Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How Long do you think hard drives will be around?

How long will hard drives stick around?

  • Less then 5 years

    Votes: 9 10.8%

  • 5-15

    Votes: 40 48.2%

  • 15-35

    Votes: 23 27.7%

  • 35+

    Votes: 11 13.3%
  • Total voters
    83
I do not think HD will ever fully be replaced in our life time. There tech might change but it be a while.
They have been around for 50 years and never had anything take them over. We have just been able to make them faster and bigger. For example look at Seagates 1TB drive they just released. That is using the vertical stacking technology and that just scratching the surfaces of what that tech can do.
Had drive also have been keeping pace with CPU, ram and other technology in how fast it is improving so it has some life in it.
Hell the only thing in computer that has failed to increase at the same rate at everything else has been the battery power. but that more due to the fact that the battery is pushing the physical limits of what can be put in that amount of space.
 
The One Laptop Per Child computer has no Hard Drive, eventhough it won't be sold commercially there is a chance of such cheap hardware becoming avalible.

http://www.laptop.org/

Annoying though that when you search 'XO laptop' on Google it says 'Did you mean XP laptop' :(
 
I don't think that flash will beat hard drives, but rather something else will obsolete both of them. And I think that it will happen in the next five years. Potentially, hard drives will continue on for mass storage, as RAID arrays of terrabyte and beyond collections of data. But I think that consumers, particularly notebook owners, will be using a solid state storage mechanism. I think that 100 GB is the sweet spot, where if something can be that large, and the right price, and size, then it will win.
 
MarkCollette said:
I don't think that flash will beat hard drives, but rather something else will obsolete both of them.
Click to expand...
I am leaning this way as well.

However, I think that it will be more than 5 years down the road.

FWIW, some time ago when 4MB RAM memory was the largest that you could get, I had a Japanese friend who worked for _____ in their research labs. They already had 64MB DIMMs up and running.

...it would be 4-5 years later when these hit the market and were available to the regular customer.

Today it seems that the time from research to market has shortened somewhat but there is still a lag.

Technology developments continue to excite! ;)
 
Hard drives will be around for quite some time, but I see them ending up like VHS tapes compared to DVD - even though DVDs are the norm, VHS tapes and VCRs are still around an in use, even though the technology is antiquated and production is significantly ramping down. Flash-based technology and holographic storage will take over soon and become the norm, but I still see hard drives being the main storage solution for at least another 5 years before any alternatives because truly feasible, cost effective and commonplace. :cool:
 
I voted 15-30 years..I'd say about 20-25 years


I can see flash taking up more of the laptop market soon(with in 5 years) the desktop and sever markets need massive amounts of storage
 
Coheebuzz said:
I voted less than 5 years, have you seen this?

They will start mass-producing this year, so i hope that in the next 3-4 years the cost will go down from $5000 to something us mortals can afford.
Click to expand...
As many have already said in this thread, flash memory capacities are going up and price is coming down.

The 64 dollar question will be how long before they are priced at consumer levels.

FWIW, those of us who have been around a while saw 32MB DIMMs going for $3,200 initial drop to less than $100 about 4-5 years later. (Now if you can find them they go for about $4-5 bucks. Not a good way to invest your money! ;) )

The laptop market, and other portable devices, will be driving down the price of flash memory products. But as ~shard~ mentioned, we still have VHS tape players being used.
 
A couple of rubbish graphs:

1. Hard drive prices per gig over a rather short time period:

hard%20drive%20graph.bmp


HD prices have dropped 26 fold over the 4 years in the graph.

2. Flash prices per gig over a completely different period:

123395-2401p028-2b.jpg


Flash prices have dropped 29 fold over the 5 years of the graph.

So that proves sod all really.
 
The goal is not for flash to have 500GB drives 10 years from now, it's for flash to have the equivalent of 500GB right now, since who knows how big the space requirements will be for computers at that time. I think the price/GB ratio for magnetic-based hard disks is going to be tough to beat. It's not like those guys are going to quit innovating.
 
With continued progress in magnetic media, the largest drives will likely still rely on them. However, I would expect flash media to replace traditional HD's in portables.
although newer and nwer technologies come (and go) for the most critical data I still use tape for backups of critical information.
 
pseudobrit said:
I need another graph.
Click to expand...

Well, looking at the recent historical value of recycled paper per gigagram:

paper-prices.jpg


Focusing on the period from 1996 to 2001, then over that 5 year period, paper memory prices fell 4-fold.

That's comparable with the price decline of flash memory / hard disk drives over a similar span of time.

The general principles are delineated in the following graph, which will look clearer if you lean your head 90 degrees to the left whilst looking at it.

Bouncing on the spot while scratching your left bollock / genital flap is optional.

cost-graph.jpg
 
Cassie said:
Why are we compareing the cost of paper to hard drives?
Click to expand...
Because it's fun! ;) :p :D

Getting back on track, the use of paper brings up a question. And that is reliability and safety of your data.

HDs and Flash memory do fail. Although much more reliable these days then when both methods were introduced, they still can fail.

CDs/DVDs do not last the 30 years that the industry touted a few years ago.

If I were to visit home in the states I could look at old family pictures that were taken close to 100 years ago. They are keepsakes.

Now in the digital domain, it is so easy to loose those keepsakes in the blink of an eye should the storage medium go bad. Accidents do happen.

According to Steve Gibson, while HDs capacities are getting much larger, they are also getting more unreliable when it comes to data storage on the media. So HDs routinely relocate data to keep it intact.

I've personally had or observed a few Thumb Drives go bad. Most are mechanical issues such as the connector comes loose. But others are chip related.

I've also had issues with CDs and DVDs.

As for me, I want a medium that will last years from now. Again I draw your attention to the aforementioned family pictures. I can look at those many years from now and they will still be okay. What happens if I put my pictures on a medium that is no longer supported in the future, or it doesn't work?

So it looks like we will continually be challenged to move our music, picture and video collection to media as it becomes available. :mad: Meanwhile, I will still be able to look at those very old family pictures. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back