Hard drives will go the way of floppies

[DoctorDoom]

A breakthrough invention and patent in nanotechnology will keep data storage technology in touch with its ever-increasing requirements of mass data storage well into this millennium.

Michael E. Thomas, President of Colossal Storage Corporation, is the inventor of rewritable ferroelectric molecular optical storage nanotechnology which could become a pioneering development in the technology of mass data storage.

[snip]

The discovery means that one 10 terabyte to 100 terabyte 3.5 inch FerroElectric disk would be the equivalent of a 10,000 to 100,000 Gigabyte disk drive. "That's greater 1,000 times any state of the art hard disk technology with 100 Gigabytes on one disk," Thomas claims. Although it is still too early to worry about prices, the expected cost of the Atomic Holographic DVR disc drive will be from $570 to $750 with the replacement discs estimated at $45.
Nanotechnology promises massive data storage on a single disk (http://www.gizmo.com.au/public/News/news.asp?articleid=3134)

A typical one-sided DVD can hold up to 4.7 gigabytes. One of these disks could hold 21,276 DVDs. That's a mighty shitload of data.

[nosferatuscoffin]

Nods. I read about this a little while ago, I think in Dvorak's column. Been waiting for the first terabyte drives and discs to finally come to market.

Seeing that we have had Moore's Law on steriods that last 4 years when it comes to data storage, it will be needed.

[rustynail]

How long would it take to defrag a 100 terabyte disk?

[DoctorDoom]

Well, using the native Windows XP defragger, a few years. :D

Actually, since it is aimed at the mass storage market, fragmenting is not a factor. That only happens with constant writing, deleting, and rewriting of data. The title of the thread was mostly in jest, since the hard-drive is not going to go away until a suitable replacement, such as a huge block of NVRAM, appears.

[UnkHiram]

When I got out of the Air Force in 1986 I took a job repairing and maintaining the onsite computers for a Rent to Own store. At the time the largest hard drive we had at any location was a 20 MEGA bite hard drive at the home office. I can remember saying that we would never fill it up. IT seems we are making quantom leaps into the "Star Trek" universe every time we turn around.

[DoctorDoom]

20 megs? Hell, I have quite a few MP3 files that big.

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
-- Bill Gates, 1981

[nosferatuscoffin]

My old Leading Edge XT that I got in the 80's is still sitting in my closet and it had a 20MB hard drive. Though it and the floppy drive that came with it are shot. The Hercules mono-green monitor that came with it also died a long time ago. I suppose the RAM in it is still good. :D Hell, even the power supply still works, even though that thing was used for YEARS, (about 9).

Which is more than I can say for the PS that came with this PC I got last Xmas. It shorted out and nearly took out my motherboard back in June. Goes to show you that they do not make them like they used to.

Oh yes, it originally came with 512k of RAM. That was later updated to Gates' recommendation of 640k. Wow. That really helped when I hit the tubro switch to run it at 7.14Mhz. :moo:

[Wyatt_Junker]

I keep waiting for tech to plateau and it solemnly refuses to do so each time. Perhaps is just my memory from-days-of-Pong that keeps me in constant amazement, playing Activision's Pitfall in the early 80's and thinking life was good. Now it appears entire Libraries of Congress can be turned into data as infinitesimal as dustmotes.

Sometimes I hanker for that Encyclopedia Britannica salesman at my door. He wore a derby and clutched a briefcase. He was always nervous, and, at his feet was a cardboard box of nice leatherbound tomes embossed with gold insignia and the pages also trimmed in gold paint. It was a Gutenburg dream come true back then. And you could put it on lay-away and fill your bookshelves to appear learn-ed. We all knew it was a scam, even back then, just a way to make your girlfriends think you were well-read and cultured as you attempted to pull down her panties. You never cracked open those showpieces.

I miss those Pre-PC days, when Bill Gates was firmly stationed organically at his momma's rack & Steve Jobs was laughing hysterically at Tom & Jerry reruns. Its not that I'm a Luddite, I just have an occasional nostalgic lust for hearing K.I.S.S. albums in my room and thinking about how Farrah Fawcett must have reacted when Lee Majors asked her for another beer from the kitchen.

There was a time when a kid used to get real excited about bringing home his very first $140 Atari box back home from the mall. Amazed, wall-eyed even, as he took out the joy stick and plugged it in and then used the infamous TV toggle jack to go back-n-forth between Hill Street Blues episodes and another round of Asteroids.

Those days are gone. The kids today wouldn't understand. Those graphics of old would be like heiroglyph to them. Heck, I have the Atari joystick today with the dozen or so built-in games and my son looks at me wondering what would motivate me in playing another round of Yar's Revenge, and sitting back, I can kind of agree with him. Its laaaaame.

[DoctorDoom]

I still have a working Magnavox Odyssey 2 in the closet, with graphics not far up from Pong.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v349/DocDoom777/base-scr.gif

I pull it out once in a while for flashbacks. There also a Timex-Sinclair 1000 in there (with a membrane keyboard), two C-64s, two C-128s, and Radio Shack PC-1 and PC-2 Pocket Computers. In the drawer is a Sears Electronic Slide Rule and an original Bowmar Brain 4-banger ($240 new). This place is a mini-museum of antiques. :D

[Rink]

heh i Still have my old TRS-80 microcomputer, all 16k worth of memory in it LMAO

[BEST45CAL]

heh i Still have my old TRS-80 microcomputer, all 16k worth of memory in it LMAO
I'm sure we've still got an old Commodore 64 in storage somewhere. LOL:claps: