Originally posted by G4scott
Whoops, didn't see the posts about solid state storage until too late. anyways, here's my spiel (or whatever that word is...):
All of these new abilities to write more and more on optical and magnetic media are great, but I believe they will become like what tape drives are now. Even if you have a 100000 RPM hard drive, or a 1000x CD burner, it would be impractical to put something like that in a laptop, or something that runs off a battery or has to take up little space. Tape drives were seen as something good, because they could hold so much data, but they had really slow access speeds... There are limitations to mechanical devices, such as optical media, and hard drives. What I see taking off in the future, is memory on chips, like the kind of memory that is used to make the L1 cache (I think it's called SRAM.) It doesn't need to be refreshed with power to hold its data, and has fast access times. If they could shrink down the size of chips, or even use some new DNA or atom sized transistors, I imagine you could get over 100 gigs in a relatively small space. It may take a while, but in the long run, I think it would be more beneficial. I just don't see optical technology going to super high capacities for much useful purposes where fast access time is an important factor. It would be nice, though, to store video and stuff all on one disc.
Eventually, cd's and hard drives will give way to smaller, faster, more powerful storage devices with large capacities and no moving parts. If you could utilize 20 512mb high speed ram chips into one storage device, you would have a very fast storage device.It would be expensive and bulky, but eventually, I think that things will come down to size and price. It may take 10-20 years or so, but I think it will be better...
Until then... 100gb of data sounds good for storing a whole series of a TV show... or, holographic, 3d TV... I'm thinking too much... oh well...
