back to article WD and Xyratex discuss future tech roadmap for disk drives

It seems the disk drive industry has decided which future technology to use and in which order, judging by recent Western Digital and Xyratex discussions with investment analysts. The current perpendicular magnetic recording technology (PMR) is running out of steam as continued size reductions in the magnetised bit area lead …

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  1. Chris McFaul
    WTF?

    so exactly the same?

    "He reckoned that SSD areal density curve was increasing at 33 per cent a year through to 2020 while the hard disk drive areal density increase rate was 33 per cent."

  2. frank ly

    Big Drives Not Needed

    For the _average_ home and even office user, a 16GB drive is all that's needed for a Windows OS and a shed load of installed applications. Maybe some people with lots of meaty apps will need a 32GB drive at the most. User data can be stored on the network or a physically small USB 3.0 drive.

    What I'd like to see are small, fast, cheap SSDs in laptops and desktops. The problem may be that laptops and desktops would last longer if they used SSDs rather than spinning metal things.

    1. Nigel 11
      Pint

      Big drives not *always* needed.

      You're right that the desktop of the near will be better equipped with an 80Gb SSD not a 250Gb HD. Hard disk manufacturers can see this coming. If the hard disk is to have any future, it's at the high-capacity end of the market.

      As for who needs (say) 100Tb drives ... if they were on the market today at £100 each, we'd be buying. Give our researchers any amount of CPU power and storage, and they'll fill it to capacity within a few weeks. Molecular modelling, if you were wondering. Others I know something about the IT needs: particle physicists, astronomers, DNA, Oil prospecting. Doubtless lots of other things that I've never found out about.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Stop

      Enterprise not Desktop

      While I agree that office and home PC's can usually get away with smaller capacity you need to think bigger.

      The use of cloud storage and the likes of youtube, facebook, etc. means that the requirement for massive capacity in data centres is increasing at a phenominal rate.

      Now you could just add expansion enclosures to keep pace but that means extra power and cooling - or you could increase the capacity of the drives to get more storage for the same infrastructure.

      SSD's may be good for laptops but when you are considering Peta and Exa Bytes of storage Hard Drives are the only way forward

    3. jonathanb Silver badge

      64GB ought to be enough for anyone?

      Over here, C:\Windows alone occupies 38GB of space, and I haven't looked at c:\program files or c:\program files (x86)

      If you are the sort of person who collects video files, then you will definitely be in the market for larger hard drives.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    product in 2014/15 that's an eternity away

    no one really gives a flying **** that "product could arrive by 2014" any more as that's an eternity away, if it doesn't exist in 2011/12 then why should they care!.

    i dont know about anyone else, but im sick and tired of hearing PR drones telling us product X will be here in 5 year's, while it's is fun to hear about new advances in the lab and all, where exactly is That cheap crystal cube mass storage device that was supposed to be here by now for instance ?

    if product X and Y is not already on the production line ready for mass production within 2 year's max, then i dont care any more.

    people have got Cash/credit to spend right now on the cristmass/new year product , where exactly are these new product devices on the production line/shipping for late 2010/early 2011 that people actually want to to buy right NOW ?

    such as a matching set of generic 10gig "Ethernet over Light Peak" fibre 4 port pciE cards and fibre patch leads in a self install kit or that display port WIRELESS device or even that Sandy Bridge with included Encode/Decode hardware engine and x264 patch with a new MSI P67A-GD65, P67A-GD55 AND H67MA-ED55, 4 slots for DDR3 memory.

    there's no real storage device on peoples must buy list for a while yet, as they are all priced to high on SSD product even though SSD chips have fallen in price a lot

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