News - WD demonstrates its high density HAMR HDD technology

[HEXUS]

Firm’s heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) tech is demoed at China trade show.

Read more.

[scaryjim]

Analysts predict 25 trillion gigabytes of new data will be generated by 20201 and that average household storage needs in the U.S. will require as much as 3.3 TB by 20162

Well, yes, I imagine we'll need quite a bit more storage in 18,000 years' time

Interesting to see storage coompanies planning on pushing mechnical drive technology forward still - obviously a strong feeling that solid state storage simply won't provide the necessary capacities for a significant number of years yet...

[virtuo]

HAMR sounded promising when they first started talking about it. Extra capacity can't come soon enough, I could probably use up 25 trillion gigabytes on my own.. today.

[AETAaAS]

That is a bl**dy lot of porn, virtuo.

If they can really get density up five fold, that would be an achievement. 5TB laptop drives would do me for a good while, at least until 4k goes mainstream.

@scaryjim, its not about the need for storage in the years to come. It's the need to store all your recorded phone calls, web surfing habits and phone GPS data in some facility in Utah. And yes they have the embarrassing video of that thing you did 2 weeks ago.

[scaryjim]

@scaryjim, its not about the need for storage in the years to come. It's the need to store all your recorded phone calls, web surfing habits and phone GPS data in some facility in Utah. And yes they have the embarrassing video of that thing you did 2 weeks ago.

Normally I'd say a reasonable dose of paranoia is healthy, but I think that's just a little too tin-foin-hat-worthy to be healthy

I'm not sure how people use so much digital storage, mind: I've just decided that my 120GB SSD probably isn't going to be big enough for my new laptop, but I can't see me using anywhere near the 1TB I've already got in there. In fact, I don't think there's a PC in my house with more than 1TB of storage, and I don't think any of them are even close to running out of space. How private individuals manage to consume terrabye upon terrabye of storage is a mystery to me...

[AETAaAS]

No man, they got all your data and sh*t. The other day I pulled a microchip from my shoe. No idea how it got there, I don't even own shoes! But they are watching. Always watching. Always listening. One time, I ate a burger and the next day, when browsing the web I felt a little hungry then I saw an ad on the website for Burger King. I hadn't even said anything about that burger to anyone! They are out there... >.>

jk. I'm not that insane, but it is true to say that a lot of internet traffic is snooped on. And Utah was a reference to the big Utah Data Center (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center). Some people say it's capacity is in the order of exa or zetabytes. Which can only mean one thing. They are recording each and every persons movements in full 1080p! Kidding again but I would not be surprised if your Skype/email/chat has been hoovered up in their massive intelligence gathering apparatus. I'm not too bothered unless they are trying to steal my technique for rocket launchers in Battlefield 4. Bastards.

[DanceswithUnix]

How private individuals manage to consume terrabye upon terrabye of storage is a mystery to me...

They generally don't. Machines, planes, cctv cameras, stuff like that generates huge amounts of data and it is increasing.

[watercooled]

There are practical limits to how much storage could fit into a datacentre, regardless of who built it, I suspect a lot of those figures are just pulled out of the air by some sensationalistic journalists.

The annual production of all the MFRs on the planet is on the order of exabytes per year. Even if that one data centre could somehow absorb something like half the world's production capacity, overcame the immense power, cooling, connectivity, redundency problems, and had a tardis room to store them all, we're still talking on the order of exascale storage.

The zettabyte, let alone yottabyte, reports strike me as utterly preposterous.

Just as a demonstration, assuming it was possible to produce and buy storage at current prices on the order of £30 per TB, we're looking at something like £32 trillion for *just* the hard drives for *one* zettabyte. In other words, about twice the entire USA GDP.

Edit, sorry it's more like three-four times the USA GDP, I forgot to do the conversion to Sterling.

[DanceswithUnix]

There are practical limits to how much storage could fit into a datacentre, regardless of who built it, I suspect a lot of those figures are just pulled out of the air by some sensationalistic journalists.

The annual production of all the MFRs on the planet is on the order of exabytes per year. Even if that one data centre could somehow absorb something like half the world's production capacity, overcame the immense power, cooling, connectivity, redundency problems, and had a tardis room to store them all, we're still talking on the order of exascale storage.

The zettabyte, let alone yottabyte, reports strike me as utterly preposterous.

Just as a demonstration, assuming it was possible to produce and buy storage at current prices on the order of £30 per TB, we're looking at something like £32 trillion for *just* the hard drives for *one* zettabyte. In other words, about twice the entire USA GDP.

Not hard to come up with big numbers for demand.

There are an awful lot of smartphones out there, if just a million people take a single 1MB picture with their camera, that is a terabyte.

That is nothing compared to automated data generation though...

A plane generates an immense amount of data per flight, and increasing. How many planes are there in the air at any moment?

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/...rgin-atlantic/

CERN generates a staggering 1PT of data every second. So much, they have to throw most of it away.

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/20812...ating-petabyte

So the demand is measurable and probably where the analysts are coming from, you are right that deployment is quite a challenge and the CERN model of heavy filtering has to become commonplace.

Inline dedupe can be very effective for lots of people where there is a tendency for data to repeated.

[watercooled]

It just seems they're completely ignoring the need to do a sanity check on what they're saying TBH. The entire world being able to produce a certain amount of traffic is one thing, being able to collect and store it in one remote datacentre is another story entirely.

Of course, it's theoretically possible to filter a lot of stuff at source e.g. some algorithms to 'learn' the locations of things like game/video downloads/streams and ignore them. However, the practicality of a DPI system able to process stuff like that without missing potentially hidden data in such streams is another issue again.

[Lucio]

Of course, there's always plan B where developers write applications to make the most efficient use of resources and thus reduce this need for oversized storage

[DanceswithUnix]

It just seems they're completely ignoring the need to do a sanity check on what they're saying TBH. The entire world being able to produce a certain amount of traffic is one thing, being able to collect and store it in one remote datacentre is another story entirely.

Of course, it's theoretically possible to filter a lot of stuff at source e.g. some algorithms to 'learn' the locations of things like game/video downloads/streams and ignore them. However, the practicality of a DPI system able to process stuff like that without missing potentially hidden data in such streams is another issue again.

Well I don't think they were talking about one data center there, add up all the data centers in the world and see what you get.

There is the other thing of course, have you seen the size of the tape to back that lot up?

Of course, there's always plan B where developers write applications to make the most efficient use of resources and thus reduce this need for oversized storage

Perhaps smaller planes would generate less data in flight (joke warning for the hard of humour).

I think part of the fun here is in data mining, people often don't know what they need to store until they have had a chance to analyze it?

[watercooled]

Well I don't think they were talking about one data center there, add up all the data centers in the world and see what you get.

I was only referring to that new NSA datacentre.

Just realised I didn't actually say that in my post

[DanceswithUnix]

I was only referring to that new NSA datacentre.

Just realised I didn't actually say that in my post

Ah, but they probably store using alien tech

From the description of what they have been up to, the NSA could well explain both the US budget deficit and Seagate's profits in the last few years

[thedearleader]

My very first hard drive, a 20Mbyte, cost me £250, I recently purchased a 500Gbyte hybrid for £60.
With out looking, I bet my Windows 7 os would not fit on the 20Mbyte drive.
I hate to think what my computer systems would look like if we were still using hard drives in the storage range of 20Mbyte.

[jackadision]