard.
    I have very little doubt that in 2 years, we'll see multi-terabyte drives shipping for consumer-friendly prices. Now, the solid state bit is an interesting spin, but think about it:
    1. How much faster than 10K RPM can we spin drives? Not particularly that much before we have overheating and wear-and-tear issues to deal with.
    2. Sure, we can have penny-sized CD that holds umpteen zigabytes of data, but when dealing with magnetic disks, we're going to run into physical issues soon with data density.
    3. Power. 10K drives need more current than 7200 or 5400rpm ones, and to go faster we'll need to suck even more. In today's world of green PCs, faster conventional hard drives aren't gonna do it.

    I think this article is completely legit. Granted, I'm all with CT on the "believe it when I see it" issue, but I don't think it's completely off-the-wall.

    -Chris

  97. oops by Trepidity · · Score: 2

    After checking over my math, I'm even more skeptical. The 2.3 TB drive for $50 would represent a 600,000 times increase in capacity per dollar over two years, compared to the 40 or so we've seen in the last 5 years.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    1. Re:oops by quadong · · Score: 1

      forgive me, but 2300GB/30GB*$300/$50 = 460 times less, not 500 or 600,000. Or am i mistaken?

    2. Re:oops by Trepidity · · Score: 2

      Ok, I was right the first time, approximately 500 (slightly less, you're right at 460). Now where did i get that 600,000 number from?

      *scratches head*

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  98. One word, vaporware by guacamole · · Score: 1

    See the topic.

  99. Re:2.3tb....scandisk and defrag would be a week lo by GypC · · Score: 1

    heheh... that's why you'd use a decent file system instead of that FAT16/32 crap.

  100. Mips per $ a fair comparison? by timothy · · Score: 1

    This sounds like a fair measure (is there anyone with a technical reason for why MIPS on one machine could not be compared to MIPS on another?).

    The prices need to be measured in some realstic way, too, though, for the result to mean anything.

    Y'know, either retail prices or street prices ...

    timothy

    --
    jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
  101. CDs = 30% by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    CDs use about 30% for their error correction, so why not 40% for magneto/optical storage?

  102. Re:This is (almost) "solid state" by William+Tanksley · · Score: 1

    From what I read, the technology advance is solid state. In order to really use it, you do have to use non-solid state stuff.

    However, on the bright side, they imply that the precision needed for the head motion motor is much lower -- that should result in faster and cheaper drives.

    I also wonder how much data could be stored if you couldn't move the head at all -- that would be truly solid state. If there's anything to the 2.3 TB figure and the statement that the head doesn't have to be positioned accurately, I would guesstimate several hundred megs.

    Not to condone the gratuitous use of the words solid state, of course. You're 100% right about that.

    -Billy

  103. $0.03 of sand in a Pentium/600 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You nailed it. Try buying a Pentium/600 for $0.03 it cost for the raw silicon used to make it, or 2.3T of storage for $50. Ain't gonna happen.

  104. hmmmmmmmmmm by cthulu70 · · Score: 1

    I was just thinking .. god .. its a pain to have fsck run on a 3.2GB HDD, imagion what it would be like running on a monster like this ... "Uh .. yeah .. ill play quake with ya online .... ill be there in about a month"

    1. Re:hmmmmmmmmmm by El+Puerco+Loco · · Score: 1

      Maybe there will be a journaling file system for linux by then.
      ^. .^
      ( @ )

    2. Re:hmmmmmmmmmm by BitPoet · · Score: 1

      My doctor gave me a good bit of advice when I told him that if I did something specific, and strange, to my knee that it would hurt like a bastard.

      His advice was "don't do it"

  105. Digital VCR by crow · · Score: 5

    Not that I believe in this technology, but one big consumer application would be digital VCRs. You could record a thousand hours of DVD-quality video with one of those. So you could record every episode of your favorite TV shows. Or get HBO for a few months and build up a library of movies.

    Of course, this is still a long way from being able to record every channel all the time. With only 100 channels, you would run out of storage within a day. You could, though, pick your favorite channels, set up a profile of stuff you know you don't want to watch (e.g., golf), and have it record everything that doesn't fit the profile. You would then have a week or so after something was recorded to decide to watch or save it before it is recorded over by newer stuff.

  106. 2.3TB is small! by crow · · Score: 2

    Well, not really, but my employer, EMC, has been selling multi-terabyte storage systems for years. If you've got the money, we'll set up a 10TB system for you.

    Generally, EMC storage systems are partitioned into separate volumes, which show up as separate devices when viewed by a host computer.

    Still, the point is that people are dealing with storage systems larger than what we're talking about here.

  107. Re:What do you do with 2.3 TB? - Movies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    By my math... 2.3TB is 2300GB (roughly), and a DVD can hold upto 17GB (roughly), then by division, you can hold 130 movies (roughly) in DVD quality on one of these drives. For $50, that's none too shaby.

    Beware TPB

  108. Selling for $50 would not be practical by kgasso · · Score: 1

    I believe that there is no way these will sell for $50 - go look at the price of an 18GB hard drive.. don't you think this company wants to make money too? It's illogical to sell at this price when they could easily sell for $375-$400 (or more) and still make a killing. Believe it or not, most people would throw in the extra cash for all that space. Why sell for a lower price when you can increase prices to make more money? Common business sense.

    Another thing that concerns me:
    The data-access time for the new storage technology is predicted to be around 100 Mbps.

    100megabits? 100megabytes? The latter I might spring for, but as far as I know, that would be correctly abbreviated 100MBps.

    I'm still skeptical considering all the "new technology" that never made it past the prototype stage...

    -K
    --

  109. fsck time by crow · · Score: 2

    fsck has always been a pain. There are several solutions, though.

    Much of the time used by fsck is for reading all the inodes. If you reduce the number of inodes, you speed up fsck. I did this with my MP3 partition. Unfortunately, ext2 won't let me have one inode per 1024K. Since with such large storage systems most people will be storing very large (by today's standards) files (excluding news/mail archives with one file per message), it makes sense to alter the file system to reserve fewer inodes. Using dynamic inode allocation makes a lot of sense here. You can also save some time by using larger block groups and larger block sizes, but the advantages there will be relatively insignificant.

    1. Re:fsck time by crow · · Score: 2

      Another solution is to use a different type of file system--one that protects itself from corruption or uses some sort of journaling to reduce the need for a full-blown fsck.

    2. Re:fsck time by cthulu70 · · Score: 1

      very true .. and it makes sense to do that. But i think even a better idea would be to use XFS that is going to be incopreated .. sapose to be ALOT faster at checks. (pardon the spelling)

  110. That's why we need JFS (was Re:hmmmmmmmmmm) by davie · · Score: 2

    The trend towards huge storage is one of the reasons why folks want a JFS for Linux. I had to fsck a couple 10GB IDE disks a few weeks ago and it was coffee break time. I can't imagine what TB-scale fsck times would be like. I have my fingers crossed that XFS makes it into Linux 2.6 (next year?).

    --
    slashdot broke my sig
  111. Re:1st use for drive: p0rn! w4r3z! by lubricated · · Score: 1

    Why was this moderated??!!? Personally I know of plenty people who filled their hard drives with porn and warez real quick. I have a friend who has an entire cd collection of porn from mpg's to jpg's this big hard drive would be of great use. As far as warez go their just like any other program. Granted this wasn't a great post but -1 come on.

    --
    It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
  112. Got a problem with the Register? by um...+Lucas · · Score: 1

    The "much hated register"? I find the Register to be generally the most informative website out there. Unadulterated news, with what seems to be almost prophetic insight.... I check that site prior to Slashdot when i first arrive @ work every morning.

  113. MST3K!!! by crayz · · Score: 1

    I can think right now which show I'd want to have all the episodes of on one of these puppies...