Hitachi Makes 400-Gigabyte Hard Drive

Associated Press ^ | March 13, 2004 | May Wong

[AntiGuv]

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Digital media hogs can celebrate. A new, whopping 400-gigabyte hard drive from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies can store up to 400 hours of standard television programming, 45 hours of high-definition programming or more than 6,500 hours of digital music.

Previously, the largest such drive available was a 300-gigabyte product from Maxtor Corp., said Dave Reinsel, industry analyst at IDC.

San Jose-based Hitachi said it designed the monster drive, the Deskstar 7K400, for audio/video products such as digital video recorders.

Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm, predicts the number of households with DVRs will increase to nearly 25 million by 2007, from about 3 million today.

[AntiGuv]

Woohoo!

[Crazieman]

Took 2 years to go from 360GB to 400GB. Methinks we're hitting the physical electromagnetic storage barrier.

[annyokie]

Who wants to defrag that?

[TSgt]

Excellent observation!

A Moore's law definitely doesn't apply to this technology.

I've heard however that IBM has new means of storing data using lasers and crystals.

Mechanical drives have a limited future because they are just that...mechanical.

[ml/nj]

I think I once paid a grand for a 60 Meg drive!

ML/NJ

[kylaka]

I think it's LaCie that's had a 500 Gig out for over a year now. I got 2-250's last December for well under $1.00 per Gig.

[js1138]

That would be an IBM drive (Deskstar) under the Hitachi name. I wonder if they figured out what made the IBM drives fail?

[Psycho_Bunny]

I suspect it took that long because of a lack of demand. Personally, I prefer to spread huge amounts of data over multiple servers....it's faster and easier to manage and recover.

[krb]

That would be an IBM drive (Deskstar) under the Hitachi name.

IBM sold its disk drive unit to Hitachi. So it's more like a hitachi drive sold under the old IBM brand name.

[js1138]

Mechanical drives have a limited future because they are just that...mechanical.

Don't be hasty. Mechanical drives are thriving in digital cameras. They are getting even smaller than the flash memory sized microdrives.

Next year's computers will probably be small form factor machines with two inch drives.

[Crazieman]

I don't think so. Hard disk companies have been complaining about the physical medium of electromagnetic storage for a while now. You can only make a field change so small before everything starts to interfere and deteriorate.

On the demand side, I dunno. Personally I've been needing a lot more space since I picked up a TV tuner.

[stylin19a]

Lacie now has a 1 terabyte external.

[BikePacker]

...more than 6,500 hours of digital music

That's 3/4ths of a year.

[dogbyte12]

Right before the Pentium class computers came out, in early 94, I got a "screaming fast system". A 486/DX66 with 400MB hard drive. So, we have gone from 400MB HD to 400GB in exactly 10 years. That isn't too shabby. At this rate, we who are still around in 2014 can probably expect to be able to store an absolutely amazing amount of stuff.

My prediction is that many of us will have multiple cameras continuously storing video of our house, car, office, kid's school non stop. We will be creating our own biographies in a sense.

[savedbygrace]

A new, whopping 400-gigabyte hard drive from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies can store up to 400 hours of standard television programming, 45 hours of high-definition programming or more than 6,500 hours of digital music.

I question AP's source for the info. DV takes about 5 minutes per GB, which is about 12GB per hour. Standard definition uncompressed video takes about 90GB per hour.

[TheDon]

"predicts the number of households with DVRs will increase to nearly 25 million by 2007, from about 3 million today"

I'm doing my part.

[Petronski]

I believe the LaCie is a drive housing which holds multiple drives totalling one gig.

[kylaka]

I wonder how long before we see exabytes.

[js1138]

A couple years ago I bought three IBM 60 gig drives for myself and family members. I now hear that they are considered the worst drives ever sold. My sister is currently waiting for a replacement.

That is, of course, why IBM had to leave the business.

[Petronski]

Ach! "...that total one terabyte."