From: "oryoki2000" <>
>
> I'm guessing that the first release of Toshiba's drive will be 2GB.
> This is enough space for almost three hours of stereo 16/48 PCM
> recording.
Note they talked about storing 60 hours of music, or a couple hours high
quality video. Clearly these things will be used with considerable
compression.
> More interesting than the drive will be its packaging. Cornice, a
> competitor, sells its tiny disc product as a bare drive, suitable for
> embedding directly on the system board. Hitachi packages their 1
> inch drive in a Compactflash Type II card, so it's removable in the
> field.
>
> A smaller disc size means much less storage space, and much higher
> prices. Maximum storage available today using a one-inch disc is
> Hitachi's 4GB Microdrive, list price $500. Go up to a 1.8 inch disc,
> and maximum storage increases to 40GB, as in the Toshiba disc used in
> the iPod. Price is ~$200, but you can't buy one -- Apple and Toshiba
> use the entire production in their music players. A Toshiba drive
> with 2.5 inch platter holds 60GB, and costs about $175. These drives
> are commonly used in notebook computers, and are used in the new
> generation of digital field recorders like the Sound Devices 722 and
> Nagra V.
>
> --oryoki
We should not get into the mode of expecting infinite expansion of
capacity with time. Some of the most data dense hard drives now are
approaching putting each bit on only one particle of magnetic material
in the disk coating. That's a limit that's going to be hard to get around.
There are similar limits in the solid state memory too.
We are going to come to the end of rapid expansion of memory with little
increase in cost.
And, because memory demands will continue to increase, expect the
increasing use of compression.
Walt
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