Hitachi to Harvest 5TB Hard Drive by 2010
Hitachi to Harvest 5TB Hard Drive by 2010
Posted 07/07/2008 at 6:49am
| by Paul Lilly
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While SSDs continue to come down in price and up in performance, hard disk drives keep ballooning in size. And just when we thought we were becoming spoiled with storage space, Hitachi hits us with a humdinger by announcing plans to release a 5TB hard drive by 2010. That's FIVE freaking terabytes in a single 3.5" drive, or half the storage capacity of the human brain, claims Dr. Yoshihiro Shiroishi from Hitachi. In more concrete terms, 5TB equates to about 5,000 hours of video, or more than a million songs. Throw two drives together and you could store a human brain's worth of porn!
Hitachi's pledge trumps an earlier prediction the company made back in October 2007 when it said 4TB of storage would be likely by 2011. Instead, Hitachi will employ Current-Perpendicular-to-Plant Giant Magnetoresistance (CPP-GMR) magnetic read heads to pack an additional terabyte than initially anticipated, and a year sooner than predicted. CPP-GMR will make it possible to achieve data densities of 1TB or more per square inch, paving the way for even larger hard drives.
Home theater buffs will undoubtedly herald Hitachi's announcement, but what about everyone else? Are we reaching the point of diminishing returns in terms of hard drive space? Post your thoughts in the comments section.
Image Credit: Hitachi
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ddreese
March 28, 2011 at 4:49pm
I guess this prediction didn't quite hit the mark...and Hitachi is being bought by WD...
lumpoco
July 02, 2009 at 5:14pm
It took me over 2.5 hours to format a 1TB drive. I would rather not spend close to half a day to format a drive. but if it's going to be fast and affordable who am I to stand in the way of progress. I never thought that I'd pay less than $200 for a 5TB drive. I remember when I spent close to $300 each on a 4X DVD burner and a 76GXP IBM drive. Ah, what fond memories.
Paul_Lilly
July 05, 2009 at 9:24am
Unless you believe there are bad sectors on your hard drive, you can choose the Quick Format option rather than running a full blown scan and it will finish in a matter of seconds. And if you're paranoid, you can always set up a 'chkdsk' run while you sleep or when you know you'll be away from your PC for a length of time.
More info here.
-Paul Lilly
agenttatsuda
July 07, 2008 at 8:07am
backing up +5tb of data, even with eSATA, would take hours.
If it becomes cheap, great for us consumers! i'd buy one.
maybe i could back up everything i learned in grades k-12 too....you know, just in case
hogkill
July 07, 2008 at 7:46am
The human brain only has a 10TB storage capacity? Thanks for that little fact MPC. I'll have you know I'm writing a Biochemistry exam tommorow you big jerks.
Seriously thinking about this though does anyone know how to defrag a brain, or compress and delete files? I'm only 21 but I think I'm already getting a bit backed up. Maybe I only have 5TB or something.
And as for the question about diminishing returns: no I always need more hard drive space. When I first got my PC over three years ago it had 300gigs of storage and everyone thought I was crazy. Then two years ago I ran out of space and got a 320gig external drive. Then one year ago that ran out of space and I got a 500gig external, which has about 200gigs of room left on it.
So I use about 300gigs a year, but I am sort of a "home theatre buff". Also this ammount is only going to increase during the shift into "high definition", which really doesnt improve on DVD's much if you ask me.
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