how long til TB

[wtiger]

I was just wondering if anyone knew how long approximately til we start seeing TB HD's? anyone have roadmaps on about when we can expect them?

 

[UnknownSouljer]

I was just wondering if anyone knew how long approximately til we start seeing TB HD's? anyone have roadmaps on about when we can expect them?

Because HD space is currently limted by a physical limitation involving physical space and magnetics on a platter, I don't think I'm too far off in saying that it's a ways off, at least for consumer based HD's that are affordable.

For HD's it will always be incremental 50-100GB (for now) at a time (I can remember when it was just 10-30GB at a time and before that MB and kb at a time... heh). 500GB HD's have just barely been announced by a few HD manufacturers, and I would go onto say that it would probably take at least 2-3 years for 1 TB consumer based drives. Maybe I'm being too conservitive, but that sounds about right.

 

[wtiger]

I thought the HD industry was getting close to some sort of breakthrough with the vertical nanastructures on the platters that would allow them to greatly increase HD size. I know there's at least one for laptops that was recently released that uses some variant of this.

 

[DougLite]

Not only must you perfect perpindicular recording to pack more bits into a given area, you must also make the actuator more precise to stay on cylinders that are packed more closely together. You must also hold the line on performance, reliability, and perhaps most importantly in the consumer space, price. All of these design considerations compete against each other, and even if you have the magic bullet for one of them, you need to address all of those factors before bringing a drive to market. It's not easy.

 

[Dark Ember]

Not only must you perfect perpindicular recording to pack more bits into a given area, you must also make the actuator more precise to stay on cylinders that are packed more closely together. You must also hold the line on performance, reliability, and perhaps most importantly in the consumer space, price. All of these design considerations compete against each other, and even if you have the magic bullet for one of them, you need to address all of those factors before bringing a drive to market. It's not easy.

I think DL hit the nail on the head here. Vertical Integration is key to hitting the 1TB mark, but there is a lot that goes into getting that functionality working correctly. Its a huge change in the paradigm of how drives function. Even this alone won't bring 1TB hard disks, but a combination of this and the same kind of increases we've been seeing with heads/media advancement over the past year or so. Perpendicular recording will yield a big jump in capacity, but overall the days of HD capacities doubling within a year are over.

Like UnknownSouljer said, give it a couple years, and we'll see where the industry is at.

 

[gerbiaNem]

My guess is end of next year. Seagate just announced a 160GB notebook drive using perpendicular recording, because that is the industry that needs the space. I think it's safe to say that a desktop drive isn't too far off.

 

[doormat]

If you want a date, I'd say late (very late) 2006 anywhere up to the end of 2007. I believe that most of the just-announced 500GB HDs are probably going to be 133GB/platter designs (with four platters). I figure we probably have one more HD increase to go (probably 166GB platters x 4 = 650GB HDs). Then perpendicular recording will take over and deliver 200GB platters (800GB), maybe the second generation of perpendicular recording HDs will take us to 1TB with 250GB/platter densities.