Gizmodo
With the news from Seagate today that it had shipped its billionth hard drive, I got to thinking about the mahoosive amount of storage space that all those drives represent. Then I wondered, "How much drive space do I have around the place?" and after opening cupboards and drawers, I tallied the lot to what I think is a surprisingly large amount. You may beg to differ, and you can below. But first, vote in the poll: how many terabytes does one person need really?
Here's my tally:
• 80 GB in my new shiny MacBook Air
• 250 GB in my old faithful iMac (now recovered from a hard drive crash a few weeks ago)
• 320 GB in an old Western Digital MyBook external drive
• 500 GB in a shiny new FireWire MyBook
• 500 GB in an Iomega "Screenplay" connected to the TV, filled with movies
• 40 GB in a CF card reader/storage box
• 30 GB in an unbranded FireWire drive sitting abandoned in the cupboard
• 40 GB in an old iBook with a borked power unit in the same cupboard
• 250 GB in my set-top broadband TV box
That comes to a grand total of 2010 GB, so around 2 TB. That seems a ridiculous amount, to me. And apart from the "dead" gadgets, all those drives are in pretty constant use (some for backup).
• In MP3 terms, that's 3,195 days worth of music—nearly nine years, nonstop.
• A plain text Complete Works of Shakespeare runs to 5MB, so there's room for 400,000 of those.
• A RAW file from my camera is 8MB so there's space to store about 250,000— enough to take 28 photos an hour for the next year, by which time the shutter would've clicked its last.
• A compressed feature film from a DVD will fit in a gig, so there's room for around 2,000 of those.
That seems like plenty, but maybe I'm wrong. Come on, Giz readers, tell me:
Comments
I still remember my first 1 GB hard drive and thinking, "I could copy a whole CD to my hard drive if I wanted to!"
Well... If you count in multiple computers and digital topboxes... you have got to have over 1TB... but unless you are a big nerd, you shouldn't need too much over 1TB on a normal desktop computer, at least i can't see the use for it.
Porn + Music + Movies + DSLR = 4 plus TB eventually
I'm afraid to have that much data. You can't back it up, just buy more TB HDDs. It's a vicious circle.
Enough?
it wasn't that long ago that no one could ever possibly need a one gigabyte hard drive, how could anyone fill up such a cavernous hard drive? Now 1gb usb flash drives are given away like candy.
We'll be filling up 1TB drives in no time
Let me answer your question with another question: How many TBs of porn is there on the internet?
That many TBs.
Except clown porn, because that's just creepy.
I work with HD video and boy do those 2GB pics add up so yeah, I need the 4+TB that I have.
Oh wait, we're including all the pron? Well then.....::starts counting fingers and toes::
Hahaha....yes! I remember playing a round of 18 on jack nickolous golf with an old 386 and having the screen refresh for 5 minutes before each shot...Man that was exciting! Gadget pron to the max! Wheres my floppy drive? *fap fap fap*
1 TB in WHS box
160 GB(system) + 250 GB(recorded TV) Dell Vista Media Center box
160 GB MacBook
120 GB Dell 700m
160 GB TiVo
2850 GB
I have around 14 TB, I could use more.
@DeCerbo: I guess I have to. It's not creepy...it's funny.
if you are downloading large amounts of media, ripping cd/dvd/HD video, or have a high res DSLR/video camera, I can understand a need for more than a TB of storage in a single device...
I still have an 8GB hard drive that is used in a desktop system, where the largest drive is 40GB - never needed more on the system.
I don't see a strong push for cheap 1+ TB hard disks until the average consumer has real need to purchase a drive that large
Q: How many Gigabytes is enough?
A: All of them... all of them.
I have easy 6TB at my desk
I'm just a little bit over a TB here, and I'm currently working on converting all my DVDs to be AppleTV compatible. I think this will suit me for 2 more years or so. In 2 years I'll probably want at least 3 or 4. Hard drives, I'm always worried they're going to fail...should I be worried?
i have a couple TB spread over several computers too. i just recently disassembled an old 42MB hdd(yea thats megabyte, no typo) but....[refer to pic] [media.techeblog.com]
My first desktop had 2 GB and now I'm bordering on filling up 2 TB...obsession, I think so :(
Listen....its not really about the capacity; Its about getting the info right when you need it. Combine speed with capacity and then you're talking.
The only time i will ever be content is when hardrives reach the speed and approxiamte capacity of a human brain. BEcause everyday and new albums comes, movies come, photos are taken in higher res, and every day you need more space...
I think this whole data madness thing may be whats driving my next home network setup with my webserver/router and media pc being ultra light linux boxes that store all dynamic content on a nice NAS instead of having my data spread out all over the place. Even my desktop I want to only have HD space for applications store everything else on the NAS. It'd make it way easier to back up your data via just a nice Raid 5 array of 1TB discs or something. *shrug* Just a pipe dream atm.
@arras:
Exactly, before it was just documents and maybe a couple simple programs. Then it evolved into more and more complex programs requiring more space, then the evolution of High Speed online games with unbelievable graphics...not to mention our digital photo albums, or our entire music collection on mp3...now we have moved into movies and our dvd collections being compressed and saved as well. Yeah, we'll be able to use all the space they give us as we find more and more stuff to store on it.
I'm backing up all the pr0n on the internets.
I don't have a terabyte but I wish I did. I could easily fill up a terabyte if I wanted too. I'm sure mostly everyone else could too.
For day-to-day email, web, word processing kind of stuff? 300-500GB, maybe.
For pro-level video editing, especially long-form (as in feature film)? A bare minimum of 3-5TB, 5-8TB is better, and it is impossible to have too much.
I'm a photographer who shoots in RAW. I usually get 2-4 gigs a shoot. So the more the better.
my first PC was a 486 with 256 Mb of hard drive space and 4 mb of ram, that was back in 1993. Just to put things into perspective. Now i have about 2TB worth of storage and 4Gb of ram. Man times have changed big time
what comes after Terabytes? that. that's what i need. a bunch of them though; not just one. maybe like 7,000.
i enjoy my anime fansubs. "short" series can easily run 4-5 GB, so its not too hard too fill up disk space.
I have about 3 TB right now, which = 1.5 TB, completely backed up. If you want to be safe with your data, you should have double what you're actually using.
We have two desktops and three laptops in our household...and one Tivo. One of the desktops hosts DVDs that we may want to view in different room. The formatted 640 GB hard drive can hold about 65 or so DVDs. That estimate is for 9GB dual layer DVDs. Compare that size with a dual layer blu-ray disk, which is 50 GB. Hmm...a formatted 1 TB hard drive will hold less than 20 such titles. Ouch.
Pictures and music take up space, but video will be driving this situation for the near- to mid-term.
60 gig for my os
250 gig for ripping
750 gig external
500 gig external
500 gig external w/ a remote and outputs for the tv
30 gig ipod
Thats getting close to 3tb and it still isn't enough for me. I wish that I could afford backups for all of my drives.
does seem silly but yes, games, music, porn, movies, downloads, documents. it can get pretty tight. right now I have a 640gb hd and a WD500gb external. that should amount for something. also, I connected my hard drive to my DTV so I can record cable and the such. So I guess, I really don't have that much space after all.
**scratches head with finger**
i have 9 TB of active disk right now, my movie collection is approx 5TB, all of my applications are backed up un a central NAS box, and the remainder is for apps etc...
If anyone is ever interested in creating an incredible movie collection use my movies 2
[www.download.com]
my iTunes Library is 1.2TB alone. Add HD video editing, DSLR, Blu-Ray rips and it gets mind-boggling.
120G internal iMac
2TB Western Digital MyBook
(3)500GB LaCie externals
(1)600GB LaCie external
4220GB
@fusedinertia:
2GB! My first PC had no hard drive. Just a cassette tape...and we liked it! :-) The first PC that I owned that did have a hard drive had a 10 MB HD...and we thought it was massive.
BTW, I had 2K for RAM on that first TRS-80 model 1...and I had to code carefully as to not fill it. ? instead of print saves 4 bytes! :-)
160 gig for Desktop PC
120 gig for Laptop PC
320 gig for external drive
1TB for Network Attached Storage
80 gig for external drive
120 gig on the Xbox 360
80 gig iPod
lots of thumb drives
so my total is almost 2 TB right now... but i have a feeling I'm leaving something out...
80 gig iPog
150 gig internal
400 gig internal
hmm...
670 gig Gmail account
10 gig original xbox hdd
120 gig xbox 360 hdd
dammit.. I really only have about 550 gigs of useful space :c( I'm far behind you guys... time to catch up.
@drewheyman: Terabyte, Petabyte, Exabyte, Zettabyte, Yottabyte.
I've 4TB in a Mac Pro, another 5TB in a desktop case RAID, 2TB in a PC, 320GB in a PS3, 250GB in the DVR, and various USB keys and film cards.
12TBs...that's enough...for now.
439GB for me... more than enough
@Rabid Penguin:
Awwww damn... It's sad that Google offers me more free space than I have in my computer... and I payed for that :c(
my amiga 500 had a 5MB harddrive, i was amazed, now i have 4x750GB in my mac pro and 2 external 500GB lol isnt that 4,000,000 x more storage? my math is auful.
@snowtires:
Even with a good raid setup, hard drives are pretty flakey. I gave up on trying to back stuff up on dvd, too. That can crap out and it takes waaaay too long these days.
even if you are just doing causal amateur video editing, it's never too many bits and bytes. i have a 2TB NAS holding all my music in .wav format, ripped dvds, finished photos and movies. wishing for a 1T external drive to hold all work-in-progress video source files and a blu-ray writer to do archives.
i have 2.8Tb ... woo
As of now anywhere between 3-4tb is what I have. But in the next year or so I can see my data storage needs doubling like my tolerence to alcohol if I dont quite my current job.
@TheAdAgency:
LMAO!
I'm at 2TB, but I am in need of more. I'd really like to make a back up of everything, right now I only have my Pictures, and Docs backed up, I'd be at a loss if I lost all my media.
There are only two kinds of Hard Drives - those that have failed, and those that WILL fail. :)
If you are participating in the "digital world", whether it be photos, movies, music, or all-of-the-above, then you simply MUST save all your data in two places or at least on mirrored drives. (3 TB storage means 1.5 TB actual content)
Purchasing and regularly replacing hard drives absolutely MUST be in your budget, because you most definitely want to replace them BEFORE they die and not after.
Just know that all the money you WOULD have had to spend on physical shelves and entertainment cabinets can now be spent instead on buying new mirrored HDs every two years. Whether the old ones are still running or not...
I have 1TB of music, without RAID or any backup system. I live in constant fear.