Once everyone has Blu Ray disks, they won't feel that upgrading to Terrabyte Holographic discs is neccessary, unless they want to get the most out of their Ultra High Definition Televisions.
Fortunately, Playstation 4 will be the cheapest HG-DVD player around at a smooth $800.
They're going to work up to terabytes over the next few generations. As the technology improves they should be able to achieve some impressive capacities.
However, I don't see why anyone would buy this product now. Think about it: the cost for this is $18000 + $180 per 300GB...why would anyone spend that when you can pick up a 500GB hard drive for £40? I'm not sure what the retention time of a hard drive is, but it can't be far off 50 years when used for archive. Not only are HDs cheaper, but they've got better R/W times too.
@ j_g_puff "Think about it: the cost for this is $18000 + $180 per 300GB...why would anyone spend that when you can pick up a 500GB hard drive for £40?"
For $180 I could raid 5 your ass..then use the change to raid 1 your mother's ass.
Plus, hard drive failure rates are well known. These disks have a great big ? when it comes to real-world failures, and when it's reliability that gets you hot, a ? is the last thing you want.
If anyone wants to suggest hard drives as a backup solution have a listen to my three week old RAID array...
*ch-chunk ch-chunk ch-chunk*
Yeah... it still reads but a fair bit slower when it's clunking like that, I have RMA'ed them and waiting for the pickup, but it demonstrates quite well why you shouldn't trust HDDs for archives and backup :)
If the manufacturer had burnt them in properly the dodgy ones wouldn't get passed on to you. Or me for that matter - i've lost 2 disks in the last 3 years.
I still don't see why they can't be used for archive though. Get a few well-made (and well burnt-in) disks and use a parity scheme across a few of them. They only need to run for a few weeks while you back up, then they can be stashed offsite until they're needed. Of course they're probably bulkier and more expensive than things like DLT, but certainly less than holographic (for the next few years at least).
Why would anyone buy one of these? It's ludicrous. If you are a serious business or government, tape backup makes 1000 times more sense than this.
If you're a consumer, use frickin hard drives. Redundancy is the key. Make multiple backups, and put the disk back in the anti-static bag. In 5 years you'll be able to store a lot more than 300GB on your Mozy or .mac account.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
300gb? I thought these things came in the terrabytes?
try again in 5 years
Oh Great - another FORMAT WAR.
Once everyone has Blu Ray disks, they won't feel that upgrading to Terrabyte Holographic discs is neccessary, unless they want to get the most out of their Ultra High Definition Televisions.
Fortunately, Playstation 4 will be the cheapest HG-DVD player around at a smooth $800.
They're going to work up to terabytes over the next few generations. As the technology improves they should be able to achieve some impressive capacities.
However, I don't see why anyone would buy this product now. Think about it: the cost for this is $18000 + $180 per 300GB...why would anyone spend that when you can pick up a 500GB hard drive for £40? I'm not sure what the retention time of a hard drive is, but it can't be far off 50 years when used for archive. Not only are HDs cheaper, but they've got better R/W times too.
Exactly who is this product aimed at?
@ j_g_puff "Think about it: the cost for this is $18000 + $180 per 300GB...why would anyone spend that when you can pick up a 500GB hard drive for £40?"
Because hard drives fail. And so do you.
@Alexander
For $180 I could raid 5 your ass..then use the change to raid 1 your mother's ass.
Plus, hard drive failure rates are well known. These disks have a great big ? when it comes to real-world failures, and when it's reliability that gets you hot, a ? is the last thing you want.
puff...RAID is NOT a backup solution.
Jesse: why not?
If anyone wants to suggest hard drives as a backup solution have a listen to my three week old RAID array...
*ch-chunk ch-chunk ch-chunk*
Yeah... it still reads but a fair bit slower when it's clunking like that, I have RMA'ed them and waiting for the pickup, but it demonstrates quite well why you shouldn't trust HDDs for archives and backup :)
w00t:
If the manufacturer had burnt them in properly the dodgy ones wouldn't get passed on to you. Or me for that matter - i've lost 2 disks in the last 3 years.
I still don't see why they can't be used for archive though. Get a few well-made (and well burnt-in) disks and use a parity scheme across a few of them. They only need to run for a few weeks while you back up, then they can be stashed offsite until they're needed. Of course they're probably bulkier and more expensive than things like DLT, but certainly less than holographic (for the next few years at least).
Why would anyone buy one of these? It's ludicrous. If you are a serious business or government, tape backup makes 1000 times more sense than this.
If you're a consumer, use frickin hard drives. Redundancy is the key. Make multiple backups, and put the disk back in the anti-static bag. In 5 years you'll be able to store a lot more than 300GB on your Mozy or .mac account.