The coming terabyte era & flash drives

[~kev~]

There was once a time when a <1 gig hard drive was standard on a system. As strange as its sounds, PC games were only 30 - 40 megs big. When quake 1 came out, it took up about 90 - 100 megs of hard drive space.

When I got my first computer, the hard drive was 1.2 gigs. The second drive I got was a Quantam bigfoot 6 gigs. The 6 gig drive crashed twice. After the second under warranty replacement, quantam replaced the 6 gig with an 8 gig drive.

With the 8 gig drive, I was in hog heaven. It would takes years to fill up all 8 gigs, or so I thought.

Then came the 16, 40, 80, 120, 160, 200, 250, 300, 500 and now the terabyte drives.

Games have gone from 30 megs (doom 2, diablo 1 and C&C DOS version), to 3 - 4 gigs in size. Looking back, I can not say the 3 - 4 gig games offer any better game play then the 30 meg games. The graphics are better, but better game play, I dont think so.

How many people really need a terabyte of data? Some people, rarely, maybe so.

One item I am really disappointed with is hard drive speed. The technology used to build hard drives is based on 1970's - 1980's know how. The whole industry should have switched over to flash drives years ago. Just imagine a 500 gig flash drive. No spin up time, with almost instant access.

The terabyte drives are a way for companies to squeeze every bit of cash they can from old technology before moving to the next step. Instead of focusing on larger drives, faster drives are needed. The only real advance in hard drive technology has been the SCSI and the SATA drive. But even those are built off ancient technology.

There was a review in pcmagazine or pcworld of a laptop with no hard drive. It used a flash drive instead. The boot up time was almost instant.

In the next few years, I expect to see larger external, and even internal flash drives. With old style spin up drives slowly disappearing. The market might be mixed, with either a terabyte drive, or a 100 gig flash drive as the options on your new system.

A check of pricewatch shows the largest flash drive is 16 gigs. Its just a matter of time before the storage doubles every 4 - 6 months. So maybe in a couple of years, 200 gig flash drives will be on the market.

So just imagine almost instant load times on your favorite games.

[SoBe Green]

It'll be awhile before they are mainstream if they ever make it that way. The biggest problem is price.

Look at the once popular 20 gig hard drive.

2000 - 20GB HD - $120
2003 - 20GB HD - $40
2006 - 20GB HD - Nonexistant

Now 80GBs are struggling to hold on to the "standard drive size". 120s are being made less and less and everyone is pushing up to the 160s. At this rate we are bound to hit a hard barrier sometime.

Seagate is working on some new technology that involves hard drives with non moving parts but it isn't flash memory. I wish I could find the article talking about it.

Seems more than anything either way we'll see a reinvention of the hard drive in the next 5-20 years.

[Ginger Lord]

Crysis needs 12Gb of space to install \o/

[Ihmhi]

Pfft, flash memory is so 2004. Crystal-based memory is where the future is. Or molecular memory!

[SoBe Green]

I think the point he was trying to make was that they are finally becoming financially possible not that it was brand new technology. There are a ton of new technology for hard drives but the one that is the most cost efficient will win out in the end.

[~kev~]

Originally Posted by Ihmhi

Pfft, flash memory is so 2004. Crystal-based memory is where the future is. Or molecular memory!

In 1997 I wrote a paper on "hard drives and storage" for a computer class that I was in.

At that time (1997) the scientist were talking about using silicon cubes and two lasers to store data. With a one inch square cube, the current storage space, as compared to a hard drive could have would have been something like 10X the current capacity. Those cubes never came about.

12 inch laser disk, BETA tapes and VHS came out at about the same time. VHS took over, BETA tapes and the 12 inch disk went away.

Then there was using proteins to store data, and the list goes on and on. Just because someone is talking about a new technology does not mean it will catch on.

When CD roms came out they were a fade. The new cd rom drives were so expensive - $200+, burning at 2X took 45 minutes. So it took awhile for even a simple cd burner to catch on.

The technology industry as a whole seems to move fast, but a look at the big picture shows we are really moving at a turtles pace.

Memory is still the same design that came out 25+ years ago - its just faster. Hard drives - 25+ year old technology & not really that much faster.
Processors - 30+(?) year old technology.

Even though everything is "faster" we are still using the basic designs that came out 20 - 30+ years ago..

[Credge]

When I said I wouldn't fill both of my 200 gig HD's, I was sure I wouldn't. Now I'm crying that I have 3 gigs left.

So, to answer your question; will anyone ever use a terrabyte of HD space? Yes. The only reason I haven't filled both of my HD's up is because I'm not an idiot. I've got about 10 games I don't have installed plus all 100 gigs of my music on an USB HD.

[gizmofo]

I agree with you on some parts, specifically that we are on the verge on new technology. But the cost of that is very expensive- companies have to devote millions to R&D, and within months, the next company will mirror the exact hardware produced. It's all based on how much their willing to spend vs. how much they think they'll make.
Partially unrelated- The government should be investing in these R&D programs.

[Iggy]

You guys are REALLY making me feel old.

MY first computer had 64kb of memory, NO internal storage device OF ANY KIND! I had a TAPE drive to store programs and data on....it used standard audio cassettes. I was in heaven when a year later, I got my first Floppy Disk Drive....held a whopping 170kb of data. Hell, I didn't even have a monitor....I used an old black and white television.

Hard Disk Drive?! I heard of them...but while they held a whopping 20 Megabytes of Data....$1500 was a little pricey for my family(me and my grandmother).

Hell, my 300 baud modem was bought on sale for $99....

[zSilver_Fox]

I feel so young now, I remember 80 gigs being in my childhood .



Wait, I AM.

[C-Aim]

I have 2x 74GB drives right now and I'm only using 61GB between the two, I really don't see the need for a terabyte drive unless you are A) A media hoarder/thief or B) A photographer or Video editor

I'm more excited about SSHDs (or flash drives as you called them), and I hope that they become the next (affordable) standard for desktops. They are already in laptops at around 64GB--but at insanely high prices (over 1k from DELL IIRC). I hope that in the next 2 years a 64GB SSHD will be available for a good price.

[Dr.Uudge]

Originally Posted by Iggy

You guys are REALLY making me feel old.

MY first computer had 64kb of memory, NO internal storage device OF ANY KIND! I had a TAPE drive to store programs and data on....it used standard audio cassettes. I was in heaven when a year later, I got my first Floppy Disk Drive....held a whopping 170kb of data. Hell, I didn't even have a monitor....I used an old black and white television.

Hard Disk Drive?! I heard of them...but while they held a whopping 20 Megabytes of Data....$1500 was a little pricey for my family(me and my grandmother).

Hell, my 300 baud modem was bought on sale for $99....

LOL. I think my first one was one for our family: the tandy 1000.

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by C-Aim

I have 2x 74GB drives right now and I'm only using 61GB between the two, I really don't see the need for a terabyte drive unless you are A) A media hoarder/thief or B) A photographer or Video editor

Don't forget C) Avid p0rn collector

Legal or Illegaly gained, I can guarantee you there's a vast amount of harddrive space out there soley dedicated to the storage of p0rn.

My first computer growing up was a 286 I can't remember how much memory it had, but it ran doom2 just fine. That and my 28.8 K modem lead to many hours of entertainment of dialing into my friend's computers to mulch.

It was soo funny, because the connection was never consistent, what would work once the first time, wouldn't the next 10 times. And when you finally did get a connection and someone stupidly picked up the phone, you lost it all again.

Ahh good times good times.

Cheers,
Hammock

[Innoc]

Originally Posted by C-Aim

I have 2x 74GB drives right now and I'm only using 61GB between the two, I really don't see the need for a terabyte drive unless you are A) A media hoarder/thief or B) A photographer or Video editor

I'm more excited about SSHDs (or flash drives as you called them), and I hope that they become the next (affordable) standard for desktops. They are already in laptops at around 64GB--but at insanely high prices (over 1k from DELL IIRC). I hope that in the next 2 years a 64GB SSHD will be available for a good price.

If you game I suspect future games will gobble drive real estate up very fast. I think I read someone saying that Crysis is expected to take up 12 GB? For a game? Really? How much longer before 15 GB becomes the norm? Look at how my space Vista takes up. It's coming.

Flash reminds me of the early days of RLL and MFM drives. The spot failure rate on those drives was INSANE! It took a while before platters were more reliable. Flash has a limited number of writes before it starts to become unreliable. Something will need to improve with that technology so that it's more reliable....it's coming and not nearly soon enough.

[C-Aim]

That only matters if you like to leave your games installed indefinitely, which I don't. For me, faster > more space, which is why I use 2x WD Raptor drives instead of a huge single drive. Even if games went to 15GB standard then I think 150GB would be still more than enough for me--which I have (plus, Raptors come in 150 GB individually so I could just add/replace one). IIRC SSHDs are supposed to eventually be way faster and efficient, which is why I am way more excited about them starting to go mainstream.