Fujitsu plans to boost HDD capacity by 500% in two years

Fujitsu is always talking up this or that hard drive technology that's totally going to revolutionize the industry and so on, but at least this time around they've got some "solid" numbers. It's that same "areal density" spiel again, with Fujitsu claiming that a new vertical magnetic recording tech based on crystalline magnesium oxide allows them to sense even smaller magnetic pits, thereby allowing them to squeeze more data into each square inch. Fujitsu was promising 1TB per square inch a few months back, but it seems now they'll settle for 500-800GB per square inch -- which translates to a roughly 500 percent capacity increase -- and should be shipping samples out in a couple years. Start planning now how to best fill a 5TB drive, we're leaning towards backing up a few hundred DVDs and filling the rest with polka music -- it's a hard job, but somebody's got to do it. [Warning: subscription required]

[Via The Inquirer]

[elbrando @ May 11th 2007 2:08PM]

"we're leaning towards backing up a few hundred DVDs and filling the rest with polka music"

That's hilarious! Just make sure those DVDs are of freely licensed polka content.

Then, don't forget the dip for the viewing party.

[sean @ May 11th 2007 2:10PM]

At some point humanity will have more storage than porn. What will happen then?

[andy @ May 11th 2007 2:15PM]

@sean


The coolest thing ever... we'll make more.


Besides, this is Fujitsu, not Seagate, so you'll have to wait a bit on the storing pron thing.

[shirizaki @ May 11th 2007 2:20PM]

Impossible.

And if that were to happen, we'd simply make more porn.

[Jacob Magnusson @ May 11th 2007 3:05PM]

And higher res porn :P

[Chuckles McGee @ May 11th 2007 3:11PM]

Exactly. You think you'll never need 5 TB, just start loading in full 50 gig blu-rays...and um...well... that's ONLY 100 movies!!! Still pretty impressive, but far from limitless. As soon as more space is available, software and media will take advantage of that extra capacity.

[Jacob Magnusson @ May 11th 2007 3:14PM]

I hate it when people say "we won't need that much space" etc.

There will ALWAYS be a need for more space. This applies to all technology really.

[Andir3.0 @ May 11th 2007 4:29PM]

No way! With Adaptive/Dynamic Texture/Data (whatever the hell it's called now) Generation, we never need to go beyond DVD9! I can just have the computer/XBox360 calculate what my family pictures should look like on the fly!

[Leo @ May 11th 2007 3:28PM]

I'm sure a few years back some guy said that we'll never need more than 200MB hard drives or maybe it was 40? hmn

[BrandonLehman @ May 11th 2007 3:41PM]

Because at the end of the day, what it really boils down to is polka music. Look deep inside, you know it's true.

[Ignacio @ May 11th 2007 4:18PM]

We'll never need more than 640GB... ;)

[G-Money @ May 11th 2007 6:00PM]

Backing up Blue-Ray/HD DVD Movies HERE I COME!

[tekdroid @ May 11th 2007 7:59PM]

this news would mean something to me if/when fujitsu ever decided to make 3.5inch drives again (and if the link didn't require a login...)

[nikster @ May 12th 2007 10:13AM]

Chuckles ++ 'xactly.

People didn't think about filling their hard disks with mp3s when they had 20MB hard disks. What's the point of loading 3 songs?

Fast forward, for DVD backups TB drives will be interesting. Not just backups, also legally downloaded material.

For HD DVDs single-digit TBs are not enough. So for the next 5 years we know what will go on the newer, bigger HDs.

Co-incidentally the porn industry is spearheading HD production - they have been shooting in HD for years now.

[ssuk @ May 13th 2007 5:18AM]

You guys act like computers are used for something other than porn. This confuses and disturbs me...

[Dan Isaacs @ May 13th 2007 10:28AM]

I wonder how long a RAID reconstruct would take. :)

[Felix @ May 13th 2007 12:19PM]

We'll never need more than 640GB... ;)

Didn't we wonder how to fill an 20GB drive a few years ago?