Seagate: Industry Not Ready for 3TB HDD Capacity

[eddieroolz]

Interesting. Though a 2TB drive will suffice for my backup operations, more is never a bad thing. Seems like a lot of problems to address first though.

 

[Ciuy]

lol

 

[schmich]

If you're buying a 3TB HDD for a PC that's running Windows XP you're doing something wrong anyways. You should be looking at buying something else!

If you've got Vista you're doing something wrong, look towards something starting with 7.

If you've got 7 32-bit you're also doing something wrong.

 

[doomtomb]

Learn to proofread. It's embarrassing.

 

[Titanius]

Seagate, a word of advice:

It is us that tells you what we want, not the other way around.

 

[ananke]

My home made AVCHD videos are kind of 16GB (one SDHC card) for one hour on maximum quality. I have many family shot videos, which are essentially priceless. I keep at least THREE copies of them, of which one is optical, just for storage. I also need large and fast HDDs for manipulating the videos - trimming, scenes, etc. editing. Anything cheap above 1TB comes handy . Honestly, I will be extremely happy whenever somebody comes up with holographic media, that can contain many terrabytes in a small cube. And I am sure the video related businesses are in the same shoes with me.

 

[w3k3m]

[citation][nom]TommySch[/nom]If you still run a 32-bit OS, you are obsolete.[/citation]

Obsolete ?? The overwhelming majority of software is still 32-bit only and it seems it will stay that way for quite a while. Why would I sacrifice more hardware resources in order to run software through emulation layer ? Not many people in reality need more then 4GB of addressable RAM. Even native 64-bit software brings substantial benefits only with very specific applications (nothing to compare with 16->32bit transition at the time). Just because marketing people want you to continually buy new products it doesn't mean it is better for you.

 

[Littlun]

Eh, I'd be a little weary of storing such massive amounts on a single HDD anyway.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

Um yeah...Tom's Hardware needs an editor.

 

[Guest]

Ok I will be the first to look dumb in the future. Who is ever going to need a HD over 3TB?

 

[micky_lund]

[citation][nom]TommySch[/nom]Good thing, this will push the remaining 32-bit OS through the window once and for all!If you still run a 32-bit OS, you are obsolete.[/citation]
finally 😀

 

[evolve60]

In fact, most PCs just aren't built to cope with hard drive capacities beyond that limit thanks to the original logical block addressing (LBA) standard set by Microsoft and IBM twenty years ago.

the LBA standard was developed in 1980.

If I'm correct it's 2010 and 2010 - 1980 = 30, so this was implemented as a standard 30 years go.

Craig said that in-house tests have shown that only 990 MB of a 3 TB drive is available in XP, with the remaining 2.1 TB literally unseen by the OS.

990 MB would leave the other 2.9 TB of space undetected not 2.1 TB

The fail in this is outrageous, does anyone proofread these articles?

 

[Moshu78]

[citation][nom]w3k3m[/nom]Obsolete ?? The overwhelming majority of software is still 32-bit only and it seems it will stay that way for quite a while. Why would I sacrifice more hardware resources in order to run software through emulation layer ? Not many people in reality need more then 4GB of addressable RAM. Even native 64-bit software brings substantial benefits only with very specific applications (nothing to compare with 16->32bit transition at the time). Just because marketing people want you to continually buy new products it doesn't mean it is better for you.[/citation]

3 GB of RAM, more than 3 GB. You can't access 4 GB on a 32 bit OS and IMHO 3 GB is really as low as I'd go on a Win 7 PC. Add some home-made video processing and gaming and the 3 GB will not sufice. Therefore... go 64 bit OS and 4-6 GB RAM. Can't see the point over 6 GB though unless you're making money with your PC.

 

[anamaniac]

I see no point in the 1.5/3TB drives. I'll wait for 4TB before I buy a new one, thank you.

 

[thomaseron]

[citation][nom]drwho1[/nom]note: my 2 2TB drives only have 1.81TB available, so my question is,how much a 3TB would really have available for use? I'm guessing around 2.6TB of actual space.[/citation]

It only displays about 93% of your total space, but you can use it all. Windows just calculates it differently. Right-click on your harddrive and choose properties. Check the Capacity and you'll see one specified in Gigabytes, and one in bytes. There should be quite a difference.

 

[Gin Fushicho]

3TB's would be nice for 70 bucks. My 1TB of space is almost gone already. it's only been a year.

 

[zybch]

[citation][nom]drwho1[/nom]I just want WD to announce their 5TB hard drives, but we might have to wait a little longer for this.[/citation]

Why, so when the drive crashes and burns well within its warranty you can get all excited about having the drive replaced, but desperately despair when you realize your data has just been destroyed by another flawed WD product.
No thanks.

 

[w3k3m]

[citation][nom]anamaniac[/nom]3 GB of RAM, more than 3 GB. You can't access 4 GB on a 32 bit OS and IMHO 3 GB is really as low as I'd go on a Win 7 PC.[/citation]

I meant 4GB CPU of addressable RAM, I know that only 3GB is available.
I can gurantee you that more then 95% of users never ever need more then 3GB of RAM. Have you ever checked your task manager ? Only video and graphics professinals and such could benefit from so much RAM. Games ? C'mon. I'm a heavy multitasker and even though I have 8GB of RAM, I use half of it more useful as RAM-disk. Second a 32-Bit application under 64-bit OS cannot see more then 3GB as well. I mean with all the drawbacks (drivers, compatibility etc) why bother ?

 

[tommysch]

[citation][nom]w3k3m[/nom]Obsolete ?? The overwhelming majority of software is still 32-bit only and it seems it will stay that way for quite a while. Why would I sacrifice more hardware resources in order to run software through emulation layer ? Not many people in reality need more then 4GB of addressable RAM. Even native 64-bit software brings substantial benefits only with very specific applications (nothing to compare with 16->32bit transition at the time). Just because marketing people want you to continually buy new products it doesn't mean it is better for you.[/citation]

We could still be running DOS, who needs a GUI anyway? Its just marketing. DOS runs perfectly fine and it is the most stable platform!

 

[tommysch]

[citation][nom]w3k3m[/nom]I meant 4GB CPU of addressable RAM, I know that only 3GB is available.I can gurantee you that more then 95% of users never ever need more then 3GB of RAM. Have you ever checked your task manager ? Only video and graphics professinals and such could benefit from so much RAM. Games ? C'mon. I'm a heavy multitasker and even though I have 8GB of RAM, I use half of it more useful as RAM-disk. Second a 32-Bit application under 64-bit OS cannot see more then 3GB as well. I mean with all the drawbacks (drivers, compatibility etc) why bother ?[/citation]

I dont remember any kind of driver problem since Windows Vista x64 beta. Thats 2-3 years ago FYI.

 

[w3k3m]

[citation][nom]TommySch[/nom]We could still be running DOS, who needs a GUI anyway? Its just marketing. DOS runs perfectly fine and it is the most stable platform![/citation]

Well, there are educated users out there who understand exactly what a particular upgrade brings in reality, not just in marketing brochures.
Comparing apples with bananas is not very helpful. As soon I see some real benefit in something (and I do extensive tests beforehand) , I'd jump on it right away (that is bananas that are really bananas and not apples with a banana sticker . Cosmetics just doesn't turn me on.

 

[hemelskonijn]

[citation][nom]evolve60[/nom]If I'm correct it's 2010 and 2010 - 1980 = 30, so this was implemented as a standard 30 years go.[/citation]

No it was developed in the 80's and implemented as a standard in the early 90's. (Note that there where a lot more completely different platforms back then and thus implementing a standard was a tad harder specially because in the 80's the PC was not even close to being the defacto home computer so its no wonder it took them 10+ years to get it implemented as a standard).

 

[zaznet]

[citation][nom]martin0642[/nom]and people with big data needs (Big online storage companies) then hardware to utilize it will quickly come.[/citation]

Big online storage companies don't use big hard drives. They use a lot of hard drives. We are seeing IDE via SATA showing up more and more in data centers though. The real long term here is SSD drives which will be much smaller in capacity even after we see large data center adoption. In the data center I can present 20TB of storage without ever using a 1TB or larger drive.

 

[sliem]

So... that means 3+ TB HDD won't be hot until 10 years from now? Assuming we survive 2012 that is.

 

[annymmo]

They really should adapt a little bit to the new things.

UEFI + GPT also brings other stuff to the table.
(integrated boot manager when dealing with multiple OS's.)

Everybody: put pressure on motherboard manufacturers.

These stupid people always leave stuff to come to an end.
The date format in Linux nowadays still exist in a fixed width format.
Windows is probably even worse.
These stupid not-good-enough-standards-with-stupid-restrictions-that-you-can-see-biting-back-from-the-beginning-people really should learn scalability and if they don't thrown very hard against a brick wall.