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Hardware Desktops Soon to Ship With 8TB of Storage
Tuan Nguyen (Blog) - March 1, 2006 4:33 PM

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28 comment(s) - last by Wwhat.. on Mar 7 at 8:01 PM

Just a few years ago, a 1GB HD set me back nearly $900

Memory has always been a sticker for Windows upgrades. Each time Microsoft prepares for an OS release, memory and storage companies wait in anticipation because more memory is always required. Industry insiders however, predict that with Windows Vista, memory will not play as big of a role as it has been for the last several years. Instead, storage capacity will be the number one concern.

With HD video, music, and saving broadcasts to disk becoming ever popular, this trend wouldn't be much of a surprise. Hard drives of all types have become extremely affordable and knowing Windows, hard drive capacity requirements will always be high. Despite this, manufacturers are beginning to build systems that offer capacities in excess of 500GB with some systems shipping with over 1TB off the shelf.

In an interview with Voodoo PC, the manufacturer says that it may begin to ship systems with up to 8TB of storage, possibly with a sticker price of $8,000 to $9,000.

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Addicting

By littlebitstrouds on 3/1/2006 4:42:30 PM , Rating: 2

I can't get enough of it... I'm a junkie of Hardrive space so I love this. I've kept and purchased every hardrive I could for the past 2 years. Now I've got 7hd's of every size and shape in my main rig for a total of 1.3tb of storage. I can honestly say though that with MCE there are times, if I'm busy and can't watch my recordings right away, when I can almost fill half of that with every show I record.

RE: Addicting

By sandytheguy on 3/1/2006 8:00:57 PM , Rating: 2

Right on. I'm up to 15 HDD's at 1920GB's and I'm constantly working to free up space. Bring on the 500+GB drives I say.

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RE: Addicting

By tuteja1986 on 3/1/2006 9:53:28 PM , Rating: 2

http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/28/voodoopc-plans-...

$350 500GB HDs * 16 = $5600
Case: $400 (Case w/LCD)
CPU: $500
Mobo: $150
PSU: $150
Video: $250
RAM: $200
DVD-ROM: $50
Cooling System: $50
Well it would end up costing about $7000 if i built something like that now

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RE: Addicting

By defter on 3/2/2006 6:48:24 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
$350 500GB HDs * 16 = $5600

1. How exactly are you going to connect these HDs? With normal motherboard (2 ATA channel, 4 SATA ports) you can connect 6 HDs easily (assuming that you put only one HD/ATA channel, otherwise performance will suffer). This means that you will have to find a way to how to connect rest 10 HDs. Since number of expansion slots will be limited, you might have to buy 4 port SATA controller cards which aren't cheap.

2. Where will you put them? I don't think that even a full ATX tower has a space for 16HDs.

3. You will need an extra power supply or two for those 16 HDs.

Building 8TB storage system isn't very easy or cheap currently. There will be a lot of extra costs in addition to the cost of HDs.

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RE: Addicting

By ATWindsor on 3/2/2006 7:53:11 AM , Rating: 2

1. A "high-class" mobo has 8 sata-ports, and 4 pata, that means 1 extra controller, and although they aren't cheap compared to a mobo, they aren't overly expensive either, I don't know US prices, but 50$ maybe?

2. Bigger towers has space enough for 16 discs, (CM stacker for instance).

3. Do you? My fileserver has a single 480 watt, and 10 disks, with a bit bigger CPU i would guess you can do fine with 1. I saw a guy with 51 disks, he used 3 PSUs.

If you just think you purchase through, and by a solid an big tower, with a solid PSU, ir reasonably easy, but it is pretty expensive, I'll give you that :)

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RE: Addicting

By Wwhat on 3/7/2006 7:59:17 PM , Rating: 2

Of course sata hd's don't even have to be in the same case really.

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By bunnyfubbles on 3/1/2006 6:09:30 PM , Rating: 4

quote:
Just a few years ago, a 1GB HD set me back nearly $900

Last I checked, a decade was a little more than a "few" years. Few means 2 or 3, little more at best.

Although I understand what the comment is trying to accomplish, lets be realistic please.

RE: BS

By theslug on 3/1/2006 8:45:54 PM , Rating: 2

Even then, paying that much for a drive is a ripoff.

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RE: BS

By hans007 on 3/1/2006 9:28:12 PM , Rating: 2

thats far more than 10 years ago too.

in 1997 i bought a 3.5 gb hard drive from frys for about $190.

i'd figure it had to be at least 15 years ago.

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RE: BS

By Jedi2155 on 3/1/2006 10:44:09 PM , Rating: 2

Sounds more like 1993-95. My first computer had a 250 MB hard drive back in 1994 and I was stuck with that all the way till 1999...gosh that was annoying.

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$9,000 or a DVR

By osalcido on 3/1/06, Rating: 0

Not just DVR function

By lennylim on 3/1/2006 5:24:10 PM , Rating: 2

I'd imagine the main reason for so much HDD space for storing video is if you're editing or creating content, not just recording off the air / cable / satellite.

What about Blu Ray? Dual layer 12cm Blu Ray discs can store 50GB per disc.

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RE: Not just DVR function

By latrosicarius on 3/2/2006 12:49:31 AM , Rating: 1

I thought they were going to be 13 cm or some crazy sh**. Just enough to NOT fit in a 5.25 bay drive.

anywho, you gotta be careful with some of these things like ordering a butt load of HDD space b/c most current operating systems don't support arrays over 4TB.

I got about 1.5TB now, soon to be upgrading cuz of so much music & videos

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RE: $9,000 or a DVR

By Motley on 3/1/2006 5:39:56 PM , Rating: 2

The fact that your DVR runs out of space after 4-6 hours of HiDef content? And blueray and HD-DVD Recorders? Those are good for 2-3 hours. Of course my DVR can't play games, balance my checkbook, or browse the web (very well atleast).

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RE: $9,000 or a DVR

By spwrozek on 3/1/2006 5:48:20 PM , Rating: 2

You have to take into consideration that it is still a computer. I had a DVR for a while and you can record and play back and that is about it. The way Voodoo builds PC's I am sure you could realistically be doing a TON more stuff then using it as a DVR. It may sound steep to you but I would bet that, since I am sure it is an HTPC, Voodoo is using its own custom cooling. Most likely water cooled cpu and gpu since you would want the machine to be quiet. It is also in no crappy dell case, You are going to have a great CPU and GPU and MOBO. They do not put crap into their machines. They are going to setup the raid for you. All your programs installed and it will be completely stable. Can you do it cheaper by yourself? Sure, but you have to do that all by yourself and deal with noise and the raid and they give you a year of support.

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RE: $9,000 or a DVR

By jkresh on 3/1/2006 5:58:35 PM , Rating: 2

Most dvr's can only record a few hours of hd, 8tb's could hold hundreds of hours, which no consumer dvr can currently do. Plus as others have said it’s also a high quality pc so it’s silly to compare the two. Another thing to consider is if it uses current 500gig drives then its using 16 hard drives, which requires a rather large case, and with a retail price over $300 per drive, then 8-9 grand for the machine doesn’t sound so bad (with nearly 5grand in the drives alone). I don’t expect it to be mainstream at that price, but I can certainly see uses for it (having both 2 comcast hd dvrs and a mce system with 1.1tb’s of space, I know how fast it can get used if you are recording in hd).

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Foolish

By nordicpc on 3/2/2006 9:59:42 AM , Rating: 2

I was talking to some people about this, and not only is 8TB ridiculously expensive right now, but if you want it to be usable, it'll need to be in a RAID array of some sort. That means a 16-port controller card, which last I checked there's only one of them on Newegg, the Adaptec 21610SA. You'll need 64-bit PCI for that montser.Not to mention, if you go with RAID-1 across 16 drives, the time to failure is going to be very quick, loosing all 8TB of data. Even if we are able to double hard drive capacity by the end of the year with perpendicular recording, we're still looking at 8 drives, which isn't crazy, but not for the home.

The only thing that would be worthwhile would be to setup a rack in your closet with gig-e all over the house, and put a dedicated box in there with RAID 50 or something. We've got a 3U box from Supermicro that holds 14 drives, so 4TB or so isn't out of the question. 8TB, Rahul you go too far.

RE: Foolish

By Eris23007 on 3/2/2006 1:19:12 PM , Rating: 3

You're thinking Raid 0 (striping) across all 16 drives being an MTBF problem.

Raid 1 (mirroring) across those drives would be a solution, though I agree a RAID 5-based setup with a hardware controller card (I can't imagine asking the host CPU to do that many XORs and still run well) would be a pretty good solution if 8TB were really that necessary.

Anyway... In a few years I do think we'll get holographic storage going in a practical way, and hopefully HDs will be a thing of the past (wouldn't that be nice).

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RE: Foolish

By Wwhat on 3/7/2006 8:01:58 PM , Rating: 2

Oh so very nice yes, can't wait :]

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HD Space

By drunkenmastermind on 3/2/2006 2:11:23 AM , Rating: 2

Why have Terabytes when you could have...Petabytes!

RE: HD Space

By Brassbud on 3/2/2006 3:22:54 AM , Rating: 2

My main desktop uses one 80 GB HDD and is 50% free right now. Sure, I'm not doing much content creation, and my music exists mainly in my head, but until individual programs start getting in the 100 GB+ range, I think I'll be fine with a sub 500GB HDD...but we shall see.

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RE: HD Space

By sieistganzfett on 3/2/2006 7:25:51 AM , Rating: 2

if individual programs get into the 100GB+ range, they damn well better run well and look real (if they are games/sims for something) or they better be using the 100GB for some good purpose. I'd hate to see that 5yrs from now where they just manage to waste space for something like MSword.

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back in the day...

By OzQuant on 3/1/2006 6:31:35 PM , Rating: 2

I remember in the good ol' days... I think it was '90 or '91 that I got my first PC (upgrade from C64 and Amiga) and it came with a 50MB hard drive and at the time, 'standard' systems shipped with 20MB and all my friends were saying "what are you gonna do with all that hdd space?", or "why did you get a PC with so much space" ? And couple of years after that, I remember I saved up $700 and drove like an hour to buy a 200MB drive.

Now I have HDDs everywhere in my house - 2 Tivos, (200GB each), 3 PCs (300+40+200+120 GB), Xbox (120GB), satellite decoder (80GB), portable multimedia player (20GB)

RE: back in the day...

By SunAngel on 3/1/06, Rating: -1

RE: back in the day...

By rushnrockt on 3/1/2006 11:54:03 PM , Rating: 2

pocket lint (2 gigs)...

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Never enough

By Viper007Bond on 3/1/2006 5:15:24 PM , Rating: 2

It'll never be enough. It didn't take me much time after I got my 400 gig HD quite a while back to fill it up. :/

Hell, a 1080i rip of a movie is 12 gigs... EACH.