Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Super Size Storage - (He Just Can't Get Enough)
Posted by Jonathon Watkins in "THOUGHT" @ 06:00 AM
"Now 32 petabytes - that really is a serious amount of storage. A 32 "pet" media player could hold about seven billion MP3s or roughly 50 million movies - surely that would be enough for even the most avid cinema buff or music nut? If I've learned anything from Depeche Mode and my old 64Mb player, it's that 32 petabytes probably won't be enough. So it must only be a matter of time before the exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte and finally the brontobyte media player appears on the market. A brontobyte is million million petabytes, enough to store everything that's ever been filmed, taped, photographed, recorded, written, spoken, and probably even thought. Still, it would probably be wise to wait for the 10 bront model, just to be on the safe side."
The BBC has just put up an amusing, but thought provoking article about digital storage space. The columnist tells a tale that most of us will recognise. When he started out with his 64Mb MP3 player he was happy with the capacity, and now the sky is the limit. Sound familiar? He talks about how the current generation 40Gb MP3 players should be large enough for most folk's music collection and speculates about the emerging generation of 'personal media' players and their insatiable demand for storage capacity to fit in multiple films. Maybe it's just me, but I don't have a burning desire to carry around 50 films me all the time. If you do a lot of long distance travelling I can see how that would be useful, but how many folks will want regular mobile access to that that number of films?
Do you reckon that the BBC columnist is correct in that demand of mobile personal storage will inexorably continue to rise? I have 35Gb+ of music and 30Gb+ of data (though that's increasing fast with an 8Mp camera to add more photos). As I don't make digital videos or collect films, I just don't see my storage needs making a step change. Sure, it adds up, but have you seen the prices of 250Gb hard disks recently? Heck, at those prices I'll have two and do RAID 1 disk mirroring for peace of mind. Are potential disk capacities rising faster than our abilities to fill them, or are we chasing rainbows, never able to connect? At what point does the increase in storage space catch up with our wants, let alone our needs? Thoughts?
The BBC has just put up an amusing, but thought provoking article about digital storage space. The columnist tells a tale that most of us will recognise. When he started out with his 64Mb MP3 player he was happy with the capacity, and now the sky is the limit. Sound familiar? He talks about how the current generation 40Gb MP3 players should be large enough for most folk's music collection and speculates about the emerging generation of 'personal media' players and their insatiable demand for storage capacity to fit in multiple films. Maybe it's just me, but I don't have a burning desire to carry around 50 films me all the time. If you do a lot of long distance travelling I can see how that would be useful, but how many folks will want regular mobile access to that that number of films?
Do you reckon that the BBC columnist is correct in that demand of mobile personal storage will inexorably continue to rise? I have 35Gb+ of music and 30Gb+ of data (though that's increasing fast with an 8Mp camera to add more photos). As I don't make digital videos or collect films, I just don't see my storage needs making a step change. Sure, it adds up, but have you seen the prices of 250Gb hard disks recently? Heck, at those prices I'll have two and do RAID 1 disk mirroring for peace of mind. Are potential disk capacities rising faster than our abilities to fill them, or are we chasing rainbows, never able to connect? At what point does the increase in storage space catch up with our wants, let alone our needs? Thoughts?
