99 replies to this topic

[abandongamez]

I always pondered this question alot. How big is the biggest hard drive in the world? Does anyone know? I'm sure you cannot buy it at the store. And also, what's the biggest hard drive you can buy at the store? Because I need a quite large one for all my movies and mp3 and games. anyone please?

Edited by miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG, 16 December 2005 - 07:07 AM.

[moldboy]

I believe the biggest you can buy at the store is 500gb, however I wouldn't know about the biggest on in the world. I would guess somewhere in the 1-5 TB range.

[inconnu]

To my knowledge, the largest capacity packed in a single hard drive unit is 500GB, which are commonly available on the store shelves for individuals.

There are a number of external storage boxes configured to hold like 2TB, making use of multiple hard drives inside the box.

The needs for larger storage capacity in the enterprise world is supported by enormous number of arrayed disk drives, than putting the data onto one disk. Therefore the capacity of such storage system can be really huge.

By the way, your question title reminded me of my days i was selling 9" hard drives carrying only a few hundred of megabytes --- yes they were big too,,,
physically. <grin>

[saint-michael]

yeah from what i googled the biggest is 500bg but then the next question would be the biggest harddrives connected to a network how about htat.

[sodredge]

yeah from what i googled the biggest is 500bg but then the next question would be the biggest harddrives connected to a network how about htat.

I found a company called Lacie out of France that marketed this 2TB Monster hard drive.

Also when considering network size and drives within wouldn't Seti be the largest. At least with them if you figure, all the drives they use over their network which uses a ton of computers.

[Killer008r]

I have seen the biggest hd at 800 gb from pricewatch. Although the company dosent sell them. And I was going to say the same this sodredge said :/ but he got to it first.

[warbird]

I know that at my fathers company they work with harddisks of about 2TB(maybe more, but not sure) and then they use several of them combined. But that computers are quite big, somewhere near 2m x 3m x 1m (height x width x depth). Of course harddisks will have more capacity in future and less big but I don't want to have such a creature in my living room, do you?

-=jeroen=-

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG]

Off topic - but my first ever computer had a 3.5" HDD (in the days of huge bulky ones - way back in 1991's) with a WHOPPING CAPACITY OF 20 MEGABYTES Those days that used to be one of biggest hard drives around the block

[inconnu]

You can find many IHV (independent hardware) companies like LaCie offering RAID subsystems, in which many cases they utilize 4 units of 500GB hard drives.
For the ease of installation, products aimed at SOHO and individual enthusiasts are often built in tower chasis.

For corporates, a 2TB unit is made out of 4 x 500GB drives more often laid out in a "rack" (imagine something like a flat big tray.)
There are solutions like stacking multiple racks to be connected through fiber channels to the server. If you had 7 racks stacked that'll make 14TB, for example.

In reality, however, corporate storage solutions would generally sacrifice a lot of raw capacity for security and backup. They use techniques like RAID to reserve a part of capacity to achieve higher reliability. In other words, the capacity made available to store data is much less than plain sum of the disk capacity used.

[lisim]

I found a company called Lacie out of France that marketed this 2TB Monster hard drive.

Also when considering network size and drives within wouldn't Seti be the largest. At least with them if you figure, all the drives they use over their network which uses a ton of computers. 

the "hard drive" u mentioned is an box of stroage 2tb isnt huge infact i have it in one computer lets see 8x 200 is what nearly 2 tb and i could always grab some 320gigs or bigger i belive 500 u will find is the bigest and easiest to get your hands on

[wutske]

Off topic - but my first ever computer had a 3.5" HDD (in the days of huge bulky ones - way back in 1991's) with a WHOPPING CAPACITY OF 20 MEGABYTES Those days that used to be one of biggest hard drives around the block

Lol, we even have a 5,25" hdd, but it' already offers a few gb of data.

Now, I do remember having an old 286 pc, the hdd is dead. I think it's also a 5,25" model (might be different, it's not even an ATA/IDE hdd) and has only few Mb space .

Aah good old times (never been there tough), 8Mhz computer power

[juventino79]

I always pondered this question alot. How big is the biggest hard drive in the world? Does anyone know? I'm sure you cannot buy it at the store. And also, what's the biggest hard drive you can buy at the store? Because I need a quite large one for all my movies and mp3 and games. anyone please?

The largest i have seen is 1 terabyte
i saw it at futureshop.ca and its going for 999$CDN

[xboxrulz]

we've seen 500 gb, 800 gb, 1 TB, 2 TB but does 32-bit systems handle them? I've heard there was a limit of like 640 GB and 2 GB RAM for 32-bit systems.

Also, who uses, or buys a 2 TB HDD for personal use?

I know that XFS (EB), JFS (PB), ReiserFS (TB), NTFS (EB), ext2/3 (TB). [things in bracket is the biggest unit of measurement that a filesystem can go]

More info: http://en.wikipedia....of_file_systems

xboxrulz

[EvilNui]

Who could use that for personal use ? Me!
I'm watching Anime and I have seen around 100 at least. Plus, I'm storing Mp3's and Soundtracks (mostly of the anime ) and I think I would have exceeded 1 TB already, when i wasn't deleting or copying them to DVD.
And I would really like to store them for an eternity on my Harddrive
(example: a full Ranma 1/2 package is 40 Gigs big! - It's a big anime, though)

How expensive are big external Harddrives, anyway ?
And what are blades ? Aren't blades big storages ? Or at least something like that ?

[xboxrulz]

You know that storing anime from the internet is highly illegal, just as to download and watch movies.

Therefore, if we use our computer "legitimitely" then, really in 2006, no one needs 2 TB in the personal sector.

If you are so stuck to download movies, there are things like DivX, RMVB, etc to compress such files that you don't need a big HDD.

xboxrulz

[demolaynyc]

Like what the other people are saying, the largest harddrive in stock for most stores is the 500gb hard disk. However if you want to go for multi-terabyte storage, then you may need to use an external hard drive and have at least 2 hard drives connected to each other--one master and the rest are slaves. Man I wish I had that much money to buy a big hard drive.

Like what the other people are saying, the largest harddrive in stock for most stores is the 500gb hard disk. However if you want to go for multi-terabyte storage, then you may need to use an external hard drive and have at least 2 hard drives connected to each other--one master and the rest are slaves. Man I wish I had that much money to buy a big hard drive.

[justjoey]

i have a 120 GB hard drive and taht was pretty huge backl in 2003, now we're into damning terrabytes.. I dont think i'd ever yuse a terrabyte, im having trouble filling my 120!!! i think new reporters could do with terrabytes of data, and maybe, sound manufacturers.. sound often takes alot of space and there are effects and stuff.. so video stuff could take a lot of space also. Why i said news was because theyd have loadss of photo input every day and theyd also have articles written every day in the bulk, over time this could reach terrabytes but im sure theyd just ensd it over to differnt hard drives.. i dont actaully think we need terrbyte drives...loadas differnet ones will do.. but then... uless we get terrabyte large files.. we wont need it

[James_K]

haha joey I have one 120gb one 150gb and one 280gb and IT"S STILL NOT ENOUGH!!!! i know i'm crazy but I need more MORE ROOM! I cnat wait for the Terabyte drives to skydive in price as soon as it does I'm going to jump on it and use it as my new backup drive

[Drusek]

I recently red an articly that said that they are making new hard drives with new technology (instead of magnetic pins, they will use elektrons) and those drives will be able to store few PB (PetaBytes) of data!!!
PB=1000TB=1000000GB