The need for more storage is a necessity of life. Everyone always needs a bigger garage, a few more feet in the closet, or perhaps a few more cabinets in the kitchen. Computers are no different. As programs get bigger, more imagery is stored and people start saving episodes of “Desperate Housewives, terabytes will come and go before you know it.
But the terabyte is the goal right now. So, what are your options to put a terabyte together? The Inquirer recently had a great article and they mentioned a number of quality options to put the terabyte together. Doug Mohney laid down a benchmark of close to a terabyte with about the size of a toaster.
One set he mentioned was a “$600 list for a pair of Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 400 GB drives and putting them in a NetGear SC 101 storage central enclosure.” During the summer, Seagate also turned out 500 GB hard drives. A pair of these would be something to consider as well.
Something the article didn’t go into is how the newer perpendicular storage technology could come into play. With the new perpendicular technology, the information is stored differently and will be a much smaller alternative to the traditional storage devices. Both Seagate and Toshiba have been working on this technology. Seagate’s technology could take a 2.5-inch drive and store 160 GB on it. With that type of capacity, it’s only matter of time before the hard drive business will see a reformat.
With the high definition DVDs due out sometime soon, storage has become more imperative. TDK has already claimed they’ve got a four-layer Blu-Ray DVD with 100GB on it. It’s not a stretch to think some games or some video collections could eat that space up, especially with the high-definition, digital content. This will defintely be a growth sector in the future.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
