5 TB Drives ... Will WD be first?

[John Kotches]

Looks like some hints to a 5TB drive were leaked out in a roadmap by Western Digital. It's about a year out according to the roadmap. My guess is that it'll be discussed at CES right after the first of the year.

Here's the source article from the UK tech site The Register.

So now that the leak has been made, how long before Seagate and Toshiba "preannounce" their 5TB monsters?

 

[Ramy]

I just hope when they come out they aren't buggy to where the whole drive is noticed in the OS.

 

[John Kotches]

I just hope when they come out they aren't buggy to where the whole drive is noticed in the OS.

It's not the drive that's the issue, it's that the OS, or more typically the BIOS, that cannot handle the size of the drive.

 

[JerseyMatt]

... which is why retail boxed drives over 2.5TB come with a HBA card.

 

[DodgerKing]

What in the heck would you do with 5TB? I have 500GB and only use about 20% of it.

 

[StevenD]

What in the heck would you do with 5TB? I have 500GB and only use about 20% of it.

You're joking, right? I have almost 50TB of storage at home.

 

[Ramy]

You're joking, right? I have almost 50TB of storage at home.

That is a lot of porn.

 

[StevenD]

That is a lot of porn.

I'd never leave the house if it was all porn!

I have NAS boxes hosting movies, music, acronis images, photos. Then I have a BackupExec server with 15TB of space for my desktop and server backups. It adds up quickly. I'm adding about 2TB/month.

 

[LER]

my big server is 6 x 2TB in a RAIDZ1 ZFS pool. It's for misc. stuff......

 

[John Kotches]

What in the heck would you do with 5TB? I have 500GB and only use about 20% of it.

Lots of movies, music and backing up systems so that you aren't saying <insert expletive here> when a drive fails on a machine.

I have a much more modest 25TB for all of that.

 

[jevans64]

Western Digital is going to be first. They already have 4TB RAID Edition 3.5" 7200 RPM drives out now. Wish I had the grand it costs for a pair of them to replace my 1TB RE3 drives in my Shuttle SFF. It will be simple work for them to add a platter and slow the spindle speed to 4200-5400 RPM for a Green drive. Sleazegate only has a 3TB drive out now and Hitachi has a non-enterprise 4TB drive. I have a Thermaltake BlacX and a stack of 1.5TB WD Black drives I use for data backup between multiple machines. Looking at a NAS solution but want to go Gigabit network first. 4K video is probably only going to be distributed via network, so those BIG drives will be needed in the near future.

 

[John Kotches]

jevans:

Or more likely, increase the areal density and use the same number of platters. A 4-platter 1.25TB/per platter would be the likely option.

 

[sampatterson]

I haven't even migrated to the 4TB drives yet in my arrays. I have 54TB in 2 arrays (18TB RAID5 6 bay and 36TB RAID6 12 bay) I like to keep my video content as uncompressed as possible. So with 5TB drives I could get a total of 90TB in my arrays. Cool - a migration path!

 

[Ramy]

I have 3 3TB drives. One for video that I don't care to lose. One for video and mp3 files and one to back all that up on.

 

[DodgerKing]

You're joking, right? I have almost 50TB of storage at home.

Nope. Never once had more than that on any HDD. All my PowerPoint, research papers, class activities, music (1,000+ songs), photos (thousands), programs, files, ect have never taken up more than about 20% of my HDDs

 

[Anole]

I use two 2tb drives at home, to store my (compressed) video library.
Most content is TV series, and a smattering of movies.
Currently, I have a spare unused 2tb drive on the shelf.
If I could hold off for 5tb drives, that would be inviting.
Maybe I'll just manage what I've got and sit tight.
3tb just makes no sense.

As to the technical problems of running big (>2tb) drives on Windows, here is the story:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/235088/everything_you_need_to_know_about_3TB_hard_drives.html

Still not sure how to make off line backups.
With bluray burners & 25gb blanks already at $90 & $1, I may give in.

 

[Frank Jr.]

While I realize nothing is permanent and find a 5tb consumer hard drive amazing, I personally would have no use for one. I still transfer files to longer lasting media, rather than relying on a chip or a spinning platter coated with iron oxide. I still enjoy reading books and looking at photographs the old fashion way.

I have to agree with DK on this one.

 

[John Kotches]

While I realize nothing is permanent and find a 5tb consumer hard drive amazing, I personally would have no use for one. I still transfer files to longer lasting media, rather than relying on a chip or a spinning platter coated with iron oxide. I still enjoy reading books and looking at photographs the old fashion way.

I have to agree with DK on this one.

When's the last time you checked a several year old CD or DVD used for integrity?

I would say that most people using arrays of drives are IT professionals -- so it's pretty easy to setup and maintain.




Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk HD

 

[JerseyMatt]

Not only that but do you print photos yourself or do you have them done at the photo lab? If you do them yourself, even with the best paper and inks, they start fading within a few years. And god help you if they get wet.

I'd trust my RAID-5 arrays over burned optical media every day of the week and three times on Sunday.

 

[Frank Jr.]

Matt, John read the first 6 words in my previous post.