56 replies to this topic

[RoKeR]

The owner of Colossal Storage, Michael Thomas, says he's the first person to solve non-contact optical spintronics which will in turn ultimately result in the creation of 3.5-inch discs with a million times the capacity of any hard drive - 1.2 petabytes of storage!

1.2 Petabyte is a hell lot of space!
For those of you who don't know:
1.2Petabyte = 1 228.8Terabyte = 1 258 291.2Gigabyte

The 1.2Petabyte Hard Disk is expected to be finished within 4 to 5 years from now and would cost approximately $750USD for 1

Read itHere

520 of these COULD hold the whole internet! As of 2002, the internet was 532,897 TB according to the article i read somewhere.

Edited by RoKeR, 19 March 2006 - 01:20 PM.

[pyost]

Wow, that is really cheap. If you think of it, in about 7 or 8 years time we will have these hard dise for maybe 100-200$. Now it looks so awesome, but useless. Nobody really needs something that big, at least not for personal use. On the other hand, who knows what kind of systems and files we will have in the future!

[Vash]

1.2PB????
Wow, that's exactly what I need, maybe even a bit more ... I just hope he doesn't changes his mind on the pricing, for US$750 I would surely buy one of those

[PureHeart]

Yeah, that sound great! But, is $750 a price that's too low to be true.

[jovencoronel]

WoW.. i mean WOW.. this is really impressive.. Im pretty sure that this hard drives will be coming to public soon.. But i doubt people will buy this because of its prize..

[finaldesign]

Wow, that is really cheap. If you think of it, in about 7 or 8 years time we will have these hard dise for maybe 100-200$. Now it looks so awesome, but useless. Nobody really needs something that big, at least not for personal use. On the other hand, who knows what kind of systems and files we will have in the future!

but imagine, webhosting providers would need only 1 HDD that is soo awesome, I just cant wait this to be built, I would probably be first one to buy it, and make my own webhosting

[RoKeR]

Thinks about GOOGLE... how would their reaction be to this development. I would not be surprised if Google and all the other search engine giants would be the first ones to offer it.

It is JUST WOW!

Imagine.. you can actually install all the Operating Systems to date in it and yet have enough space to install 10 times as many.!!!

Isn't that just great?

AND More yet.. who knows that within these years we might have softwares as big as 50-90 GB each!!!

[Jeigh]

IOn order to have software thats 50-90gb, you'd need to have people MAKING that much data for each piece of software, meaning you'd be paying ALOT of money for that software

But yea this would truly be some awesome stuff, and the $750 price tag seems pretty genious to me. It's expensive enough to have a solid profit on each drive sold (excluding the research costs the materials probably aren't worth alot) and still have them start being sold by the millions. If he released petabyte drives for under a grand a pop, he'd knock the bottom out of the HD industry and bring down the competetors pretty damn quickly. Sure he could make as much money selling way less for a huge sum of money... but if he keeps it surprisingly low he won't have to worry about much in the way of competition Regardless, can't wait to see if this tech works as promsied.

[illini319]

well as quick as we are figuring out ways to store more data in a small amount of space, we are equally as fast to make bloated and inefficient software (*cough* windows). So what I would like to know is, when the time comes that 1.2 PB drives are mass marketed, how different will this storage boon really be to our current predicament? I mean, certainly we cannot use our current space requirements as a measurement for a device that won't even be available for 4-5 years (optimistically). That's an eternity in computing. We could have double/tripled/(some ludicrous factor)ed our data storage needs by then!

[abhiram]

Ah ... a dream come true . Where can I get mine?

Finally, I'll be able to download the internet as was my childhood dream .

[dhanesh]

Wow .. a full back up of the internet finally .. .. but to think of it, we now say that we dont need so much of a space .. well thats what we said when 40GB HDD's came out .. and then 80GB and so on ..

I am having trouble keeping my backup ( files, videos,mp3s etc) on a 160GB .. i recently got a DVD writer finally .. just to keep up with all that storage .. So well overall .. i'd say this is good .. but i need moreeeee .. more .. my precioussss

Regards
Dhanesh.

[RoKeR]

Nopez.. not exactly the whole of the internet! Not unless you buy 520 or more of those hard disks...

But you know.. i guess... some people are partly correct..
I dont think we will need sooo much of data storage space! i mean.. come on....

Think of it... Would you really need 1,200,000 GB worth of storage space 4-5 years from now?

I dont think sooo...


Anyways...
Let's play a game... Rather like a poll... just thought of it...
MIND YOU.. It's based on PURE IMAGINATION!!

Suppose you have the 1.2PB HDD......

EXACTLY INTO HOW MANY PARTITIONS WOULD YOU DIVIDE IT? AND WHAT FOR??

just let your imagination float... be totally unrealistic if you have to...!!!

MY answer to this POLL will be given soon.... after thinking abt it a bit...

[RoKeR]

MY answer.. well...

I would be dividing it into exactly 4 partitions...

One for the OS and utility softz... the other for Gamez...
3rd one for MUSIC!!!!!!

AND .... the fourth would be for all the Softz that i have ever wanted to download and have fun with....!!!!

Please do reply now....

[Sarah81]

*drools*

The first thing that comes to my mind is MUSIC STORAGE. I have quite a bit of music ... but even if I quadrupled my collection, I wouldn't make even a small dent in that drive.

But oh, the challenge of trying to take up some of that space!

Heh.

Seriously though, this really does sound like something companies, not private people, would put to the best use.

[Logan Deathbringer]

Honestly, I don't think I can ever use that much storage in my lifetime...

Unless I'm running a server or something.

Seriously now, unless you never burn anything onto DVDs or CDs, there's no point in keeping everything on your HD after it's been outdated anyways.

[RoKeR]

BUt you see...
It all depends on what these coming years have in store for us...

Like I said..

U never know... we may have softwares worth GBs of data.... probably that would easily fill these things up...

It's just like the History repeating...

When 80 GB hard disks were released... people were dazzled... everyone had the same questions in mind...

WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THAT SPACE??

and you have the results in front of your eyes now...

so just think of the development now and in the future with the same results in mind....

*PEACE OUT*

[Quatrux]

Well, having a lot of space is always good, I only have 80 GB hard disk, but I don't really need more at this time, but as the digital quality of everything is growing, I will be keeping my pictures from my camera in my computer with such a quality jpeg that it would take 5 MB, so imagine 10 000 pictures == 50 000 MB == 50 GB and that is not so much pics.

Furthermore, we have DVD movies or etc. now and want to keep them in our HDD's, so if you have 200 movies in DVD, imagine how much they would take up.. and having music files with very good quality is also cool, imagine for 500 000 mp3 files with very good quality, also will take some.. So I think HDD's needs and will be expanding, one thing which only worries me - I don't need ultimate space, I just need that they would be very stable, very very stable and I mean stable.

For servers having such big drives, I think they should have more for backups of their files, you know how bad it is when your hard drive breaks, you get nervous or maybe even want to cry. I also am backing up my files to archives and into DVD cd's, very useful. As a matter of fact I always have been doing it, even into 700 MB cdr's and when I watch them sometimes, I find something funny from the past.

Edited by Quatrux, 23 March 2006 - 02:22 PM.

[Jeigh]

I'd just want one so I can stop caring. It's like... rip a backup of a dvd? Doesn't matter if you burn it to disk or keep it on your comp, not like the 5-8 gigs will affect your % used. Want to have every game you may play again a year or two down the road installed? Fine, doesn't matter. Want to rip iso's of every game you have so you never need to disk shuffle for game playing again? Why not. It's not a question of necessity, but a question of comfort

Plus I mean I have about 300gigs of storage right now and I've been known to fill that up, so obviously I could use more heh. It's not that he's choosing 1.2PB because he thinks we need it, but because when he implements the new tech that's the most logical size to make it.

Man if I could buy a single HD and never have to worry about storage again it would be amazing. Have like 20 linux distro's on it...if you buy a new comp or move to a new windows, just install the primary OS in a new partition and ignore the old, haha. Even with the huge drives we have, there's always the possibility of filling it up. For the price of a good video card in 5 years maybe we can stop worrying

[RoKeR]

You see... Jeigh is right... that's the point that i have been trying to explain to all over here...

4-5 years from now.. and you dont even know what the future has in store for us...

I say.... it wont be long before our storage requirements go up...

Then... even the PB will be too small for us....
U see... the world is continuously changing...
Who would have ever dreamt of PB 3-4 years from now?
and yet we see that it is a matter of just some years that these things come into existence....

By the way.. since my HDD partition POLL had no response... i just thought of something else...

Let's say.. you already own the PB.. it's very common now....
Mind you we are 10-12 years ahead of now...

so.. here's the question...

What name would you suggest for the next Storage? I mean... consider KB, MB, GB, TB, and now PB... in your opinion... what do you think will be the next initials for the storage...


My answer to that would be the ZB.(ZILLA BYTE!)

How'z that?

[Quatrux]

What name would you suggest for the next Storage? I mean... consider KB, MB, GB, TB, and now PB... in your opinion... what do you think will be the next initials for the storage...
My answer to that would be the ZB.(ZILLA BYTE!)

How'z that?

Well, from physics as I remember it is E, (eksa) so it is 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 = 10^18 from the normal 1 (byte) and Peta is == 10^15.. and I don't know how everything is called further, but I am sure there is something already there, in physics, maths such further numbers are usually not needed, we usually don't go so high, usually down to 10^-15 (femto), (nano) 10^-9