New computer hard drives run at 1 tb!

[Heath McKnight]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/...terabyteofdata

heath

[Tom Roper]

Isn't a terabyte a 1000 gigs? I didn't know this was a big deal. Yesterday at BB I purchased an external USB hardrive (laptop user) with 250gig for $99, and they had external terabyte drives for $449 with IEEE 1394 and USB.

I saved a small forest!

[Ayman Hussein]

1tb hdd will rock. cant wait for 2nd generation and the price to come down.

[Matthew Overstreet]

Yeah, I've been seeing 1TB external drives for quite some time now, AT LEAST a year, maybe two.

[Liam Hall]

Terabyte drives might be old news in professional multimedia systems but I bet no one's running a yottabyte drive. Now that would be something.

Liam.

[Pete Bauer]

Originally Posted by Matthew Overstreet

Yeah, I've been seeing 1TB external drives for quite some time now, AT LEAST a year, maybe two.

That's because those devices either use 2 x 500GB or 4 x250GB hard drives. Single HDD's of 1TB were anticipated to be released this spring...and here they come!

[Heath McKnight]

Pete beat me to it, but yes, all those drives are made up of two hard drives in one enclosure.

heath

[Liam Hall]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

Pete beat me to it, but yes, all those drives are made up of two hard drives in one enclosure.

heath

I suspected that might be the case.

One question though, apart from being cheaper to manufacture, what would be the benefit of a single drive over a multiple one?

[Heath McKnight]

You can put two 1tb drives into one case to make a 2 tb drive. It's also more efficient.

heath

[Harm Millaard]

Originally Posted by Liam Hall

I suspected that might be the case.

One question though, apart from being cheaper to manufacture, what would be the benefit of a single drive over a multiple one?

What do you think of doubling storage capacity over 500 GB disks or even quadrupling over 250 GB disks? In a very compact (2 disk) enclosure you can now get 2 TB. Just be aware to only use eSATA and not USB or fire wire to get the full benefit.

[Liam Hall]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

What do you think of doubling storage capacity over 500 GB disks or even quadrupling over 250 GB disks? In a very compact (2 disk) enclosure you can now get 2 TB. Just be aware to only use eSATA and not USB or fire wire to get the full benefit.

Obviously, they'll be more storage. What I mean is will a 1TB drive be faster and more durable than 2 500GB drives or 4 250GB drives? Will it be quieter and less prone to fail?

In short does size matter?

[Marty Hudzik]

Originally Posted by Liam Hall

Obviously, they'll be more storage. What I mean is will a 1TB drive be faster and more durable than 2 500GB drives or 4 250GB drives? Will it be quieter and less prone to fail?

In short does size matter?

I don't know if it would be more prone to fail or not. Keep in mind that if you have 2 drives in an enclosure, wouldn't you say there is 2x greater chance that one will fail? If configured in a RAID 0 (Which is most likely) you lose everything anyway. So......I don't know.

I can say I have a tendency to want to have 4 250GB external drives around and swap them as I need them. If any one of them dies I still have 75% of my files. If I have one great big TB drive and it fails.....I have 0% of my files.

At this point in time I can easily handle HD projects and not exceed 250GB so I am OK.

[A. J. deLange]

Originally Posted by Marty Hudzik

I don't know if it would be more prone to fail or not. Keep in mind that if you have 2 drives in an enclosure, wouldn't you say there is 2x greater chance that one will fail? If configured in a RAID 0 (Which is most likely) you lose everything anyway. So......I don't know.

Absolutely. If the probability that one drive in a pair will fail is p the probability that neither will fail is (1-p)*(1-p) = 1 -2p + p*p. Thus the probability that at least one drive will fail is 2p - p*p or not quite double. That's why RAID sets (in some configurations) use redundancy. The probaility of a failure is higher.

Also note that the next increment after the terrabyte drive (or drive set) is the petabyte drive. These are used to store petafiles (sorry, I just had to).

[Liam Hall]

Originally Posted by A. J. deLange

Absolutely. If the probability that one drive in a pair will fail is p the probability that neither will fail is (1-p)*(1-p) = 1 -2p + p*p. Thus the probability that at least one drive will fail is 2p - p*p or not quite double. That's why RAID sets (in some configurations) use redundancy. The probaility of a failure is higher.

Nice math, but it doesn't tell us diddly squat about whether or not using one new drive as opposed to two older ones is a better option. The new drives incorporate a new manufacturing technique and I'll bet they're just a little bit flaky.

Just told my wife your petafile joke, she looked at me like I was mad:)

[Matthew Overstreet]

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...lm=TJ763LL%2FA

Are you sure this is just 2 500GB discs? Because they do have a version of this that is 2 discs that is 2TB, and this has been out for quite some time.