Fujitsu planning on shipping 1.2TB laptop hard drives in 2010

Fujitsu keeps pumping out the hard drive innovation -- this time the company is planning to ship a 1.2TB 2.5-inch hard drive by 2010. The company is planning on leveraging a new perpendicular recording method that allows researchers to create "ideally 'ordered' alumina nanohole patterns for isolated bit-by-bit recording on a large disk area" to accomplish the feat, which sounds pretty intense to us. Of course, by 2010 we'll all probably be rocking at least a petabyte or two of desktop storage, but it's still fun to dream.

[humpty @ Aug 8th 2007 10:10PM]

I wouldnt to put 1.2TB of data on a laptop HDD ... SSD maybe, but, no freakin way on a laptop HDD.

[Clayj @ Aug 8th 2007 10:19PM]

I think you all are overestimating the timeframe for a petabyte desktop... if you assume that this year is the first year when typical computers might have even a terabyte, and if Moore's Law applies also to hard drive capacities and they double on a yearly basis, then it's going to be almost 10 more years before we can expect to see a computer that can hold 1 PB (not PowerBook, Mac boy) of hard drives.

[joey @ Aug 8th 2007 10:32PM]

Um,....I believe that was a joke mr.bogus

[osalom @ Aug 9th 2007 12:47AM]

If Moore's Law applies one terabyte shall be enough RAM for Windows 7 to run great... IF it becomes available by 2012...

[Chris @ Aug 8th 2007 10:47PM]

So you are not disappointed because the batteries aren't rechargeable, rather you are disappointed because you don't understand why?

[Chris @ Aug 8th 2007 10:49PM]

Sorry for the last post. Somehow a previous post of mine was submitted.

Anyway, I think you mean "underestimate"

[UKNigel @ Aug 8th 2007 11:05PM]

I'd just like to point out that there are two grammar mistakes in this article. One in the title, one in the post. They both start with "Planning". Couldn't resist.

[dj-kenpo @ Aug 8th 2007 11:40PM]

yaaaaaaa. OR I could have a 512gb flash drive in my laptop.

hmm descisions.

I hope the harddrive manufacturers are scared. they should be. I've had WAY too many physical disks die. revenge is sweet and shit like this, I couldn't care less.
in 2 years I don't plan to be using mechanical drives in anything but my cheapo media server.

[scott @ Aug 8th 2007 11:44PM]

Careful Fujitsu, you might go the way of Kodak, who didn't investigate digital cameras because they weren't perfected at the time and continued to improved their old and soon to be ancient technology.

I suggest you put energy into solid state media, because we're gonna get tired of spinning media someday soon.

[Chuckles McGee @ Aug 9th 2007 12:55AM]

It's going to be a long, long while until SSD becomes an affordable replacement for the massive-capacity mechanical drives (1 TB+) we see today. Don't get me wrong, SSDs are going to be gaining lots of ground for holding OSes and most users files, but the price per gig is going to make it prohibitively expensive for 1000 gig SSDs for a long, long time.

[scott @ Aug 9th 2007 12:58AM]

Thing is, Kodak thought the SAME thing about digital cameras. Really, they didn't see digital as viable within the next decade, so they killed their digital devision and has not recovered since.

I'm just saying, prepare for the future, no matter how far away it seems.

[dj-kenpo @ Aug 9th 2007 4:31PM]

I don't think it's far away at all. 256gb ssd's are available today. price? whatever, last year 4gb's of sd was, what $150? now $40. flash memory prices drop like the rain man. it's a printed chip.

I remember buying a 32mb smartmedia for $159 for my rio back in the day. it took a long while for flash to begin to drop fast in price, but now that so many companies are producing it, and so many people using it, don't hold your breath that it'll take anything more than 5 years.
5 years ago where was flash. now look at the capacity/price difference.

[DarkAardvark @ Aug 8th 2007 11:46PM]

eh, i'd rather go with the IBM Millepede... 1TB / in^2 flash memory plox

[nikster @ Aug 8th 2007 11:47PM]

Stop blabbing and get to it, Fujitsu! And wake me when I can buy them in a store.

Today, we have 250GB laptop drives, and it's 2007. If they double capacity every year it's 500GB in 2008. 1 TB in 2009. And 2TB in 2010. This is good news how, exactly? Yeah we are spoiled Moore's-law brats but whatever.
Even if you assume the more accurate 18 months for doubling, you'd have 500GB in Jan 2009 and 1TB mid-2010.

[John Doe @ Aug 9th 2007 12:53AM]

Give me half of that and I will be more then happy.

[John Doe @ Aug 9th 2007 12:54AM]

Check that half of that at 7200 RPM speeds and 16MB of cache and I will be happy.

[jitty @ Aug 9th 2007 1:04AM]

It's funny how technology is advancing at such a fast rate that things that sounded completely insane 2 years ago would sound pretty reasonable now... I guarantee you, the PS4, if is going to be based off digital distribution, will have a 1TB (TeraByte) SSD, if not 2 of those...

[A Pancake @ Aug 9th 2007 1:40AM]

I was going to leave this after the first guy brought up Moore's law, but after two posts referencing I cannot help it.

Moore's law has absolutely zero to do with hard drive density!

Furthermore, according to Wikipedia we haven't been seen storage double over the past couple of years. According to the time line posted there the first 500GB 3.5" drive was released in 2005, with the first 1TB drive coming out 2007.

[Arnie @ Aug 9th 2007 8:52AM]

Extra storage space is all well and good but how about putting more buffer on these things to improve the performance. I think hard drives are the slowest components internally after the disc drives(CD/DVD/HD) so if we improve their response the overall improvement would be quite noticeable.So put some more solid state memory on these drives.Move up from measly 16MB to at least 512 MB to even 1 GB. I think they were known as hybrid drives or something.
I personally dont believe we are going to replace hard disks anytime in the near future since we really need the large memory which completely solid state drives can probably never match(at reasonable costs) even if they are better than HDDs in other aspects.

[Matt B @ Aug 9th 2007 10:17AM]

I think my PS3 just peed a little.

[Octothorpe @ Aug 9th 2007 1:07PM]

Clayj,

Even you are underestimating the amount of time one could expect to see a petabyte drive, if you apply Moore's law. I sayy 15 years, let me show you:

1Tb = Mid 2007

2Tb = Late 2008/early 2009

4Tb = Mid 2010

8Tb = Late 2011/early 2012

16Tb = Mid 2013

32Tb = Late 2014/early 2015

64Tb = Mid 2016

128Tb = Late 2017/early 2018

256Tb = Mid 2019

512Tb = Late 2020/early 2021

1024Tb = Mid 2022

So 10 years is well over optimistic, it should take 15 years before we see 1Pb worth of storage in a single drive.

A 1.2Tb laptop drive in 2010 is right in line with Moore's law, 250Gb today, 500 late '08, and 1Tb in 2010. What unexciting news, this should be expected, not a press release worthy piece of news.

[moondy @ Aug 11th 2007 6:55AM]

The future looks sweet, and considering 1TB is worth about 50,000 TREES of paper(1)...paper will probably become redundant within the next few decades.

1. Source: www.cnet.com.au/desktops/storage/0,239029473,339279113,00.htm

[Scott @ Oct 16th 2007 1:34AM]

Actually... I've done an extensive study on Moore's law, and a comparison of drive and CPU advances spanning back to 1965 (the year Moore stated "The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year ..." the commonly misquoted "18 months", which he never said.) This relates specifically to transistors etched on silicon, and was never "meant" to encompass any other area of technology. The CPU comparison I did shows a consistent doubling of CPU transistors every 2 years, as he stated. There have been very little variation in this growth.
Storage technology on another hand is a very different matter, and applying "Moore's Law" to that, quickly illustrates that has been shattered in this area of technology. (No reason to believe all technologies would grow at the same rate). There have been factors of 800% growth in storage capacity in as little as 24 months (1989 to 1991 for example where standard HD's available to the consumer jumped from 80mb to 640mb!). It continues to grow. I have made 2 predictions in what this growth will look like for the future. At October of 2007, 3 makers have 1tb 3.5" HD's on the market (SATA). They sell for easily under $500. I have predicted 1pb drive at around 2021, but it's not out of the question to see them by 2017. Fujitsu have pledged to expand drive capacity by 500% in only 2 years. That's a lot bigger factor that doubling in the same span. I also predict that by 2011, there will be no "Hard Disks". At this point SSD (solid state drive, i.e. physical memory) will replace "moving parts" technology entirely, and HD's will go the direction of the punched card. (Really.) Might take another 10 years to get legacy gear out, but all new purchase will be SSD. These drive will be 1000% to 5000% faster than today's HD's. Which, we'll need if we're going to copy Petabytes of data anyway, since at 100mb/sec it would take ~2,700 hours to transfer that amount of info. (Yeah, Petabytes are THAT big). Or to put another way, 115 days, or just a hair over 4 months. Hope you don't need that info any time soon...

Just some food for thought...
-S