This could just be a rumor, but worth mentioning in case it's not.
"Hitachi is now readying plans to unveil the 4TB Mars drive before the year is out."
"Hitachi is now readying plans to unveil the 4TB Mars drive before the year is out."
Rumor - 4TB hard drive from Hitachi
- Thread starter Handruin
- Start date
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
Anyone think it's possible that they'll release those beasts at a sub-$250 price point?
BingBangBop
Storage is cool
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2009
- Messages
- 667
Not a chance, try $400-$500. They will probably drop to below $250 eventually but not at an initial price. They need to collect all the $$$ they can from all the non-price sensitive customers first.
DrunkenBastard
Storage is cool
Five platters
New unproven potential
For the sake of Mars not turning into a Deathstar, I think I'll wait for others to take the brave first steps into the 4TB generation.
New unproven potential
For the sake of Mars not turning into a Deathstar, I think I'll wait for others to take the brave first steps into the 4TB generation.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
What use is four measly terabytes?
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
My needs would presently be best met with an LTO changer of some sort. Sob.
CougTek
Hairy Aussie
Hibachi has often use four and five platters drives and none have had reliability issues since the 75GXP days. The 75GB era is long gone. I wouldn't worry.
The problem with many-platters Hibachi drives has always been heat. But as long as there's a minimal air flow around the drive, I haven't heard or read about a failure-prone model from them in a while.
Chewy509
Wotty wot wot.
4TB sort of makes the 36GB drives I am using in my main desktop seem kinder small... (My total storage capacity is just over 1.3TB spread across 4 systems in the household - 1 desktop, 3 laptops and external HDDs).
Hitachi was fine with ... 400GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB 5-platter drives for highest capacity in the class. It is their way.
ddrueding
Fixture
Getting perpendicular again.
Stereodude
Not really a
Hey check me out! I'm dancing! I'm dancing!
Is that for real? "Taking it back" implies that the announcement was a joke.:idea:
Somehow the improvement from crummy 6GB microdrives to 10x capacity never quite reached fruition. :monky:
Stereodude
Not really a
Flash memory got real cheap. That's what happened.
However, iPod's got up to 160GB though. If they still made an iPod with dual platter drives we'd have a 320GB model. Maybe we'll get one last larger model before they phase out their iPod Classic HD based model.
However, iPod's got up to 160GB though. If they still made an iPod with dual platter drives we'd have a 320GB model. Maybe we'll get one last larger model before they phase out their iPod Classic HD based model.
Even back then nobody was taking microdrives seriously. The MD was a dead duck by 2004.
Stereodude
Not really a
You're in a hurry to get 4TB drives given the growing pains of 3TB drives?
Stereodude
Not really a
Got me, why was 3TB any different from 2TB?
BingBangBop
Storage is cool
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2009
- Messages
- 667
Because 3TB exceeds the capacity of LBA (logical block addressing) which maxes out at 2.1TB so the entire drive is not accessible. Also, the MBR (Master Boot Record) is also limited to 2.1TB preventing booting.
Currently, unless you have a UEFI BIOS and a 64 bit OS that supports such 2.1+ TB drives are unbootable. Currently UEFI bios computers are rare so it is very unlikely that anyones computer will be able to boot from one of these. The drives can be used as data drives in Linux, Vista, and Win7 if they convert the drive to using GPT/GUID. XP is totally out of luck here.
Eventually, these problems will go away (for Vista onward) but that is the current state of affairs.
Stereodude
Not really a
Uh... 3TB does not exceed the capacity of LBA. 48bit LBA was adopted in 2003 and supports up to 128PiB.
So what? GPT has been around for a while as have drive larger than 2TB (via RAID arrays).
XP x64 supports GPT just fine, though it can't boot from a GPT drive assuming the system had EFI and all the other magic conditions.
So, I stand by my comment that 3TB is not significantly different from 2TB. Anyone playing with RAID cards knows about the 2TB limitation of MBR. Further, thanks to RAID cards, OS makers have been able to play with drives larger than 2TB for quite some time, so the idea that 3TB drives suddenly caught everyone with their pants down is laughable.
ddrueding
Fixture
Except that it has. Just because they don't have a good excuse seems irrelevant. Home server can't handle drives larger than 2TB, many RAID cards can't handle them either. But I suspect that you knew this, so the position you took in your last post seems curious.
Stereodude
Not really a
I took the position that if the jump from 2TB to 3TB has caught them with their pants down (for no good reason) we shouldn't expect the jump from 3TB to 4TB to be any different.
This isn't the old 128GB limit (LBA-28bit) where there was something that had to be overcome with a standards revision.
ddrueding
Fixture
But there is a difference between 2TB and 3TB and there isn't one between 3TB and 4TB.
Were you to produce a matrix of technologies which support each capacity, the list would have significant differences between 2TB and 3TB, and no differences between 3TB and 4TB+. IIRC, there isn't another change required until 100TB+
Were you to produce a matrix of technologies which support each capacity, the list would have significant differences between 2TB and 3TB, and no differences between 3TB and 4TB+. IIRC, there isn't another change required until 100TB+
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
It's been 11 years since we've had a serious technical issue related to hard disk capacity. It's been a nice run.
~11 years ago there was the 36GB drive problem. The 160GB drive problem was 9 years ago. IIRC, both initially involved Maxtor drives (DiamondMax 36 and DiamondMax D540X, respectively). The retail D540X shipped with a controller which was mandatory at first.
sechs
Storage? I am Storage!
Frankly, I'm curious as to who is trying to boot from these ginormous drives.
ddrueding
Fixture
Being able to run with a single drive (or a RAID-1 of them) would be nice.
timwhit
Hairy Aussie
I boot from a 1TB drive on my HTPC. If I was building a new one today, it might be useful to use a larger drive.
Maybe someone with the dedicated prono/illegal video server. I don't think that requires much in the way of HD performance.
Mercutio
Fatwah on Western Digital
My boot drives are almost always plain old 250GB SATA drives or 80GB SSDs, LM. The assumption I make when I set up a system is that there will be at least five hard disks in it. The other four will be as ginormous as I can afford and they will be used in some kind of array.