Huge size of GOG games

[jfrost]

Hard drives shouldn't get much bigger from now on anyway. Diminishing returns. We won't need so much space and cloud storage is getting traction.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Hard drives shouldn't get much bigger from now on anyway. Diminishing returns. We won't need so much space and cloud storage is getting traction.

Not to mention the physical limitations of hard drives in the first place. You can only get so dense and spin so fast...

[AppleQueso]

But guys, I have lossless blu ray rips I need to store.

I want my 50TB HDDs!

[MrPopo]

Hard drives shouldn't get much bigger from now on anyway. Diminishing returns. We won't need so much space and cloud storage is getting traction.

Not to mention the physical limitations of hard drives in the first place. You can only get so dense and spin so fast...

Good thing we've got SSD technology supplanting it. The prices there have been steadily dropping.

[irixith]

Diminishing returns. We won't need so much space and cloud storage is getting traction.

From the days of the 300 baud modem, I've lived a life on the high seas. This life requires massive amounts of storage space, especially when one had a broad spectrum of interests. I always require more space, even for content not obtained from plundering the bounty of the sea.

I ran an HTPC long before the term was coined, and the amount of television shows and movies that have ended up there over the years is staggering. >30TB worth conservatively. I can sit down, and pretty much watch whatever I feel like whenever I have time, which frankly isn't often these days. So can visitors and family.

"Cloud storage" will never be able to afford me the same convenience or accessibility. Neither does streaming from a source like Netflix (a joke in Canada, even more so outside of a major city centre). Being able to keep my data locally allows me the freedom to have an internet connection and not be concerned with caps, throttling, slow service or a company overselling their capacity -- even not having an internet connection at all. I don't have to be concerned with legality of content that I access, nor do I have to worry about ridiculous agreements that prevent access to content in my country, nor that the content can be taken away from me when those agreements are cancelled.

Nothing beats the convenience and cost of large home-based storage. "The cloud" is a pipe dream in comparison to what can be done right now at far less cost and inconvenience.

(..and this is just talking what the industry loves to call 'consumable' content. We're not even talking about space required for other things .. software, scratch space, games, music, backups..)

[MrPopo]

From the days of the 300 baud modem, I've lived a life on the high seas. This life requires massive amounts of storage space, especially when one had a broad spectrum of interests. I always require more space, even for content not obtained from plundering the bounty of the sea.

So, if I'm reading this right, you seize ships, take their cargo, and then digitize it using the machine from Tron and store the resulting data on your hard drives?

[DinnerX]

Cloud storage is slow, services can have outages or go out of business, and to top it all off other people can see your data.

It's useful for some things but I can't see it as a replacement for hard drives.

[jfrost]

Diminishing returns. We won't need so much space and cloud storage is getting traction.

From the days of the 300 baud modem, I've lived a life on the high seas. This life requires massive amounts of storage space, especially when one had a broad spectrum of interests. I always require more space, even for content not obtained from plundering the bounty of the sea.

I ran an HTPC long before the term was coined, and the amount of television shows and movies that have ended up there over the years is staggering. >30TB worth conservatively. I can sit down, and pretty much watch whatever I feel like whenever I have time, which frankly isn't often these days. So can visitors and family.

"Cloud storage" will never be able to afford me the same convenience or accessibility. Neither does streaming from a source like Netflix (a joke in Canada, even more so outside of a major city centre). Being able to keep my data locally allows me the freedom to have an internet connection and not be concerned with caps, throttling, slow service or a company overselling their capacity -- even not having an internet connection at all. I don't have to be concerned with legality of content that I access, nor do I have to worry about ridiculous agreements that prevent access to content in my country, nor that the content can be taken away from me when those agreements are cancelled.

Nothing beats the convenience and cost of large home-based storage. "The cloud" is a pipe dream in comparison to what can be done right now at far less cost and inconvenience.

(..and this is just talking what the industry loves to call 'consumable' content. We're not even talking about space required for other things .. software, scratch space, games, music, backups..)

Yeah, there's always going to be hardcore users of something. Doesn't mean their needs will be necessarily catered to (though they might).

[RCBH928]

Maybe HDD are reaching limits in spinning and density, but how about SSD? Are they capable(physically) to be larger than current HDD? Of course they are faster and I heard more durable and reliable. Do they die too?

@RyanTheSlaya

I am not arguing, I am just trying to find estimates to remember data usage back in '99. I still have hard time believing 40GB were around, seems a lot. If you really think about it, 40GB is not unusable even for today if your not going to store media files like HD videos and Triple A games (7GB) . I can see a School ordering 40GB hard drives for computer labs to save money. Thats why I am having some difficulty believing it.

@irixith

God, why do you have 30GB of of tv shows? Ever thought that you will never have time to watch them? Plus ever thought that you probably want to go outside and do something that just sit there and watch these shows?
Do you do backups? How many?

A friend of mine has many movies/shows stored on a hard-drive. I asked him why do you do it, you know you will never going to watch them. He said its for the convenience . If I ever felt like seeing a movie, its there. I do not have to worry about it. I have a "choice" as he put it.

[MrPopo]

Maybe HDD are reaching limits in spinning and density, but how about SSD? Are they capable(physically) to be larger than current HDD? Of course they are faster and I heard more durable and reliable. Do they die too?

SSDs should be able to get larger than HDDs of the same physical size. The main limiting factor right now is the manufacturing cost of high-density flash memory. Yes, SSDs will die in the future. Flash memory can only handle a finite number of writes before they start to fail. That is why modern memory controllers will intentionally spread out the writes across the drive so that there is even wear (like rotating your tires).