Hitachi outs a pair of 4TB HDDs for your storing pleasure — Engadget
Article
Hitachi outs a pair of 4TB HDDs for your storing pleasure — Engadget
My Comments
Hitachi has raised the ante again for hard-disk storage by delivering a 4Tb 3.5” hard-disk unit. They have packaged it as a retail-sold aftermarket retrofit kit with SATA connectivity for around US$399 and as a USB 3.0-connected external hard disk for US$420.
The Engadget article went on about us thinking of cloud storage as the way to go for personal data storage and that it would please those of us who place emphasis on desktop-local or NAS-hosted data storage. This would include most business operators who want direct control over their business data. I also see this hard disk as being relevant to the network-attached storage sector where you place emphasis on data capacity with these devices as they become local warehouses for high-definition video, high-quality music and high-resolution photos.
A question that may need to be raised with NAS applications is whether the NAS’s firmware / operating-system can address unique physical disks with a capacity of 4 or more terabytes. Here, I would suspect that most Linux-based firmwares could do so but even if the current firmware can’t address the 4Tb or more physical disk, a subsequent version could support the volume size.
Of course, as more hard-disk plants in Taiwan get back to full steam after the floods and more of the 4Tb hard disks come on the market, the prices could reduce where this capacity becomes more reasonable for home and small-business users. Other interesting factors that could come of this include the development of single-unit 2.5” hard disks with capacities of 1Tb or greater or smaller hard-disks with higher capacities that would appeal to those of us with a need for higher mobile data capacity.
