Hitachi To Produce 1 Terabyte Desktop Drives ...expected available late 2005.

WebProNews ^ | 2005-04-04 | WebProNews | Staff Writer |

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Hitachi's division of storage technologies, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, is expected to announce they will begin selling 1-terabyte desktop drives later this year.

In order to increase storage capacities, HGST is employing perpendicular recording, which Macworld describes as:

Perpendicular recording is perhaps the most significant near-term step in the evolution of hard-disk drive technology. The method is similar to the longitudinal recording used in today's drives in that it relies on magnetically charged particles for data storage. In today's drives, the north and south poles of the magnetic particles run parallel to the disc but in the new method they are arranged perpendicular to the disc, as the name suggests.

The result of this new arrangement is that each particle occupies a smaller area of the disk's surface and so more particles can be crammed onto the disk. This is measured as the areal density and today's most advanced drives can store between 100Gb (gigabits) and 120Gb of data in a square inch of disk space.

With this method, HGST envisions storage capacities of 230Gb per square inch by 2007. This technology would also enable the 1TB, 3.5-inch drive and 20GB, 1-inch drive. Hitachi is expected to officially announce their intentions later today.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Now this is good news....

[general_re]

18 months and it'll be too small...

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[Steely Tom]

Cool. An iPod that can store 2000 copies of every song ever recorded.

(steely)

[RadioAstronomer]

Very nice.

Here is another interesting article:

http://www.mercola.com/2003/feb/22/petabyte.htm

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Oh no!

A petabyte of storage is more than I can comprehend, but I do have well over a terabyte.....

[So Cal Rocket]

TiVo and the other DVR companies will love a 1 Tb hard-drive which will allow you to record several High Definition movies on a single drive.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

As it use to be:

*****************************************

IBM 1405 disk storage

The IBM 1405 Disk Storage was offered by IBM throughout the
1960s in 25-disk and 50-disk models, for a storage capacity of 10
million and 20 million characters, respectively.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See above for the way it was a few short years ago....that is not a small cabinet...

[RadioAstronomer]

Terrabyte used to be huge! Now it is commonplace. What will computers look like in 2020 I wonder.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Ah ....good stuff!

*********************************

	IBM Archives   >    Exhibits   >   IBM Storage   >  Storage reference room   >
	Storage product profiles  >

IBM 350 disk storage unit

IBM 350

• Model 1 announced September 4, 1956
  
  
• Model 2 announced May 5, 1958
  
  
• Models 3 & 4 announced September 15, 1958
  
  
• Models 11, 12, 13 & 14 announced January 12, 1959
  
  
• All models withdrawn August 18, 1969

The IBM 350 Disk Storage was a major component of the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Memory Accounting) system, introduced in September 1956.

IBM 305 RAMAC

The 305 was a flexible, electronic, general purpose data processing machine that enabled businesses to record transactions as they occurred and concurrently reflect each entry in affected accounts. It maintained records on a real-time basis, provided random access to any record, eliminated peak loads, and could simultaneously produce output by either print or punched cards.

The 305 system consisted of the IBM 305 Processing Unit (containing the magnetic process drum, magnetic core register and electronic logical and arithmetic circuits), the IBM 370 Printer (an 80-position serial-output printer with tape control carriage), the IBM 323 Card Punch (similar to the IBM 523 Gang Summary Punch, providing for 80 columns of output punching), the IBM 380 Console (containing the card feed, typewriter, keyboard and indicator lights and control keys), the IBM 340 Power Supply (supplying power for all components except the motors in the 350 disk storage unit), a utility table adjacent to the console, and the IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit.

The 350 Disk Storage Unit consisted of the magnetic disk memory unit with its access mechanism, the electronic and pneumatic controls for the access mechanism, and a small air compressor. Assembled with covers, the 350 was 60 inches long, 68 inches high and 29 inches deep. It was configured with 50 magnetic disks containing 50,000 sectors, each of which held 100 alphanumeric characters, for a capacity of 5 million characters.

Disks rotated at 1,200 rpm, tracks (20 to the inch) were recorded at up to 100 bits per inch, and typical head-to-disk spacing was 800 microinches. The execution of a "seek" instruction positioned a read-write head to the track that contained the desired sector and selected the sector for a later read or write operation. Seek time averaged about 600 milliseconds.

In 1958, the 305 system was enhanced to permit an optional additional 350 Disk Storage Unit, thereby doubling storage capacity; and an additional access arm for each 350.

The dual arms used to record or read data from the 350 disk storage unit.

With storage capacities of 5 million and 10 million digits, and the capability to be installed either singly or in pairs, the 350 provided the 305 system with storage capacities of 5, 10, 15 or 20 million characters.

More than 1,000 305s were built before production ended in 1961. The 305 RAMAC was one of the last vacuum tube systems designed in IBM.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I just want to be here to see what they will look like!

[RadioAstronomer]

You and me both. :-)

[Steely Tom]

TiVo and the other DVR companies will love a 1 Tb hard-drive which will allow you to record several High Definition movies on a single drive.

I know, I know.

I'm not knockin' it. Just being a little cynical.

Did you ever read Asimov's I Robot books? In one story, the protagonist and his human sidekick travel to a distant planet to investigate a murder. The entire planet has a population (carefully controlled) of 20,000 humans, and 200 million robots.

Anyway, everyone communicates electronically; to be in another person's physical presence is considered almost impossibly vulgar and unclean.

But people still like to meet, go to parties, have dinner together, etc... all done via three-dimensional holography supported by high-bandwidth communications.

I mention this because I keep wondering what people will do not so much with storage capacity but with bandwidth capacity. How long will HDTV last? Conventional TV lasted for what, 50 years? I very much doubt HDTV will last more than 10 or 15. Remember when CD's came out? I thought that was it. Then DVDs came out, only 10 years later or so.

(steely)

[Centurion2000]

Just damn .... I can see a market for a drive like this coupled to data goggles. A portable DVD library with a viewer.

And think of how many mp3's this thing will store.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Well newer DVD's are on the way too:

See this:

Simpsons swallowed whole by DVD of the future ~ 100 DVDs on a single DVD-size disc....

[Steely Tom]

I was reading a Microsoft "Advanced Windows" book, which covered programming issues surrounding the next generation 64-bit chips (the Alpha was mentioned too). That's when it really hit me... Those chips can address 180,000 terabytes of memory!

The human brain contains what, 13 billion neurons? The memory space of these 64 bit chips could support a model of the human brain with almost 14 megabytes of information per virtual neuron!

(steely)

[Centurion2000]

A petabyte of storage is more than I can comprehend, but I do have well over a terabyte.....

However, a second petabyte derive could record every moment of life, in high-quality video, of the oldest person on earth.

Eventually petabyte drives could be used in place of memory. Imagine having your ENTIRE life time indexed and recorded ?

I would think that you could start digitizing human minds with one of these things as well.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Here is the info for the major use of one terabyte disk drives:

Home Theatre PC Guide

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Technology is gonna have an impact....