Harddrives to Hit 3TB Capacities By November

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By Kevin Parrish
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A TDK chart paves the road to 3 TB hard drives by November.

Softpedia reports that hard drive head manufacturer TDK released a chart revealing hard drive capacity updates for 2010. The chart indicates that-- for 3.5-inch HDDs--the company is moving from 500 GB per platter to 640 GB per platter.

This update means that hard drive manufacturers can now crank out HDDs with 2.5 TB storage capacities (using four platters), and five-platter HDDs offering a whopping 3 TB of storage.

The chart indicates that TDK plans to launch the update next month, with the new HDDs appearing on the market by November.

As for the smaller 2.5-inch form factor, hard drive manufacturers will be able to use the just-launched 375 GB platters as soon as this month. This will be a small bump up from the previous 320 GB platters, however storage makers will now be able to manufacture HDDs with 750 GB of storage using two platters.

According to TechConnect, 2.5-inch HDDs with 750 GB are expected to hit the market sometime this October. Still, with the release of SSDs, are mechanical drives a dying technology?

Kevin Parrish
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44 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JohnnyLucky
    How many movies can be stored on a 3TB drive? Are 3TB hard drives aimed at the home theater market or commercial data storage? I'm having a hard drive imagining the massive storage capabilities.
    Reply
  • captaincharisma
    i cannot wait to get a 3TB drive for 99 bucks lol. i would love to get one of these for my PVR
    Reply
  • I love the photo. Is that a 10 MByte drive from the early 80's, maybe with an 8 inch platter?
    Reply
  • Silmarunya
    JohnnyLuckyHow many movies can be stored on a 3TB drive? Are 3TB hard drives aimed at the home theater market or commercial data storage? I'm having a hard drive imagining the massive storage capabilities.
    They'll certainly find a market in enterprise use, still the largest market for hardware. And I can imagine that workstations and certain home theater PC's could use that much storage.

    And to reply to the question in the article: I don't think magnetic storage is dying just yet. It will have a massive pricing advantage for years to come and capacity is still far ahead. The best SSD's manage 1TB, but are nearly unaffordable. Meanwhile, dirt cheap 3TB drives are being prepared...

    SSD's are great as a boot drive, maybe as a primary drive in higher end systems in a few years time, but I think that it will be at least a year or 3 before magnetic storage will start dying.
    Reply
  • daft
    its not soon enough!
    Reply
  • drksilenc
    ummm yea home theater use, still not big enough. i have a 0+1 that stores 13gb and 12 of it is full soooo
    Reply
  • hannibal
    Yep... It will take some years until ssd's can compete with prize... After that, it will be bye bye to mechanical drives, but in the mean time the storage kings are going to be old fashioned mechanical drives.
    Reply
  • omnimodis78
    Silmarunya...And to reply to the question in the article: I don't think magnetic storage is dying just yet. It will have a massive pricing advantage for years to come and capacity is still far ahead. The best SSD's manage 1TB, but are nearly unaffordable. Meanwhile, dirt cheap 3TB drives are being prepared...SSD's are great as a boot drive, maybe as a primary drive in higher end systems in a few years time, but I think that it will be at least a year or 3 before magnetic storage will start dying.I agree with you entirely! In fact, maybe even 3 years is a very optimistic prediction given that magnetic hard drives make perfect sense for regular media storage. SSD could (and should) be used as the system drive, but why not have 8TB (in 3 years?) of magnetic hard drive for movies, music and general documents. I am sure that SSDs won't be quite on the cheap side 3 years from now. I'd say by 2015 or so, SSDs will be common place though.
    Reply
  • Shadow703793
    JohnnyLuckyHow many movies can be stored on a 3TB drive? Are 3TB hard drives aimed at the home theater market or commercial data storage? I'm having a hard drive imagining the massive storage capabilities.One word: HD pr0n
    Reply
  • yang
    I know for a fact that my 2TB is actually full from my game collection. Adding another 3TB to my system will definitly allow me to install the rest of my collection.
    Reply