Everything is going as I have forseen… well, almost. 1 terabyte drives are almost a reality! My original prediction was that the unholiest of relics, the 1 TB drive, would be unveiled on June 6, 2006 (6-6-06) and spawn the end of the world. Nazis will ride on dinosaurs and bring a new world order, the dead will walk the earth, and FOX will sign Elizabeth Taylor to her own reality show. How did I reach such a conclusion? Let me explain…
750 GB drives are now here, which is both a good and bad thing. The presence of these new drives in the market is lowering the price on “meager” 400 and 500GB drives to around $200. 250GB drives can now be had for around a hundred, and everything else can be had for under $100.
Hard drive capacities have been climbing higher and higher, and scientists have been butting heads with the laws of physics. One of these physical laws is the “super-paramagnetic effect”, which means when magnetized bits get too close to each other, they lose magnetism and essentially erase the bit on the platter. Scientists have employed several clever tricks to get around these physical laws, pushing data densities higher and higher. The latest of these techniques that makes terabyte drives possible is perpendicular recording.
Let’s get Perpendicular!
In March 2005, scientists demonstrated an areal density of 230 gigabits per square inch (Gb/in2) on perpendicular recording technology. This accomplishment represents a doubling of today’s highest data densities on longitudinal recording technology. Perpendicular recording is believed to be capable of delivering up to 10 times the storage density of longitudinal recording, on the same recording media. At the current rate of growth, we should see products with storage capacities of one terabyte (1 TB) on a 3.5-inch hard drive, and up to 20 gigabytes on a one-inch Microdrive.
Current hard disk technology with longitudinal recording has an estimated limit of 100 to 200 gigabit per square inch due to the Superparamagnetic effect. The Superparamagnetic effect is a phenomenon that occurs when the microscopic magnetic grains on the disk become so tiny that they interfere with one another, thus losing their ability to hold their magnetic orientations. The result is “flipped bits” – bits whose magnetic north and south poles suddenly and spontaneously reverse – that corrupt data, rendering it and the storage device unreliable and thus unusable.
So what is Perpendicular recording?
Longitudinal recording, as its name indicates, aligns the data bits horizontally, parallel to the surface of the disk. In contrast, perpendicular recording aligns the bits vertically, perpendicular to the disk, which allows additional room on a disk to pack more data, thus, enabling higher recording densities. Perpendicular recording is predicted to allow information densities of up to around 1 Tbit/sq. inch (1000 Gbit/sq. inch).
As a consequence, there are up to 10 times the number of bits in the same amount of space of longitudinal recording. More bits speed by the read head in the same amount of time, naturally resulting in higher read and write speeds. Drives utilizing this technology perform much better than other drives. A new 750GB drive with Perpendicular recording technology performs much better than 500GB hard drives, and nearly twice as fast as older RAID0 arrays.
“Don’t be too proud of this technological terror…”
Some may consider the economics and buy more lower-capacity drives to get more GB for their money. For example, you can buy 4 300GB hard drives (1.2TB) for the same price as buying one 750GB hard drive. If you are running a server or just don’t care about the noise, then this option may be fine for you. I, on the other hand, need this much space for my vast collection of movies, mp3s and other media, which reside on a Media Center PC in my living room and bedroom. A Home Theater PC should be as quiet as possible, and four hard drives just isn’t acceptable in this application.
If cost isn’t a factor, but are limited on drive bays, then you can now have exponentially more storage than previously available. If your server has 4 hard drive bays, then you can now store 3TB of pr0n… I mean family photos and episodes of Full House.
If you want to create an array over 2TB, then you’re gonna have to create a dynamic volume (which means you cannot boot from it). Because partition tables on master boot record disks only support partition sizes up to 2TB, you must use dynamic volumes to create NTFS volumes over 2TB. You will be limited to 16TB using the default cluster size of 4K. The maximum volume NTFS is capable of is 256TB, but you must use a 64KB cluster size, and there will literally be gigabytes of storage wasted in the file system.
With great power comes great responsibility…
All that space may seem like a lot, and it is. It is a boon for those with networked media PCs and HD video recorders. You can archive virtually everything MIDI file in existance, and play MP3s for 2 years without repeating a song. How are you going to back it up? It will take at least 166 DVDs to back up all that data, so unless you need the space for HD video editing, prepare for several weeekends of non-stop burning sessions.
The thirst for greater storage capacity has pushed the human race to tease the laws of physics, taunting Mother Nature with a smug satisfaction that will eventually lead to the end of life on this planet. Every prior attempt to open Pandora’s Box has resulted in a prompt bitch-slapping from the Heavens, and Ike has opened his first Colt 45. Humans have discovered secrets of the universe that the Divine have meant to go undiscovered. Adam has taken the proverbial apple, opened God’s shower curtain, and dented his classic Ford Mustang… and we must pay the price for such defiance.
So keep coveting more space, little humans; you are part of a much grander plan! The Dark Lord Xenu commands it!