Ready to pick up a terabyte drive?
 

When 200 Gigabytes Isn't Enough...

From Forbes.com:

NEW YORK - Every few years it seems that hard drives go through a bit of a revolution. Certainly they're always getting bigger--and there's never any letup in the need for data storage.

We couldn't help but be a bit impressed by a drive we ran across recently called the Googie Orbit, from Denmark's Googie Drives. While internal PC hard drives that have a capacity of 160 gigabytes or even 200 gigabytes may seem pretty spacious--and to the average user they are--this line of external hard drives gets into the realm of terabytes.


Googie's Orbit drive

The drives connect to a PC via the Firewire port and come in capacities ranging from 720 gigabytes to 2,000 gigabytes, or about two terabytes. The company says the drives boast a transfer speed of 50 megabits per second and a 9-millisecond access time.

That's more storage than most mere mortals will ever need. Indeed, the drive is being aimed at professionals who need it for things like video editing and whatnot. But there's nothing complicated about installing them. All you need is a Firewire port on your computer. That port is standard on all new Macintosh systems from Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) and is available on PCs running Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Windows as well. Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) calls its Firewire port i.Link for reasons that make sense only to its executives, while others still insist on calling it 1394, after the technical specification that defines it. If your machine doesn't have this port, then Googie includes a PCI-based FireWire card, compatible with Macs or PCs. The drive supports Macs running Mac OS 8.6 and higher, including Mac OS X, and PCs running Windows 98 Special Edition, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Of course this kind of storage doesn't come cheap. The 720-GB drive is priced at $3,950 while the 2,000-GB version goes for $9,420. They're available directly from the company at googiestore.com.

As we said, 2,000 gigabytes makes for 2 terabytes. In case you were wondering, a thousand terabytes makes a petabyte. A thousand of those makes an exabyte. Beyond that comes zettabytes and then yottabytes. That's one septillion bytes of data. But, then again, who's counting?

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Just think, in a few years we'll all have terabyte drives!

Imagine the bloated OSs and Apps that will be made for it!

Let us know when you pop for one...

Couldn't this just be multiple hard drives in an external case? I'd be more surpirsed when they're able to make a terabyte drive for a 3.5 slot.

These terabyte drives could make things like CG games, Super high definition videos conceivable.. perhaps developers becoming less worried about being "too big" or having enough compression. I'm a quality freak, so if everybody started taking advantage of the ability to do uncompressed high quality material, I could be much happy. :-)

Also, these larger drives could pave the way for the Three Dimensional Operating Systems that are out and about or in the works right now.

-izm

:: drool ::

think of all the storage for PR0N!!!!!!!!!!!! w00t!

I can't wait to see the bloatware...

Sorry to say when internal 3.5" terabyte drives are a reality it won't seem like much space :(

Great.
Now my little 60 gig is gonna be depressed...

Ok, heres a question with the sizesu just listed, what is a teraquad? Is there such a thing?

That's insane. I remember when I bought a 3 gig hd and it almost seemed impossible to be able to fill it all.

teraquads and gigaquads are made up units for star trek. They are intentionaly vauge as to thier size, because storage capacitys grow so quickly.

It's a RAID firewire box. Nothing to get excited about, everyone go home.

You could build yourself one with a few of those Maxtor DiamondMax 250GB ATA/133 5400RPM Hard Drives. They sell for 272/per. So 2000 gigs = $2176.
You'll need an enclosure...power supply...controller card...I think we could beat Googie's $9420 without working too hard. Granted, they don't say which drives they stacked in the box, so I can't make an accurate guess.

The DATAMAX™ TERABYTE is the ultimate in redundant storage solutions. With a raw capacity of 8,960GB (8.9 TeraBytes), to 42,000GB (42 TeraBytes), this unit is sure to meet storage capacity requirements for today & tomorrow.

Yeah boy!

Storage space i s insane.. I purchased a SNAP! 4100 320GB (24o @ RAID 5) for work 2 years ago. We do artwork in a superwide printing environmetn. THa was an increase from the 36GB drive teh y were using before I came. Now we have a hard tiem keeping files cleaned off it. Fiel size keeps increasing. I'm looking ot purchase a terrabyte storage solution within teh next six months. I'm sure that will be too small with in a short time as well.

As for individual terrabyte drive I wouldn't be suprised to see them out withing a few years. IMB with their pixie dust technology was suppose to be releasing a 400MB HD this year.. Then again we all know how IBM drive had gone these past few years.

Cool!, Now I just need a place to put it.

Sweet.... i can have quick access to all of my movie collection... although... that is a BIG loss when it crashes... Ouch.

"Windows 98 SPECIAL Edition"??????????????

Where does anyone see a reference to a 3.5" version? What about "connects to an external firewire port" or the picture of the size of the box would lead to the impression of the 3.5" slot use?

In answer to the query --

ARTelevision my friend, I have long been ready for a terabyte drive :)

I remember being so excited about getting a 120GB WD drivew/ 8MB buffer in what was my first actual "dream machine" Now I'm filling up 100-pack CD spindles and huge external drives like nobody's bidniz.

Re: Ready to pick up a terabyte drive?
 

I seem to remember a similar statement about a gigabyte. hmm.. oh how times change. I can easily see 100 terabyte drives in less than 10 years.

Re: Re: Ready to pick up a terabyte drive?
 

Yup. Programs continually get larger, the demand for higher quality video and audio gets greater, people wanting a more robust OS, etc. All of these things factor into it. As time goes on, we'll eventually be saying, "ptth, I filled that 100 terabytes like nothing." And before you say that won't happen, think about what you would have said to 20 gig hd 10 years ago.