Samsung Shows HDDs with 1 TB Per Platter

News
By Douglas Perry
published

Samsung claims to have engineered the first HDD disks that can store 1 TB of data on just one 3.5-inch platter.

The com

pany also currently exhibits a 2 TB desktop HDD (HN-D201RAE) which integrates just two platters. The new drive will enable HDD capacities of 3 and 4 TB. Current desktop HDDs top out at 3 TB (4x 750 GB). The company is also showing 1 TB 2.5-inch HDDs for notebooks, which integrate two 500 GB platters.  

There was no exact information when the drives will be available to buy. The 3.5-inch drive, a member of Samsung's Spinpoint EcoGreen (5400 RPM) series, will be introduced as F6 generation and arrive with 32 MB cache and SATA 6 Gb. The launch date is sometime later this year. The 5400 RPM 1 TB notebook drive could debut as early as April, Germany's Heise reports. 

It is quite amazing to see the HDD industry achieve these kind of data densities. I can still remember an interview I did with Seagate back in 1998, when the company said that 3.5-inch hard drives may not be able hold more than 100 GB of data in the future. We are way past that point and are told that the currently believed limit may be somewhere close to 10 GB per HDD. Beyond that point, hard drives will get optically assisted reading/writing technologies that will push capacities significantly higher.

Douglas Perry
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31 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Haserath
    the currently believed limit may be somewhere close to 10 GB per HDD.
    I can't believe a HD could be able to hold 10GB, technology is moving so fast...hey, wait a minute. :p
    Reply
  • Catzwisker
    I never cease to be amazed at the lack of proofing on articles I see on the internet.
    Is a grade school kid writing these articles?
    Reply
  • pelov
    10gb?! I'm still stuck at 700mb on my IBM Aptiva.
    Reply
  • Travis Beane
    jozCan that thing even store diablo 2?Only if you do a light install, and read videos form the disk.

    I'm personally interested in building a cheap 10 drive RAID5, using 1TB single platter drives.
    Reply
  • twile
    Or you could do the sensible thing and build a RAID10 array with those drives.
    Reply
  • applegetsmelaid
    I remember seeing an advertisement for CompUSA back in 1999 for a 30 GB HDD: "The last hard drive you'll ever have to buy." Back then I thought, "30GB! No one will EVER need that much space." Now I average 20GB of HDD activity PER DAY! Not much compared to some uber-geeks, but I do process good amounts of data.
    Reply
  • caeden
    Bring back the 6 platter drive and we could have a nice little 6TB! woo hoo!
    Reply
  • kilo_17
    HaserathI can't believe a HD could be able to hold 10GB, technology is moving so fast...hey, wait a minute.haha
    Reply
  • I remember my first HDD, it could store up to 40 MB of data. I needed to run a special software tool to see more than 32 MB of the drives storage.
    My first PC ran off of floppies, no hard drive at all.
    Reply
  • alidan
    there is only so far that magnetic technology can go and still be trusted.

    to be perfectly honest here, i can see a point in time where we no longer have traditional mass size hard drives. im thinking it will happen around the time of holographic discs. a 200gb disc, bought for pennys on the gb (possibly disc), highly expandable, will be used for the long term, i dont need it now storage, and an ssd of 1-2tb will be used.

    im looking at things in a realistic manner. there is a limit to how big a video can be before we cant distinguish detail anymore. i believe that for home purposes it will be a 4k standard, possibly a bit bigger. but for most people, the only way that you could see that detail is on a 100inch+ tv, and when was that last time you seen that for a commonly affordable price?

    i have to say that at some point, like now, 12mp is all we need for photos, what most people want is better optics.

    we dont need more than 1080p because we can barely see the extra detail because of how our eyes work, unless you blow the image way the hell up.

    we hit close to the peak of what we need now, all thats left is refining it.
    Reply