Poll:When will we reach the new 48-bit LBA limit?

[jtr1962]

Any thoughts on this? It seems that every time we bump up against a capacity limit the new one only lasts a few more years. At least this time they had the foresight to make the new limit about 1 million times the old one.

BTW, the maximum size of a drive with 48-bit LBA is 144 million GB, or 144 petabytes.

Another question-do you think drives this large will be mechanical, NVRAM, or perhaps something entirely new, assuming that we ever build them?

 

[Tannin]

I'm much better at predicting the past than the future, alas. (Ask my bookmaker!) I'm a bit inclined to go out on a limb here and say that, by the time we get within sight of the limit, architectural changes will have made it a non-issue. Currently, for all the incredible technology we see in hard drives and opticals, we still think of storage in much the same way as we thought of 8-inch floppy drives. Perhaps the conceptual tide will wash away the 48-bit barrier before we ever see it.

 

[i]

Bah ... I meant to click "never have need for this much storage," not ">50 years".

Some other form of storage technology will come along that will make the limit irrelevant.

 

[blakerwry]

I said 10 years. I agree with tannin, IMO we it will be a non-issue because we will be using some other type of storage.

So, i estimate in perhaps 10 years we will have finally moved on to something bigger and better, hopefully solid-state, that does not rely on LBA 48.

 

[jtr1962]

I should have had another choice-namely a new technology or interface will make the LBA-48 limit irrelevant.

The consensus so far seems to be in 15 or so years. We'll probably be standardized on S-ATA within a few years. If that interface lasts as long as P-ATA, you could be looking at 25 years or so before we move to a new interface, so the limit might actually be reached before then. Assuming storage capacity continues increasing at 60% annually, we could be bumping up against the new limit in 30 or so years, and way less if the rate of storage capacity increase accelerates. In fact, to reach the limit in 15 years only requires an annual increase of 140%, which is more than we've seen but not by much. Note that I said storage capacity, not areal density. I'm guessing by the time we reach a few tens of terabytes, any further increases in capacity will be in the realm of non-mechanical storage. I think we're poised to see the end of the line for mechanical hard disk capacity increases within about 5 to 10 years, and we'll have a coexistence of mechanical and solid state until solid state begins to approach the size and cost per GB of mechanical, at which point the last major moving part in our PCs will be consigned to the dust bin of history. Those are my thoughts on the matter, anyhow.

Another more relevant question is why would a home user ever have the need for petabytes of storage? This is enough to store the collective written works of mankind and the entire contents of the Internet. Or consider that an uncompressed two-hour digitized movie at 35mm resolution takes about 2 TB. You can put 75,000 or so such movies on the theoretical 144 PB hard disk, and you probably wouldn't have enough free hours in your life to watch them all. Unless some application comes along(3D holomovies??) that actually needs petabytes of storage, I'm just at a loss as to what we would actually fill up such a drive with. While I can see filling a few tens of terabytes with movies and the collective works of mankind, I don't see that I would ever personally need more than that.

 

[The Grammar Police]

Alas, the ability of humanity to devise clever new technologies and plunder irreplacable natural resources is exceeded only by the ability of humanity to think of colossally stupid and inefficient ways to waste them.

 

[Fushigi]

Another more relevant question is why would a home user ever have the need for petabytes of storage? This is enough to store the collective written works of mankind and the entire contents of the Internet. Or consider that an uncompressed two-hour digitized movie at 35mm resolution takes about 2 TB. You can put 75,000 or so such movies on the theoretical 144 PB hard disk, and you probably wouldn't have enough free hours in your life to watch them all. Unless some application comes along(3D holomovies??) that actually needs petabytes of storage, I'm just at a loss as to what we would actually fill up such a drive with. While I can see filling a few tens of terabytes with movies and the collective works of mankind, I don't see that I would ever personally need more than that.

On the surface I wholeheartedly agree. But I've got to point out that famous quote:

"'Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!' - Bill Gates, 1981

(Which has been extended...
"'Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!' - Bill Gates, 1981
'Windows 95 needs at least 8 MB RAM.' - Bill Gates, 1996
Logical conclusion: 'Nobody will ever need Windows 95.' "
-- Anon.)

- Fushigi

 

[Prof.Wizard]

10 years. With current technology maybe a little bit more but I expect an exponential growth, as always in the computer industry.

 

[.Nut]

It depends on who "we" is.

Ask data processing folk involved in performing certain scientific work, and they may very well tell you that they would like something more NOW -- if the hardware was there (arrays. etc).


> ...Another question-do you think drives this large will be mechanical, NVRAM, or perhaps something entirely new, assuming that we ever build them?...

Fluorescent Disc, or especially Optical Tape, technologies (a.k.a. -- holographic) will almost assuredly push into the PB region within 5 years of commercial introduction. (PS: This stuff has been working in the labs for a while, with the occasional demo unit doing certain expos).

 

[blakerwry]

I think storage technologies like CD's, DVD's... basically reliable, portable, Random Access mechanical storage will be around for awhile.... I can only guess that it will be for the next 5 years... maybe as long as 10.

I think that we will move more towards things like Memory cards (such as compact flash and smart media) because they are smaller and will probably provide faster data access in the immediate future. Maybe if one of these formats shows itself as a clear winner (does it's function better than it's competition) then we will be able to move forward alot faster.

Even if we do move to memory cards, we may still use things like CD's and DVD's for archival purposes because of their (from what I can currently see) greater capacity, longer life and lower cost.



As far as main storage in PC's is concerned, I hope we will get away from mechanical storage and move to something without the associated limitations of mechanical objects, such as it's reletively slow access and transfer speeds as well as reliability, heat, and power consumption concerns.

 

[P5-133XL]

Sorry folks, I just don't see the need for this amount of data in my lifetime: Especially on a single drive. To fill this drive would take 790 years of continous data transfer at T3 speeds (5.79MB/s).


With no need, there won't be a market and it will never happen.

 

[Mercutio]

I have 2.1TB in my apartment right now (pretty easy in 80GB chunks), and I need more. I think I can use as much as I'm given.

 

[Cliptin]

Sorry folks, I just don't see the need for this amount of data in my lifetime: Especially on a single drive. To fill this drive would take 790 years of continous data transfer at T3 speeds (5.79MB/s).


With no need, there won't be a market and it will never happen.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/diversions/video/downloads/engineroom_download.wmv

Nvidia has a need to more dense storage.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

To fill this drive would take 790 years of continous data transfer at T3 speeds (5.79MB/s).

With no need, there won't be a market and it will never happen.

Yeah, but who said than in 10-years time there won't be a faster alternative to T3?

The need to advance in technology is an inherent need of our civilization in the search for answers to our most complex computational problems. And you don't have to be a quantum informatics pioneer to know that... Possible uses.

 

[P5-133XL]

I don't disagree that there is a need for more storage. I merely have an issue concerning the limit to what can be used by most people. 144 Petabyte excedes what people can deal with in normal circumstances and that will continue because while technology changes, people don't. Even with video, there is a limit to the number of colors people can distingish and the size of the picture that people can view and thereby there will be a limit to the size that video will consume. We long ago exceded the storage need for text except for a few of the very largest databases. I have no doubt that the same will occur with video.

Even discounting the need for the data. The second problem I see with data volumes of this magnitude is simply filling the drive. I just don't see the vast majority of people creating enough data on their own to fill the drive. That means it has to come from outside their computer. That would requrie a revolution in data transfer capability that I don't see coming either. Is everyone goint to be connected to fibre with outregous transfer rates? Perhaps there will be a replacement for DVD's that people will copy to their HD is very large quantities. As I pointed out it would take 790+ years to fill up the drive at T3 speeds. At current HD->HD transfer speeds it would still take 79 years just to fill the drive.

There will always be a need by a few for more that this limit, but that can be delt with by more drives rather than selling a single drive. The need to exceed the 144 Petabytes will be limited to a few and that market will not be big enough to justify breaking the single drive size limit. Thus I predict it will not hapen in my lifetime

 

[Prof.Wizard]

"The more you have, the more you want..."

This is the golden rule of our spoiled society. We always crave for more quality and quantity. As we speak, I personally already think that the DVD will be obsolete much sooner than we think, albeit not all people have it in their homes as a CD-ROM/CD-Player. The capacity of 4.7GB is not so much.

Remember the ratio CD-ROM/HDD when the first CDs for computer came out? It was a present from God! Now? With 250GB HDDs I doubt the DVD will ever have the momentum and possibilities the early CDs had.

Moreover, we could still expand in our storage needs. With infinite capacity we can have infinite movies UN-COM-PRES-SED! This would be incredible for cinephiles. And that was only a home use... Imagine real computations like enviromental simulations or molecule-by-molecule 3D anatomy databases of maps for all the species on this planet... Sky is the limit!

I'm pretty convinced we'll all be alive by the time we reach this new wall.

 

[NRG = mc²]

I don't see anyone having enough data to put on such a drive.

I mean, where would you get all this data from? an entire database of all the people on earth, their photos, their family home videos, photos of every object avaialbe, all videos, movies, photos ever taken...

and probably still have loads of space left for all the data on the internet, all the porn on the internet ( :roll: ), and anything else.

 

[Cliptin]

It is said that if a one hundred US dollar bill were to fall to the ground in Japan, the ground under the bill would be worth more than the bill itself.

 

[blakerwry]

Are you suggesting we build another continent out of our old obsolete hdd's after we reach the LBA 48 limit?

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Are you suggesting we build another continent out of our old obsolete hdd's after we reach the LBA 48 limit?

:eekers:

 

[Cliptin]

Are you suggesting we build another continent out of our old obsolete hdd's after we reach the LBA 48 limit?

Parts of lower Manhattan, NYC are built on land fill. The Tokyo airport is also built on landfill. If hard drives are good enough to prop a table leg of insufficient length then why not.

 

[Pradeep]

"The more you have, the more you want..."

This is the golden rule of our spoiled society. We always crave for more quality and quantity. As we speak, I personally already think that the DVD will be obsolete much sooner than we think, albeit not all people have it in their homes as a CD-ROM/CD-Player. The capacity of 4.7GB is not so much.

Remember the ratio CD-ROM/HDD when the first CDs for computer came out? It was a present from God! Now? With 250GB HDDs I doubt the DVD will ever have the momentum and possibilities the early CDs had.

Moreover, we could still expand in our storage needs. With infinite capacity we can have infinite movies UN-COM-PRES-SED! This would be incredible for cinephiles. And that was only a home use... Imagine real computations like enviromental simulations or molecule-by-molecule 3D anatomy databases of maps for all the species on this planet... Sky is the limit!

I'm pretty convinced we'll all be alive by the time we reach this new wall.

Uncompressed video would be very nice Prof, but the next generation of high def DVD's will undoubtedly have very secure "copy protection". The closest you can get to D1 right now is with D-VHS and D-Theatre tapes, which hold close to 50GB and play over a secure Firewire connection. I don't see protection like that being broken anytime soon. Of course one of the advantages of uncompressed, for the studios at least, is that it is near impossible to send 50GB of video data around the Net cheaply. If CSS wasn't so easy to crack, the current demand for HDD capacity would prob be much reduced. Tho the uptake of AIW products and MiniDV also demands major capacity.

 

[blakerwry]

The need to exceed the 144 Petabytes will be limited to a few and that market will not be big enough to justify breaking the single drive size limit. Thus I predict it will not hapen in my lifetime

that reminds me of famous quote... i think it was said by the inventor of the modern computer... it goes something like "because of the expense and complexity of a computer, I cannot see there being any practical application/market for more than a few hundred of these computers"


How short sided we humans are... if you said 5 years ago "will we reach the gHz limit?"... most people would probably say no... and question why we would need such a fast computer... or say "maybe", but that the applications would be limited.

If you said 10 years ago "will we ever have full screen(at that time it was probably 640x480), full motion(30fps), truecolor (24bit or higher) video on a personal computer?"... alot of people would have said no.

But as you all know, we have this... at 720x480 DVD's provide atleast 24bit color at NTSC(29.97fps), FILM(24fps), or for you europeans PAL (25fps). Not only do we have this full motion, fulscreen video on our PC's, but it is also easily portable in much the way Video cassette tapes were 10 years ago.

 

[NRG = mc²]

Yes but there simply isn't enough data in the world to fill up such a drive.

I mean, what exactly do you inted to store? What is there in the world that can take up so much space?

 

[blakerwry]

Games are getting larger many games now require 3 CD's and could probably easily fill a DVD in the next few years to come.

still, that is not all that large... say 5 games at 5GB each and you don't even begin to fill the larger HDD's of today.


hmm... operating systesm are getting larger, but I dont forsee them getting more than 8GB for awhile.....


These are the larger users of our storage space at the moment.. however they really don't seem to be any threat to filling up a terrabyte HDD anytime soon....


So that rules out standard applications on a PC..... well, some say video or audio.... these applications are notorious for disk space usage....

Uncompressed 32bit color HDTV resolution vidoe ~7,864,320 bytes per frame... 471,859,200 bytes per second at 60fps... (out of the 6 HDTV modes 5 are progressive and I've heard that HDTV's will run at 60fps)

For a 2 hour movie that is 3,317,760 MB for the video track alone.... uncompressed 6 channel 48kHz 24bit audio is 867,600 bytes a second, 6100.3125 MB for the same 2 hour movie

That means that one finalized, fully completed uncompressed 2 hour movie is ~3 1/2 terabytes.

Still that doesn't even come close to the 144 petabyte limit.

I wouldn't imagine anybody editing more than a couple movies at a time on PC hardware... if you took 3 takes of each scene and were doing 2 movies at once, you would still only end up with 21 terabytes.

so, i agree for PC hardware within the forseeable future LBA 48 running out of space is a non-issue.


But what about servers? Movies in theatres are going digital, those movies have to be stored somewhere... I believe that a company(not sure if this is the theatre, the movie producers, or an intermediary) hosts the movies and the theatres simply download and play the movies on the projector without having to mess with film or even switching DTS discs at all.

What if this company were hosting all the movies made in the last year using HDTV spec. I cant seem to find a reliable spec as to the number of major pictures hollywood produces, but I would have to estimate 2 movies each week... for 56 weeks that is 112 movies.... If each of them where perhaps the 3.5 terabytes(which is unlikely) you're getting almost 400 terabytes of data.... so, 1 years worth of movies you can't even make LBA 48 break a sweat.

My father recently decided to start using thin client PC's at work... these are basically PC's without HDD's and not so much tablets. All data will be stored in a raid 5 or 10 array in a SAN. If you were to give each PC 80GB (which could be foreseeable in the next 3-5 years) for 800 pc's you still only come up 64 terabytes of data.... even at RAID 10 ineficiency you would need 128 terabytes of HDD space.



So, I would have to stick with my original decision... running out of space on LBA 48 is a non-issue... I think we will be onto bigger and better things (that may not use LBA as we know it) before we run out of theoretical disk space with LBA 48.

 

[iGary]

...The need to exceed the 144 Petabytes will be limited to a few and that market will not be big enough to justify breaking the single drive size limit. Thus I predict it will not hapen in my lifetime

Unless Professor Wizard invents the world's first 666 Kg IDE hard drive, with a stack of 3 meter platters!

 

[Fushigi]

Parts of lower Manhattan, NYC are built on land fill. The Tokyo airport is also built on landfill. If hard drives are good enough to prop a table leg of insufficient length then why not.

You can add to that portions of the lakefront in downtown Chicago.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Unless Professor Wizard invents the world's first 666 Kg IDE hard drive, with a stack of 3 meter platters!

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.asp?RelatedID=3129
Technology advances... always! 8)

Always be on wait-mode for unexpected advances.

 

[jtr1962]

While there's a lot of research, it seems that most of the new technologies scheduled to be implemented in the not too distant future are either read only or write once. While these are good for archiving, they will hardly replace hard drives.

Among technologies that are rewriteable it doesn't seem like any are ready for commercialization, at least not any that will exceed the size of current hard drives by a large factor. Flash memory is too slow, and currently too small, to even be a candidate. I've been hearing about variations of the 10 TB on a credit card for over 10 years now, but have yet to see anything commercially available any time soon. We still haven't even had a viable floppy replacement, meaning something that is implemented at the BIOS level by motherboard manufacturers and of a reasonable enough capacity(a few GB) and a low enough cost per disk(<$1) that it would be a viable means of backing up. Although MO comes close, for some reason it was never adopted that widely, at least in the United States. CD-RW is definitely not a floppy replacement since the discs are too large(and unprotected), and you can't boot from a UDF formatted CD. They're also starting to show their age capacity-wise. Zip and LS-120 are both laughable in that role, although at least the new LS-240 lets you format your old 1.44 MB floppies to 32 MB so that they're semi-useful.

I'm surprised nobody here mentioned that one of the growing problems with hard drives getting into the 3-figure GB range is that there is no viable means of backing them up. Tape is too expensive(and slow unless you go for 4 figure solutions), and the capacity of CD-RW(or even DVD-RW) is just too small, especially for a monster like Maxtor's new 250 GB drive. Backing up this behemoth on floppies would require 171,500 of them and would take 80 days straight(35 seconds minimum write time per disk plus 5 seconds to change disks)! Current CD-RW would be equally outclassed by hard drives in the hundred or so TB range, not to mention anything approaching 144 PB.