30 TB drives in our future?

[meyerweb]

Seagate currently sells a 3 TB 3.5" drive with 3 platters. Some of their other drives use 5 platters, so using the same technology we can certainly expect 5 TB drives in the reasonably near future.

And this article:  http://www.gizmag.com/salt-increases-data-density-of-hdds/20357/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=65f6cd6026-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email

reports on research that should allow up to 6 times the current density using basically the same technology as today. That implies 6 TB per platter, instead of 1, and total capacity of 30 TB in a desktop size drive.

This kind of capacity just blows me away (I can remember when a 300 MB drive was considered large, and took a full height 5" drive bay). It doesn't appear that SSDs are going to replace mechanical hard drives for bulk storage any time soon.

[francois]

…
I can remember when a 300 MB drive was considered large, and took a full height 5" drive bay). It doesn't appear that SSDs are going to replace mechanical hard drives for bulk storage any time soon.

I still remember having paid something in $1200 for a 20 MB drive!
I also agree that mechanical drives won't be easily/soon replaced by SSDs when it comes about massive storage systems.

[keithrsmith]

The hard drive on my first computer was 64K (yes K) and took a 8 in unit in a rack.  On a PDP11.  It also had two tape drive (Dectapes) that were random access....

Keith

[JonathanRimmel]

Computer technology is ever evolving and ever changing, however there are currently some limitations going beyond 3TB, which is why we haven't seen harddrives with a higher capacity. It is likely the limit will be overcome in short order, but it might yet be a little while.

[Mr_S]

The hard drive on my first computer was 64K (yes K) and took a 8 in unit in a rack.  On a PDP11.  It also had two tape drive (Dectapes) that were random access....

Keith

That's very cool   I've always been interested in computers for as long as I can remember but I'm a little to young to have dabbled with a PDP11.  So what machine are you running now and can you do the maths and tell us by what factor your storage has increased by?!

[hjulenissen]

It doesn't appear that SSDs are going to replace mechanical hard drives for bulk storage any time soon.

Depends on what you mean by "anytime soon", but I think that spinning disks are a dying breed. People want their macbook airs and iPads and whatnot to be slim and light, and fewer and fewer users really need the power and flexibility of a regular desktop. Further, as more data seems to be moved into the "cloud" (or was it mainframe?), the need for massive local storage may decrease.

Of course, thats for the 95% of us. The remaining 5% are going to have stuff like a gazillion raw files from their digital MF that needs to be fast and reliably be served to their raw developer...

-h