What are the data points? The bigger available HDD for the general public?
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Yes. So that one from 1980 is the ST-506, the first hard drive that we might think of as a 'modern' hard drive. And from there I just recorded the largest available to the public in each year listed.
This chart mirrors what I have felt, that HDD size increase has slowed way down.
We had a 500 mbyte in our win 3.11 box in 94. 2004 I think I had an 80gb
SSDs are already at 100TB at datacenters type stuff. expensive as f*** but it exists.
Samsung revealed 256TB SSDs for datacenters for next year...
What isn't shown in the chart is the price for larger drives. We've had prices in the thousands (discussing dollars), then in the hundreds, then the HUGE difference was made from the crisis started at the end of 2011, when we started with 2TBs going towards 25/TB (ok, usually 30+ but in any case way under 100 for a 2TB drive). The prices went up and then barely recovered. Not only the maximum capacity didn't increase too fast but also the price per TB didn't decrease much. We aren't nitpicking here that it's between 25/TB and 15/TB or 35 and 12.5, we're talking orders of magnitude like it was the case for these intervals before. There isn't anything worth mentioning into double digits anymore (spinning drives under $100). And it isn't that there wasn't inflation in the 80s, 90s and 2000s, this thing with nearly zero inflation was just some part of 2010s.
There are people even now (well, as of yesterday) in this sub that would recommend 4TB spinning drives for 135 Euros. That is when you can have SSDs at around 150 with the right sale (a little under even if accept Samsung's QLC, which is fine).
Prior to 2011 the trend was for GB/dollar to double very 14 months. (source mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte)
Post 2011 the trend is for GB/dollar to double every... 10 years maybe.
The HDD market went to shit due to mergers and price-fixing.
I predict Holographic Data Storage will be the final evolution of data storage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage
Now imagine programmers still had to optimize their code like before.
Cpu's and hdd's make it so easy to not care. A graphics driver shouldn't be 300MB. Not even with utilities. Looking at you nVidia.
The reasaon for the slowdown is because the problem has stopped being about engineering and is now about physics. Sectors have become so tight onto HDD it's getting finicky to make them work and keep writting and reading and stuff like EM interference and even cosmic rays are playing a part.
It's why tapes have had a comeback with LTO format, as the advances of HDD engineering can be applied to tapes but weren't till now. Sadly tapes are pretty slow due to again physics as you can only spin a strip of plastic with chemicals on it so fast before you strat risking it tearing the fuck up.
has stopped being about engineering and is now about physics
(ePMR), HAMR and MAMR to the rescue!
Can confirm, my first HDD was 80 MB.
At this point I’d say there isn’t much incentive to make HDDs more data dense. For the cost of making an HDD with 50TB it would be easier to just buy two 25TB drives. Most people aren’t going to fill 20TB on a system. For content creators like videographers, architects, photographers, that store a lot of data and projects long term, a multi bay NAS setup is the go to
... this chart shows exactly what you are making fun of, that HDD growth has slowed down a lot.
the damn curve is flatting down and i dont like it !