Notebook storage :-\

[Rob Williams]

Hey peeps,

Am I the only one who's depressed over notebook storage? Toshiba recently released a 200GB drive, which is the largest in the industry. But the sad fact is, the thing is not even -that- much faster than a super fast USB thumb drive.

I don't know about anyone else here, but I know I will never own a Raptor hard drive simply for the fact that they lack so much space. I could care less about performance in that regard if I have to try to cram all of the "important" stuff into 70GB or 150GB. The same goes for laptops really... how far does 200GB go nowadays? Not far at all, especially with all the digital collections we all have.

I am curious as to whether or not this situation will improve in the near future. Flash memory is in the works, and -may- allow higher capacities, but truth is it will be expensive as hell. 4GB thumb drive costs upwards of $70 alone. Imagine a flash notebook drive at 500GB! Of course prices are going down, but still. Even then, flash is not going to be fast compared to desktop drives.

I think a new standard is needed... perhaps 3.0" drives. With perpendicular magnetic recording, I can't see how those drives couldn't hold at least 500GB and still at least retain 7200RPM. 2.5" -really- takes away a lot of potential performance thanks to it being so small, but on the other hand, 3.0" would not be THAT much larger.

I know there are laptop providers out there who are on the ball though. Toshiba and Dell are now offering laptops with TWO of these small hard drives, most totalling to 320GB. Of course, these are still not that fast at 5400RPM, but it's certainly better than a dinky 160GB.

Thanks,
Anonymous luster for notebook storage

Ok so I am not anonymous.. whatever.

 

[Greg King]

Not having a notebook now for over a year, I haven't really been too concerned with the state of laptop storage. My last notebook had an 80GB hard drive it in and for what I needed it for, it was fine. I don't need a desktop replacement. All I truly want a notebook for is remote emailing, a bit of gaming, and the ability to write reviews. At home, I store all of my media on one PC and point the notebook to the folder with the music in it. Because of this, I really do not have a need for a lot of space.

If I were to ever get a true desktop replacement notebook, lord yes I would need the space. I would want to dual boot, store all of my songs, videos and pictures as well as keep all of my emails. So yeah, space would really be needed but for what I use a notebook for, I have no need for anything over 120GB at this point.... famous last words in the storage world.

 

[Rob Williams]

Bump. My review of Seagates huge 160GB 7200 RPM drive:

http://techgage.com/article/seagate_momentus_72002_160gb_notebook_drive/

Now to wait for even larger drives...

 

[drewd]

Everybody would love a notebook that had a huge hard drive, super fast processor, loads of RAM, a big screen and a high performance GPU. Oh, and 10 hours of battery life. And make it weigh two pounds. Those last two are kind of a problem, eh?

Hard drives only have so much areal density. When you move from a 3.5 inch form factor to a 2.5" form factor, you end up with a surface area that is 50% smaller. So it boils down to just how much data you can put in a square inch of disk surface - and that's just assuming a single platter. The larger form factor will hold more physical disks than the smaller.

Next is battery life. More or larger platters means more rotational mass, which takes more energy to start and keep in motion.

It's the new technology, like perpendicular recording that makes a difference, as opposed to the brute force method. It's just that physically larger drives get a bigger bonus from those technologies because the areal density goes up as a function of the square of the radius of the disk - a small increase in the physical size of the disk gives you a big increase in area. Notebook drives will always lag desktop drives in size, unless a common form factor is developed.

Flash drives (or solid state drives) are just beginning to hit the market, but not in sizes that you're looking for. I think that 64GB is currently the largest drive in the market. It's not for lack of space in the form factor, though - there are other technical reasons for that, which will probably be overcome within the next few years.