As long as there's bad sectors around, I ain't spending +100 on a HDD.

well this is an issue for people that don;t have good raid cards, the lack of support for 64bit LBA in motherboards will render these HDD's useless (without the 64bit LBA you can't have volumes, not partitions, over 2TiB)

Never say NEVER!

They always find a way.

640GB 2.5" notebook drives with a 320GB/platter design are already here. There is a review with benchmarks for a Seagate drive at http://blog.penguintrail.com/?p=257.

I still can't fill 500gb

Wow...
At 3-8GB a game (assuming 5 for average), that's 500 games for me to pirate on a 2.5GB drive... That's 29 days at max bandwidth downloading for me... wow. My ISP would absolutely hate me (and fine me).

AmazingRando, couldn't agree more
There are even drives with 334GB/platter design:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/w [...] ,8347.html

Also, it has been said about 2.5 inch drives
"will enter manufacturing this month and slip into mass production by December"
So when are they coming out? Could it be a mistake?

Why is it every time there's news about a upcoming larger-capacity hard drive someone always comments "who would ever need that much space!" Guys, *it depends what you do* with your computer that determines how much space you need. If all you use your computer for is "normal" things like web surfing and word processing then no, you don't need much storage. But (case in point) if you're involved in video production you realize that digital video eats hard drive space for breakfast (36 Mbps for DV). There is always a need for more storage.

I cant even fill 250GB!!!!

Yawn. I could have told you there will be 2.5TB HDDs next year. Storage space is skyrocketing and we're at 2TB now. So... where's the news in this?

I can see into the future.

I predict, that around 1012, 5GB Hard Drives will be on the market.
1GB SSD Drives will be $500

^woah are you also the guy who can talk to michael jackson?!!??^

"I can see into the future.

I predict, that around 1012, 5GB Hard Drives will be on the market.
1GB SSD Drives will be $500"

The only place I will be able to find a 5GB hard drive is in my father's old computer from the mid-90's.

lol i have a 2tb drive filled to the brim and a 500gb drive filled to the brim both external ones iomega and the other is western digital. both have worked great.. no issues but my thing is i can always use more space.. i could easily fill another 2 tb drive im running a home media center i have lots of video movies and music i have converted over to play on Apple Tv or PS3 wirelessly over the home network to watch on tv. its a great thing to have most people still have not gotten into this yet.. i could easily fill another 5 tbs.. if it really came down to it..

Ditto, I don't have a need to store pirated stuff.

i have 4x640GB drives (~2.5TB) in my server, 400GB free, and im currently downloading about 250GB on my desktop so....i may need more space

i'm confused, why not? (an actual question, not disagreeing with you), 48 bit is the standard at the moment isn't it? that allows numbers up to 280 trillion. even if it was in bits it would allow up to 35TB. what gives? and if I was to guess i would say its in sectors (512 bytes) so it should allow up to 144PB if thats the case... what would make sense is if we were using 32bitLBA, if the unit was sectors then the limit would be 2TB

also, surely we are up to 1TB increments? if this comes out at twice the price of a 2TB its gonna be a hard sell, even for me who considered paying 4x the price of a 1TB drive for a 2TB ;D

and to all those ppl who say "no one needs that much space" ask your self why your mobo comes with 4,8 or even 10 sata ports...

sorry for the double post, just checked over at wiki, it seems that most mobos run 48bit lba in the bios, and therfore support drives up to 128PB , the version before that supported 28bit LBA, drives up to 128GB, so, if your mobo supports drives over 128GB, or you know its 48bitLBA, it should support drives up to 128PB (unless there is some other limitation of your mobo/sata card). I do know of a problem with the bios not able to BOOT PARTITIONS over 2TB. but if your system partition is over 2TB, you are insane.

My problem is that none of the 2TB drives are "RAID safe". The WD drives are all Green non-RAID recommended drives, and well Seagate drives just fail nowadays. Same problem for most (but not all) of the 1.5TB drives.

Plus a single 2TB drive costs 2.0-2.5x a 1.5TB drive.

Even if my PC can't see partitions over 2 terabytes (no idea as I haven't tried) my NAS certainly can.

Why do people need this much storage?

I've got less than 200 gb of space on my computer running 3 operating systems with 15 games installed and 15 gb of MP3's. I still haven't managed to fill all the space. What are all of these files people are storing?

I need at least 6TB, with more primary partition capacity!

Seriously people?? There's ALWAYS a need for more space. Back 10 years ago or so 40 GB was MASSIVE, simply an unfillable amount. Go back another 7 years, and it would cost over $1000 for 1 GB. Yes, you read right, 1 GB (not set for inflation). Either programs and games will begin to eat more space, or we will find ways to use the space ourselves. Highly detailed, realistic virtual reality anyone? Maybe consumers will win the battle to finally (legally) rip Blu-Ray movies. Whose to say the everyday consumer won't start running personal servers with multiple backups? Maybe people will record EVERY episode of EVERY TV show they watch and store it permanently instead of temporarily on their tivos. Why not? I filled my 1TB drive in 2 weeks. Once you have that much space, you start finding stuff to fill it with...

I don't see how this is impressive. We've had 2TB for a while. I would think we'd have 4TB by 2010. Personally, I've been noticing a big slow down in the development in bigger HDDs. Some people may not have a use for the space, but many of us do. HDD storage used to double every year, this is weak, if you ask me.

I think for the 'average' end-user we are increasing storage capacity faster than needed, only enthusiasts will use this huge storage amount.. normal people...have like their mp3 collection...15gig and that’s the MAJORITY of their entire need for HDD space. I feel these are just attempts to stay competitive against SSDs.

“
hillarymakesmecry 08/10/2009 1:14 PM
Why do people need this much storage?
I've got less than 200 gb of space on my computer running 3 operating systems with 15 games installed and 15 gb of MP3's. I still haven't managed to fill all the space. What are all of these files people are storing?
”


I currently have four 500gb drives set in raid 0 and two 1tb drives set as a mirror on my PC now... I only have 400gb free on the 2tb (Raid0) main platter and 120 megs (yes Mb) free on on my 1tb backups. Would I be interested in upgrading? yes I would be.

Those of you who ask why do you need that much space, well not everyone does, but I have about all of my DVD collection (around 700 DVD's) converted and backed up. I use the space to run a media server to all the TV's in my house. Secondly it is even more cost effective for me to do so, than having to re buy multiple DVD's due to the fact my kid's "lack the abilities" to taking care of them.

I agree with kaiser_25 about need for HD's to have a leg against SSD's but that said for the average user around 250-500 gigs is enough and SSD's are approaching that realm pretty quickly. That said anyone who does any video editing in HD or use the system for storage is going to look for a lot more space and the old HD is the only place to look currently.

Advancement in Technology is always welcome... But i don't know if i feel good about having 2.5 TB of data on one drive.

I don't have that much data but if i did, say movies/music i would certainly break it into multiple drives... Or i guess have two 2.5 TB drives mirrored.

I typoed... I meant to say 5TB drives... Michael says "hooooo hooo!"

2010 is a few months away... nope.

We'll have 3TB before 2011... and hitting 4~5 should be somewhat easy by 2012.

You're doing it wrong.

Loads of things! My dad's got his entire lp collection (and he's old enough to have a large one), and his cd collection stored on two computers (for safety). That takes up a bit of room. He's also got a lot of other stuff that needs space, and ofcourse games and os take up space too. In fact the 150gb sas drive is almost full right after installing windows.
At work it gets even worse. People store immense amounts of data. Just one video project could basicly fill up an entire raid box.
Also if you employ ghosts (or similar system backups), you'll find space to be crucial.
Also remember that performance of a harddrive takes a nose dive when you use more than 70% or so (worse on notebooks than desktops), so you'd ultimately want to have twice the space you need.

Personally I've got 5,5tb of storage, and I'm almost out of room. Space is easy to use if you don't clean up. Hell even my outlook pst file is closing in on its 2gb limit.




You just aren't using your computer enough!


As for the 2TB limit, it's what I'm worried about too. And btw many slightly less new raid controllers don't take more than 2tb drives either (think scsi connected raid boxes). Suppose it'll become standard in higher end mashines to have a small fast system drive, and a huge storage drive for the rest. (with gpt or crapux you don't have the limit, but it may not be bootable)