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JesterJJZ

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jul 21, 2004
2,506
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So we seem to have hit another wall at 2TB for mechanical drives. I know SDDs are all the rage now, but I'm looking for more offline storage. Anyone know what the latest is on 3TB drives? I haven't seen anything recently.
 
What wall

HDD capacity seems to be growing at the same rate it always had. The 2TB drives have only been available for about a year, we'll be seeing 3TB in the near future. If you really need more storage than 2TB can provide get an enclosure that will support multiple drives. I recommend a Drobo as they are simple to expand over time. 2TB drives will still be cheaper per GB than the first wave of 3TB anyway.
 
Yeah, all the articles I've seen are from 3 years ago. I wonder where they really are now. Actually one of the reasons I want bigger drives is so the 2TB ones go down. I keep my backups on sets of bare drives. When you drives come out I migrate my data to the larger ones, keeping my footprint the same or smaller.
 
At least in the USA, bare 2TB drives are $120. 2 years ago I spent the same $120 on a 500 gig drive.

I have seen 1.5TB drives for $70 after rebate.

I doubt if the introduction of 3TB drives will make it go much lower, maybe another $10-20 bucks.
 
While we're on the subject of good 2 TB deals, Newegg has 2 TB Samsungs for $120 with free shipping until the 10th (linky). Ordered two of them and had them the next day.
 
At least in the USA, bare 2TB drives are $120. 2 years ago I spent the same $120 on a 500 gig drive.

I have seen 1.5TB drives for $70 after rebate.

Wow...I bought a 500GB WD drive 2 years ago also and paid almost $150. I can't believe that now I could get 2TB for the same price...
 
That has SAS interface so I guess they'll be little more expensive, maybe ~300$. SAS means that it's meant for servers mainly as quite few consumers PCs has it. Hopefully SATA version will come soon
 
Wow...I bought a 500GB WD drive 2 years ago also and paid almost $150. I can't believe that now I could get 2TB for the same price...

Really? You 'can't believe' it? Prices always drop as performance goes up. i paid around $200 for a 120GB external around 10 years ago.

The largest drives seem to always be introduced around the $200-300 price point, then drop as the newer drive technology comes out and the ability to mass product the units improves.

I agree that the bottoming can't get much lower. I feel that you'll be able to get good 1TB drives for $70-ish with 2TB drives dropping toward $100 over the next year.

And believe it or not, 3TB drives will be at that price point within 18 months.

10 years from now, we'll be joking about how small a 3TB drive is and how we can't imagine how we got along with something that small as WD announces its 40TB drive!
 
10 years from now, we'll be joking about how small a 3TB drive is and how we can't imagine how we got along with something that small as WD announces its 40TB drive!

10 years from now hard drive will be a joke, everything will be SSD or something other flash technology. In few years, we'll have SSDs that are over 1TB and smaller than stamps...
 
I remember when I bought my Macbook with an 80 GB hard drive; I remember thinking that there was no way in he!! I'd ever have enough of anything to fill up a vast 80 GB. How times have changed.
 
10 years from now hard drive will be a joke, everything will be SSD or something other flash technology. In few years, we'll have SSDs that are over 1TB and smaller than stamps...

But 10 years from now 1TB will never be able to handle our storage needs. Heck, files keep getting larger...we will all have super HD video files on our drives in the future that probably take up a minimum of 25GB by 2020. :eek:

I would think each computer will ship with a minimum of 8TB of storage.

Unless there is some MAJOR breakthough in SSD technology, multi-platter, spinning-disk hard drives will still be with us.

The only thing that may change things is if households can be 'wired' with fiber optic lines and then we would have such a HUGE data pipeline that most of our info could be stored in the 'cloud' and accessed instantaneously.
 
I remember when I bought my Macbook with an 80 GB hard drive; I remember thinking that there was no way in he!! I'd ever have enough of anything to fill up a vast 80 GB. How times have changed.

Me too


...then I started editing video with my MiniDV camera and realize I needed an extra external drive to hold all my video. ;)
 
But 10 years from now 1TB will never be able to handle our storage needs. Heck, files keep getting larger...we will all have super HD video files on our drives in the future that probably take up a minimum of 25GB by 2020. :eek:

I would think each computer will ship with a minimum of 8TB of storage.

Unless there is some MAJOR breakthough in SSD technology, multi-platter, spinning-disk hard drives will still be with us.

The only thing that may change things is if households can be 'wired' with firbe optic lines and then we would have such a HUGE data pipeline that most of our info could be stored in the 'cloud' and accessed instantaneously.

How many SSDs size of a stamp you can fit in 2.5" SSD? Hundreds, even thousands. SSDs are developing a lot faster than HDs, 2TBs came when, a year ago? If we get these new 3TBs in late 2010, that's 1TB improvement in ~2 years, not very fast! 64GB was like maximum size of SSD 2 years ago, now there are 512GB SSDs available and bigger ones are coming all the time.

Size is not the only benefit in SSDs, they are A LOT faster, low power consumption, MUCH more reliable.... I can see SSDs replacing HDs in notebooks in near future, then later on when they overtake HDs in capacity and have a fair price tag, in desktop too.

Unless HD manufacturers have aces in their sleeves, HDs will soon be history
 
How many SSDs size of a stamp you can fit in 2.5" SSD? Hundreds, even thousands.

I get you now. I just thought you were marvelling over having a single 1 TB SSD.

The other problem they are having is the re-write issue. The number of times you can re-write a single portion of the SSD RAM is much more limited than with a HDD.

Things that will likely be worked out I am sure.
 
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