TDK looks to deliver 2.5TB hard drives in early 2010
By Donald Melanson 
posted Aug 7th 2009 9:34PM
posted Aug 7th 2009 9:34PM
It's been a little while since TDK has made some news in the neverending race for next big hard drive breakthrough, but it looks like that could be changing fairly soon, with a recently revealed roadmap indicating that the company currently has some 640GB drive platters suitable for a 3.5-inch drive going through qualification tests by its OEMs. While nothing's obviously official just yet, TDK is reportedly looking to begin mass production of the platters in November of this year, which could pave the way for some four-platter, 2.5TB drives to debut as early as February of next year. As Register Hardware points out, a five-platter, 3.2TB drive would also be possible, though somewhat less likely. We can dream, though.[Via Electronista]
Who cares when sony will offer 2TB memory sticks.
Just take 10 of them, stick them in an SSD enclosure, and there you go, biggest available memory in an SSD to date.
I care. Sorry, but Sony can Swiftly Stick their Stinking Sticks where the Sun don't Shine, Son.
Yea, but the 2.5tb drives will probably be way cheaper than those sony 2tb memory sticks.
It'll be years before there's a 2 TB Memory Stick. 2 TB is only theoretical, just like SDXC
And I can dream about AySel....
I don't know if i can trust a company if it's core business isn't in hard drives.
Their core competencies include ferrites, EMC, RF and inductance. I'd say they're well qualified.
Yeah I knew that, but I still prefer a company such as Seagate, WD or Hitachi. My opinion is this, I prefer a company that focus solely on hard drives. Should they produce a faulty hard drive, they would do their best to remedy a solution or try to resolve it right away. Their reputation depends on it. Such companies as TDK, or even Samsung and Toshiba "might" not provide the same level of response. Even though Samsung and Toshiba have built a solid reputation. I would still prefer Seagate, WD or Hitachi over any other.
Their business includes hard drive heads (among other things), so you may be using TDK without even knowing it :) In the past, their components may have been in your VCR's hardware, too...among many other items.
Or you may have - like lots of us - never been let down by TDK's tapes :)
As far as I'm concerned, TDK have always been about quality.
Coz we all know seagate react instantly to problems...
It's not clear from the articles if TDK will be producing the actual hard drives or simply providing the technology behind them.
2.5? Go for 3!
Who can trust keeping that much data in a small space?
My thought's exactly. I lost a 400GB hdd a few years back due to failure and I'll never trust more than a 100 gigs to a single location ever again, it just isn't worth the risk.
It's called RAID.
Which costs a lot of something called money.
... says someone whose username is rich. As well, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to RAID 2 1 TB HDDs than it is to somehow get your hands on 20 100 GB HDDs. As well, it's called regular backups.
Rich. Y'know, as in Richard? And I didn't say about 100GB drives.
Syko is correct. We should never have hard drives more than 100GB. Put a halt to all density improvements immediately.
/sarcasm
Not that long ago, they said the same thing about 5MB, then 360MB, then 1GB, etc. I'm not going to run out and buy a 2.5TB drive to store my data on. Heck, I'm not even sure about 1TB drives yet. Give me a little more time and I'll warm up to them.
It's called backups.
RAID if you want protection against disk failure, but that's all RAID protects against, it is not a substitute for backups.
Your fault for not backing up the data on your hard drive, it's like driving uninsured.
RAID is not a backup solution. I can't stress this enough, but people often don't listen, and the results can be catastrophic. RAID means that all the information is stored in one computer. If you use the mode that is redundant (I forget which number it is) your data is mirrored on both drives, and should one go out, you can get your data back by rebuilding it on the drive that is still going. The only problem with this is that with both drives in one place, you are susceptible to complete data loss due to lightning strike, surge, physical trauma to the drives (I know a lot of people that keep their towers high up on their desks, just waiting to fall), etc. Not to mention that a lot of RAID controllers are simply awful.
Get yourself one of those 30 dollar external HDD enclosures, or an HDD dock, and do backups to the external HDD (which you'd leave unplugged during lightning, and well out of harms way). If you can swing it, you could also do RAID, for double the security. Of course, there is still the problem of all your data being in one house, but short of off-site backup (which most of us can't afford) there really isn't a good solution for that.
off site backup is not expensive... it's called a giant drive and safe deposit box... $100 a year gets my important documents, a few small expensive items, and this hard drive locked up offsite... i bring it home once a month or so to sync up... sure if you have a total raid failure at home and you were a few weeks off from the sync its not perfect... but my system will get me back 99.9% of my data.
oh hey TDK, you're still relevant?
In the famous words of Dr Zoidberg: "I'll take eight!"
this is news, when did TDK start manufacturing HDDs? They're known for flat storage media devices like tape drives, optical discs, and flash drives but HDDs??
They just make heads, not whole drives.
I have 3 external HD boxes. Each box has 2 1tb drives. The box auto mirrors the data so that both drives have the exact same amount of data. So if one drive fails, I still have access to my data.
I have never trusted any HD enough to only have 1 copy of my data on it.
Is the box custom or a product, i've been looking for something like this...
This is the "Magic Box" I have:
http://www.vantecusa.com/front/product/view_detail/277
It is great! They support ESATA & USB2.
I have 3 of them, and will probably get 2 more in the next year.
Im particular to my 2 Velociraptors in raid 0 with 600gb total. Waiting for SSD drives at 1tb to come down to realistic price levels before I go SSD. They keep coming out with larger hard drives yet with the same ole 7200 rpm tech and adding cache to entice people to buy. Blah. Gimme 2 x 1TB SSD drives in raid 0 for under $500 for both or nothing.
2 velociraptors in raid 0 here also, only 300gb though (2x150). I also run OSX on a 32gb SSD.
I had no idea TDK did or was going to make hard drives, never seen one for sale anywhere.
Now all we need is Backup, AntiVirus and DiskFragmenting software makers to not keep us waiting a whole day while their software handles these larger capacities.
Who has 2.5TB of data to fill up? Wouldn't it just be better to wait a couple of years for when you can get a big SSD for the same price?
No one. Their goal is to make hard drives so big that no one needs them.
heeeey, that guy is right! Let's just keep waiting. Maybe if we wait long enough then until storage will be measured in the googleplexbye, run faster then the speed of light, and cost under a $100. In the mean time, I'll just fire up my 386 and play scorched earth.
I have 1.4TB of data. Two of these drives would be exactly what I need. I back stuff up, so I never loose anything, maybe that's why I have 1.4TB of data...
SRSLY?
*cough* server market *couch* video editing *cough* professional digital photographers *cough* etc
I hope to have at least 10-20 TB by this time next year. More the merrier!
*cough* torrents *cough*
although i only have 250 GB of them so far, but it can always be useful to have more lebensraum for my future torrenting needs. I have a 1 TB WD external HDD so i think it will be enough for a while.
Personally I have about 6 TB of Movies, Music and TV Shows. (With a 1.5 TB drive floating in soon) I offload the collection in a sneakernet manner to friends and family and use that as a backup. When a hard drive dies (and they do) I replace it with a larger drive and regain the collection from my friends and family.
Great system and it has worked well for me over the years.
How long will defrag take?
2 hours.
It's so nice to hear "mass production" in a sentence that's also scheduled for next year instead of the usual "may be commercially produced..." "projected to be available sometime when your kids have kids" and "likely due for release after you upgrade your current PC seven times"... for a nice change.
Anyway, great to see TDK thinking it worth their while to compete with the few hard drive manufacturers on their own turf. Competition should be good(er).
Awesome, means the 3 platter 2tb 7200rpm drives are a comin'. Greater density means faster read/write too. Stacking 5 of those platters kinda freaks me out though. Won't that bump up the noise, heat and fail rate?
Every Wednesday, I do my best to scribble my interpretation of 10,000 pictures on post it notes. Pert reliable backup mechanism.
Every morning I wipe what I think of technology cycles on toilet paper.
They should just focus more on SSDs and not the platter-based drives.
TDK...seriously? I didn't think they actually did anything other than slap their name on shitty CD/DVD media (among other products). Probably just a rebranded WD/Seagate/Hitachi product that they are releasing.