what is the next capacity stopping point

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lynn McGuire
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Lynn McGuire

Now that we have a jumping point to get more than
2 TB in a single drive, what is the next limit of
capacity in hard drives?

Thanks,
Lynn
 
Lynn said:
Now that we have a jumping point to get more than
2 TB in a single drive, what is the next limit of
capacity in hard drives?
Click to expand...

16 exabytes

That's the NTFS theoretical limit (not a lower limit that may be imposed
within the Windows). You never mentioned a file system. exFAT and
other file systems have different limits.
 
VanguardLH said:
Lynn McGuire wrote:
Click to expand...
16 exabytes
Click to expand...
That's the NTFS theoretical limit (not a lower limit that may be imposed
within the Windows). You never mentioned a file system. exFAT and
other file systems have different limits.
Click to expand...

There will be a LBA48 linit at 1EB, assuming 4096k sectors.
It affects (S)ATA deives.

SCSI (and hence USB storage) is good for 64ZB with 4K sectors.

The latter is also the limit on GPT with 4k sectors.

Other limits are pure filesystem-limits, but given the stupidity
we have seen from Microsoft in the past, they doubtlessly
have some other limits in there somewhere.

Arno
 
16 exabytes

That's the NTFS theoretical limit (not a lower limit that may be imposed
within the Windows). You never mentioned a file system. exFAT and
other file systems have different limits.
Click to expand...

Well, we will never need a drive capacity of
16 billion gigabytes. Right?

Lynn
 
16 exabytes

That's the NTFS theoretical limit (not a lower limit that may be imposed
within the Windows). You never mentioned a file system. exFAT and
other file systems have different limits.
Click to expand...

BTW, Thanks!

Lynn
 
Lynn said:
Well, we will never need a drive capacity of 16 billion gigabytes.
Right?
Click to expand...

Well, if the sales folks have their way, all of us just must have
in-cloud storage of, ahem, unlimited capacity (providing we can fork
out the money for all of it).

As what was once sci-fi is being researched (started 10 years ago):
holographic storage. See:

http://www.colossalstorage.net/3d_holo.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage

So big, really big, file systems may be needed and not that many years
from now (well, in maybe a decade).
 
Well, we will never need a drive capacity of
16 billion gigabytes. Right?
Click to expand...

I may never live long enough to need 16 billion Gigabytes of disk space,
but maybe in a generation or two....

My first computer (an Osborne 1) had 64K of RAM and two 92K floppy
drives, and when I saw an outboard 5MB hard-drive box for it I thought,
"If only I could afford one of those, I'd never need to buy any more
floppies"!!!

Whatever you consider to be a reasonable amount of storage, somebody
will come up with programs that need twice as much. Think of Parkinson's
Law, rewritten for computing: "Programs and their data expand to fill
completely the space available for their storage."

Perce
 
Well, we will never need a drive capacity of
16 billion gigabytes. Right?
Click to expand...
Lynn
Click to expand...

Not for any current applications, that is for sure. I mean, what
do ordinary people evenneed 3TB for, if not video? And you
can already get a few 100 hours in good wuality on one.

But I am sure the industry will find some content for that
in the time of our children (or later).

Arno
 
Arno said:
Not for any current applications, that is for sure. I mean, what
do ordinary people evenneed 3TB for, if not video? And you
can already get a few 100 hours in good wuality on one.

But I am sure the industry will find some content for that
in the time of our children (or later).
Click to expand...

The NSA can always use more storage... They'll juste rotate the
captures less frequently.
 
Now that we have a jumping point to get more than

2 TB in a single drive, what is the next limit of

capacity in hard drives?
Click to expand...

Are you talking about hardware-technology limits?
3.5" drives are at a plateau of approx 4 TB.
If HAMR gets off the ground, we could at least double that.
Maybe 10 x eventually, so 40 TB drives.
Hopefully, SATA transfer rates also double, quadruple by then.
 
Are you talking about hardware-technology limits?
3.5" drives are at a plateau of approx 4 TB.
If HAMR gets off the ground, we could at least double that.
Maybe 10 x eventually, so 40 TB drives.
Hopefully, SATA transfer rates also double, quadruple by then.
Click to expand...

And the reputed holographic storage devices
starting at 10 PB.

Lynn
 
And the reputed holographic storage devices
starting at 10 PB.
Click to expand...

You mean those we have kept hearing about for the last 20 years
or so? I don't think they will materialize this century...

Arno
 
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