300 teraBITS is not 300TB! And 3TB isn't 300TB!

Posted on Friday, January 05 2007 @ 20:52 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Three days ago Wired published an article in which they stated that Seagate will be able to deliver a 300 terabits HDD within a few years with their new heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology.

Unfortunately most media reports didn't notice the article talks about bits and published articles with stuff like "Seagate planning 300TB HDD!". I believe Joystiq was one of the first sites which reported this. They even claim this HDD will be able to store 6,144 50 GB Blu-ray disks.

Well, that's wrong. 300 terabits isn't 300TB (terabyte), it's 37.5TB. So on a 300TB drive you can't store 6,144 50GB Blu-ray disks, it would be only 768 50GB Blu-ray disks. Which is ofcourse still plenty.

Many news sites didn't carefully read the text on Wired and stated 300TB instead of 37.5TB. This includes The Inquirer, HardOCP, Bit Tech and probably lots of blogs and forums too. I guess thousands of people worldwide now think that they can expect the first 300TB HDDs within a couple of years. Well, that's wrong.

This whole story gets even funnier as about an hour ago TechWorld reports that even the 37.5TB story is wrong. They contacted Seagate and got this response:
"By 2010, perpendicular recording will remain as the technology used and 3.5-inch drives will range from 1200 to 3000 GB capacities depending on the applications (desktop class drives that don't require the same performance densities as enterprise drives are expected to have the higher capacities). Seagate research's estimates are that 50 terabit-per-square-inch density may be achievable using HAMR with perhaps a combination of Bit Patterned Media but that's moving well past the 2010 timeframe."
So there you have it. No 300TB or 37.5TB HDDs by 2010 and no HAMR by 2010. There won't be an unusual quick jump to 37.5TB in 2010, instead we can expect the first 3000GB HDDs that use perpendicular recording.

This suddenly all sounds a lot less spectacular I hope this article well reduce the amount of "Where the frack are these 300TB HDDs?" blog and forum posts in 2010 and thereafter


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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Re: 300 teraBITS is not 300TB! And 3TB isn't 300TB!
by Anonymous on Friday, January 05 2007 @ 21:00 CET
Many news sites didn't carefully read the text on Wired and stated 300TB instead of 37.5GB.

So why doyou make the same mistake? It's 37.5 TB i nstead of 37.5GB.



Re: 300 teraBITS is not 300TB! And 3TB isn't 300TB!
by Thomas De Maesschalck (lsdsmurf@dvhardware.net) on Friday, January 05 2007 @ 21:09 CET
Sorry, that was a small typo ;)



  • Reply by Anonymous on Friday, January 05 2007 @ 21:32 CET

    I know, I found it rather funny ;)

    BTW, love the site, one of my regulars!