In this months Popular Science they have an article about the new "holodraphic drives" which can store 300 gigs on a single disc, and they expect each disc to eventually hold 1.6 terabytes.
We've been hearing about holographic breakthrus for so many years it isn't funny... It seems like we haven't had any really big breakthrus, just incremental improvement..
Raw storage in 2002-2003 was over .51/GB for 250GB WD ATA drives. That was the sweet spot. More recently, it is around .27-.28 with SATA WD 500's at $139. I think it might get down closer to .20 with sale prices. I always look at the raw storage cost and then factor in what it takes to use it.
So if I can build a linux tower that can take 10 500 GB drives for $400.. That's $400+$1390 (10x$139) for about 4850 formatted GB... Or about 36.9 cents per networked gig = $375 per networked TB. And that would be a pretty powerful machine that could do other stuff.
I've seen a lot of 4 drive enclosures for $600 or so.. Even at 500GB per drive that's 62 cents per gig. So those have never worked for me. My main music machine is maxed and I'd like to expand the drive space without building *and powering* another whole machine.. Maybe a new PSU in a new case with shielded cables to the orig box.. Biggest obstacle seems to be getting more cheap SATA ports.
Anyone using power mgmt on their drives? Most of mine sit idle and could be spun down.. Though I wonder what impact that might have on long term reliability?