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Interestingly I think the typical usage on a single drive for the average user has topped out at about 1-2 TB over the past few years. Unless you are a supreme

Interestingly I think the typical usage on a single drive for the average user has topped out at about 1-2 TB over the past few years. Unless you are a supreme data hoarder this is more than enough to handle the typical user’s OS, all of it’s software and a decent collection of media (TV, music, movies) in respectable quality. This idea goes a bit out the window if you are talking about ultra high quality media of course, but for me (and I think most average users) 1080p for movies/TV and v0/320kbps level quality for music is more than sufficient. We will eventually reach the limit on what the human body can perceive in terms of audio and video quality (if we haven’t already yet, I know it’s quite debatable whether there is a perceptible difference between v0 and FLAC for instance) and that coupled with the amount of media a human can reasonably consume in a lifetime might sort of put a cap on the amount of storage needed by the typical consumer. This is of course assuming no new technology like IPFS comes along that might incentivize storing other people’s data or some other similar radical technological innovation.

aidenn0 9y ago
Video resolutions have not yet peaked though; most people don't have 4k media, but 4k TVs are becoming more and more popular. This is counterbalanced by the fact that people have netflix &c. rather than downloading movies. As internet gets faster, and people get more devices, it makes less and less sense to store things locally (you don't have 2TB of storage on your phone, so if you're going to stream there, why not also stream to your pc?)
- e12e 9y ago
  4k isn't likely to be the peak, I'm guessing 360' video, and 2x4k stereoscopic video will become normal too. And moving lightfield video, that can be refocused at playback.
kakarot 9y ago
1080p movies can vary quite a bit in size. How many audio channels? How many languages? Lossy or lossless audio? What kind of compression has been done to the video itself? How many keyframes? And what is a decent collection of media? With high standards for multimedia you may only get a few dozen TV shows or maybe 50 or so movies per 2TB drive. As for music, in today's age there isn't much reason to settle for less than FLAC, you will still be very hard-pressed to fill up 2TB with just music. I've recently taken to ripping music videos and adding them to my artist folders and I'm still having a hard time filling up my damn music drive. Of course, people have different reasons for storing media. For some it's just about quantity and not quality, but some of us are preparing for the digital dark ages and want to make sure our media is of the highest quality so that it might be useful to others one day. It's all about that 48/96khz 24-bit, baby.
mahyarm 9y ago
Humans accumulate an ever growing collection of personal photos and videos as they get older. Eventually it will become like gmail, where you never delete them.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Interesting, as I've gotten older I've stopped taking photos and videos. I realized I never look at them again.
  - devonkim 9y ago
    Varies from person to person. After my cat died last year I started remembering each and every photo I had taken in different places over the years and somehow I lost track of a single photo (I'm not sure how it never got put in a single cloud photo service but I suspect it's because I took it on a camera, not a smartphone) that stood out to me because I remember it as probably the happiest he ever looked. I felt pretty terrible given of all the digital hoarding I do I couldn't keep track of one stinking picture that would mean more to me than hundreds of 4K movies. I'm a bit more liberal with my picture taking now knowing what I went through after the death of a cat and with people it would be worse.
  - darpa_escapee 9y ago
    Funny, as I get older the more pictures I take. I once thought experience was enough for me, however I've learned that memory fades. I can only recall bits and pieces of things I thought I'd never forget. There's nothing that jostles my memory quite as well as a picture.
  - baq 9y ago
    The Google robotic overlord does a very good job at showing you interesting photos from years ago. I started taking pictures and forgetting about them only to be pleasantly surprised a few years from now.
agumonkey 9y ago
Do not worry for Hollywood decrease the complexity of every new film so that all humans can enjoy more films per life. Win Win
barrkel 9y ago
I have over 2T in personally created videos alone, and that's at 720p 30fps, nothing higher. If you record video often, it adds up rapidly.
labcomputer 9y ago
Has it though? My impression (from helping family set up off-to-college computers over the past couple of years) is that modern teenagers typically have over a TB of photos shot on their iphones. And that doesn't include video. They're on track to need 5 TB of storage just for still photos by the end of their lifetime. > We will eventually reach the limit on what the human body can perceive in terms of audio and video quality Maybe on a flat screen across the living room. But when you have, say, 20k (~800 megapixels), you can expand the field of view to cover the entire sphere. Add in computational photography that allows refocusing and a (limited) amount of movement, and there is the potential for amateur-shot video to soak up any amount of storage you can buy.
kpcyrd 9y ago
60gb for AAA games isn't that uncommon. If you never uninstall any games, you're going to notice that 1tb isn't much. > assuming no new technology like IPFS comes along that might incentivize storing other people’s data ipfs is more about addressing and distributing data, you still have to store your own stuff.
visarga 9y ago
We're already at the limit - we take many more pictures than we care to see again later, we have many more books than we could read, our phones already have a resolution higher than the eye and the cameras are so fine we can hardly see the difference when the image is not zoomed out. What counts now is not quantity, but selection of content, to help us find what we care about in the mountain of things we will never get to see. We've come to the point where Google recommends our own photos to us, for rewatching. But the enemy of large HDDs is the broadband connection, not our limited ability to consume. If it weren't for the broadband connection, we'd have to host the content locally.

aidenn0 9y ago

Video resolutions have not yet peaked though; most people don't have 4k media, but 4k TVs are becoming more and more popular. This is counterbalanced by the fact that people have netflix &c. rather than downloading movies. As internet gets faster, and people get more devices, it makes less and less sense to store things locally (you don't have 2TB of storage on your phone, so if you're going to stream there, why not also stream to your pc?)

e12e 9y ago
4k isn't likely to be the peak, I'm guessing 360' video, and 2x4k stereoscopic video will become normal too. And moving lightfield video, that can be refocused at playback.

kakarot 9y ago

1080p movies can vary quite a bit in size. How many audio channels? How many languages? Lossy or lossless audio? What kind of compression has been done to the video itself? How many keyframes? And what is a decent collection of media? With high standards for multimedia you may only get a few dozen TV shows or maybe 50 or so movies per 2TB drive. As for music, in today's age there isn't much reason to settle for less than FLAC, you will still be very hard-pressed to fill up 2TB with just music. I've recently taken to ripping music videos and adding them to my artist folders and I'm still having a hard time filling up my damn music drive. Of course, people have different reasons for storing media. For some it's just about quantity and not quality, but some of us are preparing for the digital dark ages and want to make sure our media is of the highest quality so that it might be useful to others one day. It's all about that 48/96khz 24-bit, baby.

mahyarm 9y ago

Humans accumulate an ever growing collection of personal photos and videos as they get older. Eventually it will become like gmail, where you never delete them.

ams6110 9y ago
Interesting, as I've gotten older I've stopped taking photos and videos. I realized I never look at them again.
- devonkim 9y ago
  Varies from person to person. After my cat died last year I started remembering each and every photo I had taken in different places over the years and somehow I lost track of a single photo (I'm not sure how it never got put in a single cloud photo service but I suspect it's because I took it on a camera, not a smartphone) that stood out to me because I remember it as probably the happiest he ever looked. I felt pretty terrible given of all the digital hoarding I do I couldn't keep track of one stinking picture that would mean more to me than hundreds of 4K movies. I'm a bit more liberal with my picture taking now knowing what I went through after the death of a cat and with people it would be worse.
- darpa_escapee 9y ago
  Funny, as I get older the more pictures I take. I once thought experience was enough for me, however I've learned that memory fades. I can only recall bits and pieces of things I thought I'd never forget. There's nothing that jostles my memory quite as well as a picture.
- baq 9y ago
  The Google robotic overlord does a very good job at showing you interesting photos from years ago. I started taking pictures and forgetting about them only to be pleasantly surprised a few years from now.

agumonkey 9y ago

Do not worry for Hollywood decrease the complexity of every new film so that all humans can enjoy more films per life. Win Win

barrkel 9y ago

I have over 2T in personally created videos alone, and that's at 720p 30fps, nothing higher. If you record video often, it adds up rapidly.

labcomputer 9y ago

Has it though? My impression (from helping family set up off-to-college computers over the past couple of years) is that modern teenagers typically have over a TB of photos shot on their iphones. And that doesn't include video. They're on track to need 5 TB of storage just for still photos by the end of their lifetime. > We will eventually reach the limit on what the human body can perceive in terms of audio and video quality Maybe on a flat screen across the living room. But when you have, say, 20k (~800 megapixels), you can expand the field of view to cover the entire sphere. Add in computational photography that allows refocusing and a (limited) amount of movement, and there is the potential for amateur-shot video to soak up any amount of storage you can buy.

kpcyrd 9y ago

60gb for AAA games isn't that uncommon. If you never uninstall any games, you're going to notice that 1tb isn't much. > assuming no new technology like IPFS comes along that might incentivize storing other people’s data ipfs is more about addressing and distributing data, you still have to store your own stuff.

visarga 9y ago

We're already at the limit - we take many more pictures than we care to see again later, we have many more books than we could read, our phones already have a resolution higher than the eye and the cameras are so fine we can hardly see the difference when the image is not zoomed out. What counts now is not quantity, but selection of content, to help us find what we care about in the mountain of things we will never get to see. We've come to the point where Google recommends our own photos to us, for rewatching. But the enemy of large HDDs is the broadband connection, not our limited ability to consume. If it weren't for the broadband connection, we'd have to host the content locally.