There are a number of things that impress me about technology, but most notably is the rate at which it has advanced in such a short period of time. Technology has gotten smaller, yet more powerful, portable, everywhere-accessible and more capable. It continues to stretch limitations and break into new frontiers. Today’s introduction of the world’s first 3TB hard drive is an example of this type of innovation.
Just four years ago Seagate was the first to introduce a 750GB drive and now we’ve quadrupled that figure! Whoa. And what’s impressive about this is not just the size of the drive, but how it was specially engineered to overcome the technological limitations of the Windows XP OS. My colleague, David Burks, has a great layman’s version of how this was done that you can check out here.
Now some consumers (ahem, like myself) would think, “Three terabytes?!?? What am I going to do with all that space?” But if you’ve ever spent a Christmas, birthday or music recital with my sisters and nieces—sheesh, just one afternoon of family photos can fill up a terabyte and then some! Or have you ever noticed how many shots a wedding photographer takes at a single event? Hundreds.
In all seriousness, when you group digital photos with all the movie and music files the majority of people have these days and consider the increasing number of devices out there designed to capture even more digital content—i.e. phones, flip video camera, digital cameras—it’s not surprising that digital storage capacities are also increasing. Consumers today are always on, always connected and always interacting…creating and exchanging tons of information and digital content. And a recent report by Parks Associates indicates the average consumer household will see its digital media storage needs grow to nearly 900GB by year-end 2014, driven in large part by video downloads, managed copies of Blu-ray discs, and increasing use of DVR recording capabilities.
Similar to what this recent NYTimes article indicates, consumers’ digital preferences and habits are becoming a driving force in technology. The new 3TB GoFlex Desk is an example of how Seagate is watching and meeting those preferences with flexible storage solutions designed for today’s digital lifestyle needs.
What are your thoughts? What do you store on your hard drive and could you use more space?
You stated: “…one afternoon of family photos can fill up a terabyte.” My guess is you meant gigabyte, not terabyte. No matter, between my digital camera & digital camcorder, it’s easy to amass a lot of data in a short amount of time.
Thanks for the clarification, @Janet. I was just being facetious, but you make a great point. To answer your question, the 3TB GoFlex Desk is available for purchase as of yesterday! Just visit http://bit.ly/bWlwon to place you order.
Any idea as to when this drive will be available for purchase by the average person such as myself? I asked this question a couple times yesterday on Facebook but no Seagate person responded (and yet they’ve responded to other topics, go figure). Please e-mail me with the answer.
“My colleague, David Burks, has a great layman’s version of how this was done that you can check out here.”
Nope, I think this applies only to drives using 512-byte sector emulation. If the new drive use 4KB logical sectors (as is likely), alignment becomes a non-issue.
My primary hesitation in buying a drive of this size is my concern regarding the lifespan of the drive. I’m sure I could fill it up, but it might take me several years. I don’t want a drive that dies before I get anywhere near filling it.
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