When would we expect to see 1PB (Petabyte) Hard Drives in production?

I will go out on a limb here and say not for quite a while. The reasons I say this are:

1. If you have your own drive(s) you know how long it takes, even at USB 3 speeds to fill it up. I have been downloading stuff and ripping my own CDs for a couple of years and am nowhere near the 3TB limit on my drive. Why would I want a 1000tb drive?

2.The continuing shrinkage of hard drives should not be able to continue as it has over the last 30 years. I do remember my first computer which had no hard drive. I spent $225 for a 10 pound monster so I could put all of my stuff on it. Turns out, I could fit 50,000 of those drives on the 1tb drive in my laptop. The problem is, just as in Moore’s law re: the number of components on a microprocessor, they are getting into dividing subatomic spaces into smaller sizes, which just may not be possible. I may be totally wrong here.

Maybe somebody will come up with a new laser guided whiz bang method of storage that will make everything we have at this moment obsolete.

So, to answer your question, we will see that capability in the year 2032 however it won’t be a drive at all. It will be some new laser guided whiz bang method of storage.

PS It is astounding to think that there is more computing power in an ipod than there was in all of NASA when we put a man on the moon!

Petabyte Hard Drive

Hi,

That’s basically right … the next drive won;t actually be a drive so to speak … Just for the spacial limitatuons of the current method, and that the platter has to have certain sizes to write to with the read/write heads.

It will probably be some kind of condensed liquid or gel substance that can store indefinitely, and when in a gel form, be written to or erased by simply melting it into it’a liquid state – but that will prob’ly take like a quick burst of 3000+ degrees so that room temperatures won’t accidentally erase it.

G’Luck!!

When then they first come out they will most certainly be expensive, but as usual the price will come down as production increases.

A few on here have asked “why would you want one”… I recall that same question being asked about the 1 Gb drive back in the early 90’s. The more advanced computer technology, the more complex and larger the software written will be and will require more space.

Thomas J. Watson, the IBM CEO who gave his name to the Watson famous AI once said that there would not be a market for more that 4 or 5 computers on Earth! With each generation we see that gluttony on computer speed AND storage has no limit. This preamble to say that, of course there will be a need for 1 petabytes (and more) hard drives and sooner than later with the internet of things, all the sensor data those things will emit and the big data processing ensured. IMHO, the first petabyte storage devices will be descendant of current SSD technology as HD with rotational parts will be phased out around 2018.

You should be able to buy your first one around 2022. By 2024 this should be a common item ?

I m a game reviewer and have been recording hours of HD 60 fps footage. Doing this regularly will fill up any consumer level hard drive in a matter of months.

Of course you can delete the footage as you go, though I really want to have like a massive backlog collection of footage. Just put hundreds of hours of gameplay into a playlist, hit shuffle, put it on and go to sleep watching it.

Just wanted to comment on the best answer “nobody would use that much” just wanted to point out that backing up blue rays takes about 25-40 gigs. That’s 1080p. We now have 4000p and it’s constantly rising. It’s scary as he’ll because just transferring gigs take a while on USB 3.0 I don’t even want to know how much space a 4k pixels disc would take. As our media clarity gets better the sizes do as we’ll. Just hope they get USB 4.0’s before they get 100 gigabyte movies lol

Approximately 14-16 years based on historical data, we should see a Petabyte hard drive on the market

5-10 years til the IT and Gov have them, 10-15 until the public does. They have 185TB Cassette tapes and are working on 1 PB CD roms. The next leap for the consumer is 6TB Hydrogen drives which are currently being manufactured for data centers. The ‘best’ answer is incorrect in assuming moores law would stand the test of time. And as to his USB3.0 speed reference, there are already mobile phone drives being manufactured by both samsung and sandisk twice as quick, and that’ll be the new slow.

Well, up to 10GB HD s now. Only need 100 of those! Doubled in 3 yrs. So I give it 18 yrs from 2016. 2034 ?

Considering 4K movies are expected to be around 160 GB each, might not be as far fetched as you’d think.