any idea when 1TB drives will be main stream?

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paradoxblue

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i wanna upgrade my storage. and have been itching to do so. now these 750's are out and tempting. but i dont need the upgrade NOW and im wondering. is it worth my waiting for TB drives to hit the market?

any ideas when they may? price im not to concerned about heh.

thoughts?
 
well at the rate of adoption of current drives and considering a real 1TiB drive isn't even available...maybe 5 years, maybe 10. There are no pushing need for mainstream machines to run more than 120GiB right now, 10 times that isn't even on the horizon.

Mainstreamers dont hold HD movie content on their computers. Mainstreamers dont hold DVD-A level audio. Outside of those its only games pushing drive requirements, and its gonna take a while for a 10-20GB game install to develope to mainstream level.

High end servers are already seeing 1TiB volumes becoming common, with 2 on the horizon. But those are specialized machines, and still beyond the average needs of their users.
 
Umm I dunno about 1TB drives, but I would like one for $400!

And oh I think most media center type machines have around 250+ GB drives.

All my normal (read non geek) friends have 300GB and up.
Usually they store movies and pictures. Movies is now the new big download / rip thing and of course people want more space for their movies.
 
rigor said:
Look for them in 2007 sometime according to the guys at DL.tv
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well actually, seagate plans to roll out a 960gb perpendicular drive first half of next year (or maybe 2nd, cant remember) and WD plans on rolling out 640gb drive 2nd half of next year. dont hold your breathe on TB drives just yet. maybe when hybrid drives come out....
 
750gbs are here now, so it is only a matter of time
 
750's are here now, next year 960's, and probably a year or two after that.
 
sh0rty said:
750gbs are here now, so it is only a matter of time
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My exact thought. I expect them soon. Hopefully around Vista...that'd be cool.
 
If u saw the thread i started about the PSA type of deal from Hitachi - linking back they expected to be rolling out 1TB drives next year. Now - that being the mainstream is probably a few more years out. But at least they should be readily available next year. Of course, with technology, all that can change.
 
protias said:
well actually, seagate plans to roll out a 960gb perpendicular drive first half of next year (or maybe 2nd, cant remember) and WD plans on rolling out 640gb drive 2nd half of next year. dont hold your breathe on TB drives just yet. maybe when hybrid drives come out....
Click to expand...

I don't understand while Seagate went with 960 GB and didn't just figure a way to squeeze in the extra 40 gigs to have a 1 TB drive, that would look a hell of a lot more impressive for marketing purposes.
 
NulloModo said:
I don't understand while Seagate went with 960 GB and didn't just figure a way to squeeze in the extra 40 gigs to have a 1 TB drive, that would look a hell of a lot more impressive for marketing purposes.
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it probably is a 5 platter drive already and 40GB of flash isn't really cheap either.
 
drizzt81 said:
it probably is a 5 platter drive already and 40GB of flash isn't really cheap either.
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well, i know seagate stayed with the 4 platters for the 750gb. they probably will be doing the same thing for the 960gb, that is, if they stay true to their wanting to use only 4 platters. irregardless, it will be nice to see that much space available for 1 drive.
 
"i wanna upgrade my storage. and have been itching to do so. now these 750's are out and tempting. but i dont need the upgrade NOW and im wondering. is it worth my waiting for TB drives to hit the market?

any ideas when they may? price im not to concerned about heh."

If price is no concern then just go buy what you want. When the 1TB drives come out you can get one of those.
 
I'm not buying a TB HD until they become cheap enough to run in raid 1 because I simply don't trust that much data on one drive.
 
It'd be nice when they launch the 1 TB drives if they are around 30 cents a gig.
 
maverick777 said:
I'm not buying a TB HD until they become cheap enough to run in raid 1 because I simply don't trust that much data on one drive.
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so you will be throwing that much data onto 2 drives in a raid 1 format? hell, i dont exactly trust my data on my drives either, but to me, it will either be raid 5 or 6, or seperate disks. personally, i cannot see using raid 1 unless it was done for the OS for a server.
 
general said:
"i wanna upgrade my storage. and have been itching to do so. now these 750's are out and tempting. but i dont need the upgrade NOW and im wondering. is it worth my waiting for TB drives to hit the market?

any ideas when they may? price im not to concerned about heh."

If price is no concern then just go buy what you want. When the 1TB drives come out you can get one of those.
Click to expand...

now worried about money. and blowing cash. is not the same thing.
 
protias said:
well, i know seagate stayed with the 4 platters for the 750gb. they probably will be doing the same thing for the 960gb, that is, if they stay true to their wanting to use only 4 platters. irregardless, it will be nice to see that much space available for 1 drive.
Click to expand...

Seagate has been saying that the 960 was going to be a 5 platter drive since the 750 came out.

Making the 960 a 4 platter drive would require a 28% increase in density.
 
well there are two questions here. Efficient to buy now or wait, and when will they be mainstream. I stand by my answer to the second, and if you are worried about size and need to buy now, 3x960 or 3x750 is going to make a nice sized drive and probably cost less than 2x1TB (for R1) for quite some time.

So the 750s are 4 platters? 960*4/5 ~ 750 so that makes sense. thats still 192GiB per platter. Lotsa data for one little shiny spiny thing ;) Id like to see what they could do with a 5.25" sized HDD. expensive as itd be, 4GB on 8 platters doesn't seem impossible. Figure at least 500GB per platter, with the extra diameter...tons of exra tracks, and ech track carrying more data as you get further from the center...

I wonder if you could replace the optical drive on ultra portables with one of those, say a 2 platter design? LOL. 1TB in one disk at 4200rpm, solid state 50GB for boot, games, apps...server in an ultra portable!
 
Going to 5.25" form factor would a little more than double the surface area of the platters. Typical platters inside 3.5" drives (which are actually 4" wide physically) nowadays are 2.5-2.75" in diameter, going to 5.25" would probably raise that to 4 or 4.5." However, the increase in sectors per track in the larger outer zone is only 60%.

Of course, 5.25" drives would require more powerful motors (more heat) and be subject to flutter, which would require the heads to be farther from the media, which means less precision, which means less dnesity, which partially defeats the purpose of going to the larger form factor in the first place ;)

Given the new approach in the industry of achieving the absolute highest Giggage per cubic foot (see the rise of 10K 2.5" drives, as well as laptop drives converted for use in blade servers, etc), 5.25" drives wouldn't be al lthat practical
 
I think we'll see them fairly soon.

1TB is a big milestone and I compare this to what happened with AMD and Intel. There was a race to see who could get there first. One company did, and then things slowed down and hung around 1Ghz for awhile. Then they shot back up again and we saw 2Ghz, and 3Ghz+.

I think we'll see a similar trend with hard drives. The storage companies will push for 1TB to see who can get there first and put out the first press release. After that things will slow down and capacities won't grow too much until perpendicular recording matures.. Then they will take off again..

Riley
 
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