>4TB Drives - When?

[Dubb]

Currently have (2) 2TB in both my workstation and backup enclosure, but that's filling up quickly with D800 photos. I've got about 350GB of space left, which I'm guessing will become problematically small in 6 months to a year.

I figured I would upgrade once we got to 6TB single drives, but now I'm thinking that won't be possible.

So I'm debating between swapping out one 2TB for a 4TB, or going through the effort of archiving some older stuff to different drives and then waiting for a 5-6 TB to come to market.

 

[Pneumothorax]

You should trade for my D700, then 2 gb will feel big again. In all seriousness, the damn Thai floods have really put a crimp in HDD advancement. Then there's the fact that there's only 2 mainstream HDD manufacturers left have also seriously slowed down R&D.

 

[frostedflakes]

Wasn't that long ago that Seagate and others introduced 1TB platters, so it probably won't be for another year or two. They're starting to reach the limits of perpendicular recording, so new technologies like HAMR will be necessary for densities beyond 1Tb/in^2. Supposedly Seagate is on track to have HAMR ready by 2014-2015, not sure about WD, since they were hit harder by the flooding last year that might have set them back some.

 

[Schmide]

HGST Deskstar 4TB Serial ATA/600 64MB Buffer 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive - Retail Boxed

Edit: missed the > he he

 

[exdeath]

You should trade for my D700, then 2 gb will feel big again. HDD manufacturer greed and monopoly has really put a crimp in HDD advancement. Then there's the fact that there's only 2 mainstream HDD manufacturers left have also seriously slowed down R&D.

FTFY

The flooding is long past. It is well known HDD makers aim to capitalize on the floods to "reset" the market and keep prices propped up to post flood levels long after infrastructure recovery.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I dont think they are coming anytime soon.

 

[Pneumothorax]

FTFY

The flooding is long past. It is well known HDD makers aim to capitalize on the floods to "reset" the market and keep prices propped up to post flood levels long after infrastructure recovery.

Agreed, I didn't mean the Tahi floods directly caused the stagnation of the HDD market, but the last 2 main HDD manufacturers are definitely 'milking the cow'. Unfortunately, the HDD market is becoming just like the GPU market. With only 2 main HDD manufacturers, price/performance ratio has definitely stagnated and/or slowed down compared to years past.

 

[exdeath]

Except HDD has severe competition from SSDs increasing in capacity and dropping like rocks prices. There is only so much people will pay for a VHS tape when something superior is getting bigger faster and cheaper every day.

 

[philipma1957]

Except HDD has severe competition from SSDs increasing in capacity and dropping like rocks prices. There is only so much people will pay for a VHS tape when something superior is getting bigger faster and cheaper every day.

yeah but if you are storing tv shows and or movies ssd is not there yet.

1tb usb 3 drive below is 89 bucks

http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Canvio...iba+canvio+1tb

the best price I have ever seen for 1 tb of ssd was about 650 for a pair of crucial m4 512gb ssds. two usb 3 cases would be about 30 more so 680 vs 89 and you don't need the speed of ssd for watching a movie.


to the op >4tb hdds scare the sh*t out of me! I use 2tb drives with backups for my big storage needs.

 

[exdeath]

I don't routinely hoard things that are readily available from millions of sources

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I dont think they are coming anytime soon.

Me neither.

I'm not entirely clear on why the slowdown in the pace of progress of hard drives has occurred. But I'm inclined to think it is more related to lack of demand than technological obstacles. There just aren't that many people who would even fill a 1 TB drive these days, much less a 5 TB one.

Personally, I'd pay happily for a reasonably-priced 10 TB or 20 TB drive.

 

[nextJin]

Personally I would just like to see the 4TB options more prevalent and under 150 USD, I'd love to get 4 for my HTPC and double my capacity from 8TB to 16TB.

 

[philipma1957]

I don't routinely hoard things that are readily available from millions of sources

I stopped holding onto recordings of tv shows a while back.

I do record the tonight show, letterman, jimmy fallon, and craig freguson quite a bit. basically the recordings are better quality then watching the shows on the net.

Using eye tv and 2 tuners it is around 24gb a night 120gb a week uncompressed full quality picture. I use a hdd rather then a ssd to record.

 

[rsutoratosu]

Wasn't that long ago that Seagate and others introduced 1TB platters, so it probably won't be for another year or two. They're starting to reach the limits of perpendicular recording, so new technologies like HAMR will be necessary for densities beyond 1Tb/in^2. Supposedly Seagate is on track to have HAMR ready by 2014-2015, not sure about WD, since they were hit harder by the flooding last year that might have set them back some.

HAMR hopefully will get here asap. 2002 - Seagate thinks 2008, in 2004 - pushed to 2010, March 2012 - they now say several more years.

Looks like its harder then expected..

 

[hoorah]

The flooding is long past. It is well known HDD makers aim to capitalize on the floods to "reset" the market and keep prices propped up to post flood levels long after infrastructure recovery.

I don't blame them either. Before the flood, hard drive prices were getting crazy low. At $85 for a 2TB drive, when a 1TB drive was $75 said to me that they've got to be selling these things near cost.

Except HDD has severe competition from SSDs increasing in capacity and dropping like rocks prices. There is only so much people will pay for a VHS tape when something superior is getting bigger faster and cheaper every day.

I don't think people realize how serious the threat from SSDs is to HDD makers. While the HDD makers sell a handful of drives to techie people building raid setups, the real money is in the tens of thousands of units sold to OEMs building desktops and laptops. Desktops are disappearing and notebooks are next on the list to be phased out in favor of tablets, which use SSDs for the most part.

The notebooks that DO sell in the future are all going to have SSDs in them. WD/Seagate are going from an industry where every single unit (desktop/laptop/game console/dvr) NEEDED one of their products. Now, the only people that will NEED a hard drive are those that go outside of the storage capability of an SSD, which has got to be a small fraction of the marketplace. I imagine things are not looking good for them.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Data hoarding is a too expensive hobby

 

[corkyg]

I don't routinely hoard things that are readily available from millions of sources

That is sorta my view - frankly, I can't stand watching reruns. I don't find much on TV worth saving.

 

[Smoblikat]

Think of how overpriced the 4TB drives are now, I dont think anyone would pay more for an extra 1TB on top of that. Im sure noone is buying 4TB drives as it is.

 

[ShintaiDK]

In this household we had around 1.2TB on our HTPC (1.5TB HD). Then we cleaned up from all the stuff we didnt see and didnt want to see again. And now we are below 200GB.

 

[hoorah]

Think of how overpriced the 4TB drives are now, I dont think anyone would pay more for an extra 1TB on top of that. Im sure noone is buying 4TB drives as it is.

It becomes a benefit when you're running a massive data server, where the difference between 10 4TB drives and 14 3TB drives might mean you'd have to run 2 servers, or have a shorter upgrade cycle costing labor hours and downtime.

Outside of that specific scenario though, no, I can't see anyone shelling out almost double the money for an extra 25% capacity.

 

[thelastjuju]

I don't routinely hoard things that are readily available from millions of sources

I didn't know all the OP's personal photos were available from millions of sources. :sneaky:

I don't blame them either. Before the flood, hard drive prices were getting crazy low. At $85 for a 2TB drive, when a 1TB drive was $75 said to me that they've got to be selling these things near cost.



I don't think people realize how serious the threat from SSDs is to HDD makers. While the HDD makers sell a handful of drives to techie people building raid setups, the real money is in the tens of thousands of units sold to OEMs building desktops and laptops. Desktops are disappearing and notebooks are next on the list to be phased out in favor of tablets, which use SSDs for the most part.

The notebooks that DO sell in the future are all going to have SSDs in them. WD/Seagate are going from an industry where every single unit (desktop/laptop/game console/dvr) NEEDED one of their products. Now, the only people that will NEED a hard drive are those that go outside of the storage capability of an SSD, which has got to be a small fraction of the marketplace. I imagine things are not looking good for them.

Western Digital WAS producing SSD's for a very brief period of time. Then they stopped, and stuck to HDD's, so something tells me that the HDD market is still VERY profitable for them.. especially when you can jack up prices across the entire industry under the guise of some great flood that NOBODY ever questions.. has there even been a single investigation into that nonsense?

The thing is, more people are streaming than ever before, and the trend will continue this way.. in the future, most people will probably get by with little 64-128gb SSDs and stream compressed video and audio.

What doesn't make sense to me is ANYBODY buying all these 80-320gb HDDs that STILL sell on newegg somehow. Do they just not know of SSD?

 

[Smoblikat]

I didn't know all the OP's personal photos were available from millions of sources. :sneaky:



Western Digital WAS producing SSD's for a very brief period of time. Then they stopped, and stuck to HDD's, so something tells me that the HDD market is still VERY profitable for them.. especially when you can jack up prices across the entire industry under the guise of some great flood that NOBODY ever questions.. has there even been a single investigation into that nonsense?

The thing is, more people are streaming than ever before, and the trend will continue this way.. in the future, most people will probably get by with little 64-128gb SSDs and stream compressed video and audio.

What doesn't make sense to me is ANYBODY buying all these 80-320gb HDDs that STILL sell on newegg somehow. Do they just not know of SSD?

This and a half. You can get a fast 64gb SSD for 64$, you can get a slow 80gb HDD for 100$+.

 

[tommo123]

old systems that can't take newer ones maybe for whatever reason? like people that still buy your old DDR2 (or even DDR) RAM. which is a bonus since you can sell it 2 years later for more than you bought it for

 

[exdeath]

I didn't know all the OP's personal photos were available from millions of sources. :sneaky:

Confused with another thread perhaps where someone explicitly said all they needed the space for is copying movies and music.

 

[bononos]

Confused with another thread perhaps where someone explicitly said all they needed the space for is copying movies and music.

Not all movies or music are easily available online or going to be so easy to get all the time. Its better to burn it than hope that it'll be somewhere out there when you want to dig it up.