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When in 2050 people will see how big a 1TB HDD is now they'll smile at it. I love progress.

by fosk 15y ago

simcop2387 15y ago
I hope they'll be doing that towards backblazes myself. Would be far more comparable and I'd love that amount of storage to be "quaint".
ars 15y ago
I'm not so sure about that. The 3.5 inch form factor has been around for more than 30 years, and I don't see it going away anytime soon because it's a "human" size (about the size of a hand). People are not getting smaller. We'll fit a lot of more data onto them, sure. But the physical size of the largest/most common hard disk available at that time is unlikely to change much.
- 2arrs2ells 15y ago
  It's possible (likely?) that 1 TB storage will also be available in much smaller form factors - to fit inside a watch or a keychain, if not smaller.
  - seanp2k2 15y ago
    Even if that happens, a page of uncompressed plain-text data will still be small -- that's another "human size" that won't go away any time soon, so this makes me question how much storage we'll really need in the future. Sure, we'll come up with all kinds of interesting ways to use more of it, but with devices becoming more and more "cloud-centric"...will a phone ever needs /terrabytes/ of storage?
- ajaimk 15y ago
  I'd say the transition will happen away from spinning disks by then. Pretty soon, Physics is going to start getting in the way...
  - blhack 15y ago
    Physics is already getting in the way.
    - jdpage 15y ago
      Physics always gets in the way of everything.
- oldstrangers 15y ago
  "We'll fit a lot of more data onto them, sure. But the physical size of a hard disk is unlikely to change much." There's 32gb of storage on my phone, held in an area roughly the size of a dime. It's not a hard disk, but it shows where hard disks are going.
- jws 15y ago
  Interesting theory on things only shrinking until they reach a "human size". Many things have shrunk: cell phones, thumb drives, wall warts, personal routers/access points, flash lights, inkjet printers… Some things can not successfully shrink: keyboards, displays… But there are very few things that have artificially resisted shrinking: Household telephones and credit cards come to mind. I think hard drives are a component. 3.5" will yield to 2.5" as each drive stores enough data. Smaller platters start to have diminishing returns. Before you know it the whole product will be over run by something solid state and no one will care what the last size of buggy whip was.

When in 2050 people will see how big a 1TB HDD is now they'll smile at it. I love progress.

by fosk 15y ago

When in 2050 people will see how big a 1TB HDD is now they'll smile at it. I love progress.

I hope they'll be doing that towards backblazes myself. Would be far more comparable and I'd love that amount of storage to be "quaint".

ars 15y ago

I'm not so sure about that. The 3.5 inch form factor has been around for more than 30 years, and I don't see it going away anytime soon because it's a "human" size (about the size of a hand). People are not getting smaller. We'll fit a lot of more data onto them, sure. But the physical size of the largest/most common hard disk available at that time is unlikely to change much.

2arrs2ells 15y ago
It's possible (likely?) that 1 TB storage will also be available in much smaller form factors - to fit inside a watch or a keychain, if not smaller.
- seanp2k2 15y ago
  Even if that happens, a page of uncompressed plain-text data will still be small -- that's another "human size" that won't go away any time soon, so this makes me question how much storage we'll really need in the future. Sure, we'll come up with all kinds of interesting ways to use more of it, but with devices becoming more and more "cloud-centric"...will a phone ever needs /terrabytes/ of storage?
ajaimk 15y ago
I'd say the transition will happen away from spinning disks by then. Pretty soon, Physics is going to start getting in the way...
- blhack 15y ago
  Physics is already getting in the way.
  - jdpage 15y ago
    Physics always gets in the way of everything.
oldstrangers 15y ago
"We'll fit a lot of more data onto them, sure. But the physical size of a hard disk is unlikely to change much." There's 32gb of storage on my phone, held in an area roughly the size of a dime. It's not a hard disk, but it shows where hard disks are going.
jws 15y ago
Interesting theory on things only shrinking until they reach a "human size". Many things have shrunk: cell phones, thumb drives, wall warts, personal routers/access points, flash lights, inkjet printers… Some things can not successfully shrink: keyboards, displays… But there are very few things that have artificially resisted shrinking: Household telephones and credit cards come to mind. I think hard drives are a component. 3.5" will yield to 2.5" as each drive stores enough data. Smaller platters start to have diminishing returns. Before you know it the whole product will be over run by something solid state and no one will care what the last size of buggy whip was.