Hard Light Productions Forums

Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: aldo_14 on November 18, 2004, 07:22:18 am

Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: aldo_14 on November 18, 2004, 07:22:18 am
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/18/seagate_400gb/
Hard drive maker Seagate has begun shipping what it claims is the world's highest capacity PC hard drive: a 400GB beast that's also the first drive of its class to hold up to 133GB on a single platter.

At its announcement last June, the Barracuda 7200.8 was also said to offer "the industry's first native Serial ATA interface with native command queuing". Clearly, some crafty rival has got there ahead of Seagate. Now the 7200.8 is actually shipping, the company simply refers instead to its "most advanced single-chip native Serial ATA (SATA) interface with native command queuing".
Click Here

NCQ allows drive read and write commands to be re-ordered to minimise the movement of the drive heads. The upshot is faster access and reduced wear and tear, boosting the drive's longevity.

Indeed, Seagate claimed the 7200rpm 7200.8 is able to match the performance of a 10,000rpm Serial ATA, thanks to NCQ and the use of asynchronous I/O.

The 3.5in 7200.8 ships with either 8MB or 16MB of cache, and comes in 200, 250 and 300GB flavours in addition to the 400GB model. Each offers an average seek time of 8ms. Seagate is also offering Ultra ATA versions as well as the native Serial ATA units
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Setekh on November 18, 2004, 09:15:07 am
My 30gb suddenly feels inadequate. Oh, for the days when 1.44mb was enough to store my OS and all the "media" I ever needed...
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: kode on November 18, 2004, 09:42:05 am
Quote
Originally posted by Setekh
My 30gb suddenly feels inadequate. Oh, for the days when 1.44mb was enough to store my OS and all the "media" I ever needed...


that'd be the '70s then? heck, dos 3 was on 3 floppy discs, win 3.1 on 5 or so.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Stealth on November 18, 2004, 09:55:23 am
naaa it wasn't even that long ago, i remember in the mid 90s, with windows 95 i had a 3 GB hard drive, and it sufficed.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: aldo_14 on November 18, 2004, 10:11:25 am
I remember my first Pc (486DX/2 66MhZ - whoaff!) had something like a 45MB hard drive.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: kode on November 18, 2004, 10:23:12 am
Quote
Originally posted by Stealth
naaa it wasn't even that long ago, i remember in the mid 90s, with windows 95 i had a 3 GB hard drive, and it sufficed.


well, a 3gb drive is ~2000 times more spacy than a floppy disc. early 90's hdd's generally had around 100-300mb, I think I even had a 500mb one.

my laptop 386 has an 80mb drive, iirc. I can't get it working anymore - the drive in question died, I think.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Fineus on November 18, 2004, 10:38:25 am
Think of the defrag times on one of those babies... sheesh...
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Liberator on November 18, 2004, 10:42:43 am
This to me just screams "ARCHIVE!".  

Maybe it's my mistrust of something so compact, but methinks you should have a 40gb for day to day ops and use this for longterm media and data storage.  The access times are going to be gigantic, I don't care what nifty shortcuts they've cooked up.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: karajorma on November 18, 2004, 12:24:08 pm
Quote
Originally posted by kode


that'd be the '70s then? heck, dos 3 was on 3 floppy discs, win 3.1 on 5 or so.


Yeah but windows has always been a hog. Get a better operting system and you could have kept using a disk until the late 80s at least.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Carl on November 18, 2004, 12:32:50 pm
no, in the seventies you had a 256 byte HD. it could store a short document, that's about it.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: kode on November 18, 2004, 12:52:06 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Carl
no, in the seventies you had a 256 byte HD. it could store a short document, that's about it.


liar.

I'm not sure there were any hard drives for home use back then, but the ones that existed could definitely store more than 256 bytes. the first ibm-pc with a hard drive had a 10mb one.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: SKYNET-011 on November 18, 2004, 01:04:02 pm
Why would you need that much?
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: ZylonBane on November 18, 2004, 01:14:15 pm
I look at drives like that and just think: All eggs -> One basket.

There was an interesting editorial I read a few years back about how hard drive capacity is growing at such a rate that we almost never need to delete anything anymore. Gone are the days of having to remove files to make room for something else... now when we run out of space, we just buy a bigger hard drive and move everything over. I'm pretty sure I have stuff on my hard drive that I haven't looked at in years, but I still keep it on the drive, just in case.

Oh, and Carl, the first hard drive was introduced in 1956 by IBM, and had a ~4.4MB storage capacity.
http://www.cedmagic.com/history/ibm-305-ramac.html
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: kasperl on November 18, 2004, 01:55:44 pm
But before there were HD's as such, people did indead use machines with a couple of bytes of memory, and a kilobyte being a lot.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Mad Bomber on November 18, 2004, 02:42:34 pm
Heh. I've been working with 400GB SATA HD's this size for a couple months now, at work.

(Or rather, my co-workers have. I'm not actually on that project. But eh, close enough.)
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: SKYNET-011 on November 18, 2004, 03:04:16 pm
I'd rather have multiple hard drives. That way, if 1 dies, it's not a total loss.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Sandwich on November 18, 2004, 03:54:39 pm
Quote
Originally posted by ZylonBane
I look at drives like that and just think: All eggs -> One basket.

There was an interesting editorial I read a few years back about how hard drive capacity is growing at such a rate that we almost never need to delete anything anymore. Gone are the days of having to remove files to make room for something else... now when we run out of space, we just buy a bigger hard drive and move everything over. I'm pretty sure I have stuff on my hard drive that I haven't looked at in years, but I still keep it on the drive, just in case.

Oh, and Carl, the first hard drive was introduced in 1956 by IBM, and had a ~4.4MB storage capacity.
http://www.cedmagic.com/history/ibm-305-ramac.html


:wtf: Who are you, and why are you posting exactly what I think? ;)
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Grey Wolf on November 18, 2004, 05:51:32 pm
I'm fairly sure Hitachi beat them to it, as that one has been in the stores for at least a week.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Ford Prefect on November 18, 2004, 06:00:37 pm
You could have complete archives of all the porn ever created by humanity.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Liberator on November 18, 2004, 06:58:14 pm
:shaking:
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Turnsky on November 18, 2004, 08:26:02 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Setekh
My 30gb suddenly feels inadequate. Oh, for the days when 1.44mb was enough to store my OS and all the "media" I ever needed...


y'know, i want to just put XP on a hoarde of floppies just for ****s and giggles.. but DAMN, that's a lot of floppies, tho..:lol:
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Stealth on November 18, 2004, 08:36:04 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Ford Prefect
You could have complete archives of all the porn ever created by humanity.


umm are you kidding me?  :p
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Setekh on November 19, 2004, 07:12:51 am
Quote
Originally posted by Turnsky


y'know, i want to just put XP on a hoarde of floppies just for ****s and giggles.. but DAMN, that's a lot of floppies, tho..:lol:


Actually, I think Win2k is indeed available on floppy disks - you request the order and they ship you the crate, and it has something like 400 floppy disks in there. Oh man, it's ridiculous. :p

And you know, now that you mention it, that's a good point. I just realised that I have a really well-organised backup system that none of my friends share.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: mitac on November 19, 2004, 11:19:57 am
Reminds me of the later Amiga games, like Ambermoon or Monkey Island 2. What was it, 12 or 15 Disks? That already felt like a lot of stuff.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: ChronoReverse on November 19, 2004, 11:31:03 am
Quote
Originally posted by Grey Wolf 2009
I'm fairly sure Hitachi beat them to it, as that one has been in the stores for at least a week.


"Hard drive maker Seagate has begun shipping what it claims is the world's highest capacity PC hard drive: a 400GB beast that's also the first drive of its class to hold up to 133GB on a single platter."


The Hitachi drive had 5 platters IIRC.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: karajorma on November 19, 2004, 04:48:45 pm
Quote
Originally posted by mitac
Reminds me of the later Amiga games, like Ambermoon or Monkey Island 2. What was it, 12 or 15 Disks? That already felt like a lot of stuff.


11 plus a save game disk. I was very glad I had a second disk drive I can tell you :D

And that wasn't that late an Amiga game. Freespace 1 is a later Amga game. Monkey Island II came out in the early middle of the Amiga's history :)
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: mitac on November 19, 2004, 05:11:27 pm
Quote
Originally posted by karajorma


11 plus a save game disk. I was very glad I had a second disk drive I can tell you :D

And that wasn't that late an Amiga game. Freespace 1 is a later Amga game. Monkey Island II came out in the early middle of the Amiga's history :)


Well, it was in MY late Amiga history, then. ;) I don't know when I sold it, but I can tell I never had a 2nd disk drive. The larger memory on my A1200 helped a lot, though. With the A500 it was a *****.

BTW, I almost had forgotten about that FS conversion for the Amiga, as I wasn't aware of FS at that time. One of the last things I played on that thing has probably been Wing Commander. Dunno.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Clave on November 19, 2004, 05:23:58 pm
400GB? pfft... my keychain USB has more than that.... oh wait...

Anyway, the important thing is to have enough room for games... no... pr0n... no.... games..... no...... Word Documents, yes that's it.....
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Blitzerland on November 20, 2004, 08:33:08 am
Back on my ol' Win 95 system, our HD space was limited to 1.5 gigs per partition. So, we purchased a huge new hardrive, but had to divide it into 12 partitions (Drives C, D, E, F, G, H, etc).

Can you say "clutter?"

It took forever to find anything on that computer...
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: mitac on November 20, 2004, 08:45:43 am
Updating your Windows 95 would have helped. With Win95 "0" and "A", the maximum partition size was 2 GB, with Win95 "B" it increased to current levels, using Fat32 instead of Fat16.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: kasperl on November 20, 2004, 11:53:02 am
mitac: Not IIRC, it also depends on mobo, especially when you're running on the 1,5 GB barrier. I installed a 20GB drive on a P122Mhz IBM (horror)  a while ago. I could do 5 or so 1,5 GB partitions, and then the mobo simply stopped adressing the stuff. Mind, that machine calculated oddly: Give it 4 sticks of 4 MB RAM, it tells you it has 14MB. Take it two, add two of 8MB (so you get 2*4+2*8) and it tells you 23MB.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Clave on November 20, 2004, 05:08:33 pm
Weird...  I presume everything like that was fixed in XP? but it's odd how the OS does not understand the hardware.  You would have thought that there would be some margin built in; ie: the ability to address 100GB of RAM and partition a 10TB HD, because you know we will all be there at some point...
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: kode on November 20, 2004, 06:15:37 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Clave
Weird...  I presume everything like that was fixed in XP? but it's odd how the OS does not understand the hardware.  You would have thought that there would be some margin built in; ie: the ability to address 100GB of RAM and partition a 10TB HD, because you know we will all be there at some point...


well, with 32-bit processors, the ram limit is around 4gb (2^32). hard drives partitioned larger than 132gb was fixed with sp1.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Sandwich on November 21, 2004, 01:15:47 am
*whistles happily*
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: kasperl on November 21, 2004, 05:39:32 am
Bastard.

Clave: NT and 2K couldn't do files bigger then 4GB, rather annoying for raw video, it seems. But XP and NTFS do files as big as parititions, a couple of 100GB IIRC. It could've been nearing TB though. RAM is limited by the processor architecture, so a 64 bit pro should do 2^64==enough for now.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: Cabbie on November 21, 2004, 07:00:39 am
Quote
Originally posted by Ford Prefect
You could have complete archives of all the porn ever created by humanity.


I don't think that can ever be possible.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: kode on November 21, 2004, 09:23:43 am
Quote
Originally posted by kasperl
Bastard.

Clave: NT and 2K couldn't do files bigger then 4GB


are you on drugs?
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: kasperl on November 21, 2004, 09:44:18 am
No, perhaps I've just read the wrong computer mag, or the limit is just for FAT drives.
Title: Seagate ships 'world first' 400GB PC HDDs
Post by: kode on November 21, 2004, 09:55:19 am
that limit is for FAT, yes.