I can remember swapping mainframe disk drive platters with 30 MB on each platter wondering what we would do with all that space. Now we have
more than 100,000 times that amount of space.
“Seagate achieves a whopping 6.9TB storage capacity per platter in its laboratory — 55TB to 69TB hard drives now physically possible”
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seagate-achieves-a-whopping-6-9tb-storage-capacity-per-platter-in-its-laboratory-55tb-to-69tb-hard-drives-now-physically-possible
“Hard drives remain a vital component in building high-capacity storage solutions, especially in the data center. IT Home reports that Seagate is continuing to break barriers on how many TBs can be stored on a single hard drive and has achieved a whopping 6.9TB per platter in its laboratory, making 55TB to 69TB hard drives a possibility for the first time.”
“Seagate's experimental 6.9TB platter boasts more than double the capacity of platters it uses in official products right now. Outgoing models such as Seagate's 30TB HAMR HDDs use 10 3TB platters to reach maximum capacity. With 6.9TB platters, Seagate will be able to build drives with more than double the capacity of its outgoing drives in the same form factor.”
I can remember swapping mainframe disk drive platters with 30 MB on each platter wondering what we would do with all that space. Now we have more than 100,000 times that amount of space.
Lynn
It's an achievement, but dimensionally, it's getting further
away from being practical (because the read channel isn't
becoming any faster). If you needed to rescue the files on
a drive that big, and transfer off to another drive that size,
it's going to take days to do it.
On 28/11/2025 4:56 pm, Lynn McGuire wrote:
I can remember swapping mainframe disk drive platters with 30 MB on each
platter wondering what we would do with all that space. Now we have
more than 100,000 times that amount of space.
Definitely a good way to destroy lots of records easily with such data density?? :)
Mainframe computers are supposed to be extremely fault-tolerant!!
The mainframe drives seemed to be more reliable at the time (300MB),
than the personal computer (ST412/ST506) drives at 5MB and 10MB.
We designed a personal computer at work, that used a mainframe drive
for storage, and it also had a rack mount tape drive for backups.
Lynn McGuire wrote:
I can remember swapping mainframe disk drive platters with 30 MB on
each platter wondering what we would do with all that space. Now we
have more than 100,000 times that amount of space.
Definitely a good way to destroy lots of records easily with such data density?? :)
Mainframe computers are supposed to be extremely fault-tolerant!!
“Seagate achieves a whopping 6.9TB storage capacity per platter in its laboratory — 55TB to 69TB hard drives now physically possible”
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seagate-achieves-a-whopping-6-9tb-storage-capacity-per-platter-in-its-laboratory-55tb-to-69tb-hard-drives-now-physically-possible
“Hard drives remain a vital component in building high-capacity storage solutions, especially in the data center. IT Home reports that Seagate
is continuing to break barriers on how many TBs can be stored on a
single hard drive and has achieved a whopping 6.9TB per platter in its laboratory, making 55TB to 69TB hard drives a possibility for the first time.”
“Seagate's experimental 6.9TB platter boasts more than double the
capacity of platters it uses in official products right now. Outgoing
models such as Seagate's 30TB HAMR HDDs use 10 3TB platters to reach
maximum capacity. With 6.9TB platters, Seagate will be able to build
drives with more than double the capacity of its outgoing drives in the
same form factor.”
Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
Seagate achieves a whopping 6.9TB storage capacity per platter in its
laboratory 55TB to 69TB hard drives now physically possible
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seagate-achieves-a-whopping-6-9tb-storage-capacity-per-platter-in-its-laboratory-55tb-to-69tb-hard-drives-now-physically-possible
Hard drives remain a vital component in building high-capacity storage
solutions, especially in the data center. IT Home reports that Seagate
is continuing to break barriers on how many TBs can be stored on a
single hard drive and has achieved a whopping 6.9TB per platter in its
laboratory, making 55TB to 69TB hard drives a possibility for the first
time.
Seagate's experimental 6.9TB platter boasts more than double the
capacity of platters it uses in official products right now. Outgoing
models such as Seagate's 30TB HAMR HDDs use 10 3TB platters to reach
maximum capacity. With 6.9TB platters, Seagate will be able to build
drives with more than double the capacity of its outgoing drives in the
same form factor.
Any predictions on consumer pricing when this comes out of the lab?
I'll need to schedule an appointment with a loan officer at a bank.
It's an achievement, but dimensionally, it's getting further
away from being practical (because the read channel isn't
becoming any faster). If you needed to rescue the files on
a drive that big, and transfer off to another drive that size,
it's going to take days to do it.
And the purchase price per unit, is likely to cross a red line.
They have to keep charging for it like toilet paper. And
that means it could be $1200 and use 15W while writing (could
benefit from some sort of airflow).
On 29/11/2025 12:16 am, Paul wrote:
The mainframe drives seemed to be more reliable at the time (300MB),
than the personal computer (ST412/ST506) drives at 5MB and 10MB.
We designed a personal computer at work, that used a mainframe drive
for storage, and it also had a rack mount tape drive for backups.
Was it an IBM mainframe? System 390?
On Fri, 28 Nov 2025 12:24:42 -0600, VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
“Seagate achieves a whopping 6.9TB storage capacity per platter in its >>> laboratory — 55TB to 69TB hard drives now physically possible”
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seagate-achieves-a-whopping-6-9tb-storage-capacity-per-platter-in-its-laboratory-55tb-to-69tb-hard-drives-now-physically-possible
“Hard drives remain a vital component in building high-capacity storage >>> solutions, especially in the data center. IT Home reports that Seagate
is continuing to break barriers on how many TBs can be stored on a
single hard drive and has achieved a whopping 6.9TB per platter in its
laboratory, making 55TB to 69TB hard drives a possibility for the first >>> time.”
“Seagate's experimental 6.9TB platter boasts more than double the
capacity of platters it uses in official products right now. Outgoing
models such as Seagate's 30TB HAMR HDDs use 10 3TB platters to reach
maximum capacity. With 6.9TB platters, Seagate will be able to build
drives with more than double the capacity of its outgoing drives in the >>> same form factor.”
Any predictions on consumer pricing when this comes out of the lab?
I'll need to schedule an appointment with a loan officer at a bank.
Most consumers probably don't purchase the largest capacity like that,
but new technologies frequently push prices down on existing technology,
so that's a possible benefit.
Speaking of prices, the WD Elements 20TB drive is currently $269 during
the Black Friday period. That's pretty hard to resist.
VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
Seagate achieves a whopping 6.9TB storage capacity per platter in
its laboratory 55TB to 69TB hard drives now physically possible
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seagate-achieves-a-whopping-6-9tb-storage-capacity-per-platter-in-its-laboratory-55tb-to-69tb-hard-drives-now-physically-possible
Any predictions on consumer pricing when this comes out of the lab?
I'll need to schedule an appointment with a loan officer at a bank.
Most consumers probably don't purchase the largest capacity like that,
but new technologies frequently push prices down on existing
technology, so that's a possible benefit.
Speaking of prices, the WD Elements 20TB drive is currently $269
during the Black Friday period. That's pretty hard to resist.
VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
Seagate achieves a whopping 6.9TB storage capacity per platter in
its laboratory 55TB to 69TB hard drives now physically possible
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seagate-achieves-a-whopping-6-9tb-storage-capacity-per-platter-in-its-laboratory-55tb-to-69tb-hard-drives-now-physically-possible
Any predictions on consumer pricing when this comes out of the lab?
I'll need to schedule an appointment with a loan officer at a bank.
Most consumers probably don't purchase the largest capacity like that,
but new technologies frequently push prices down on existing
technology, so that's a possible benefit.
Speaking of prices, the WD Elements 20TB drive is currently $269
during the Black Friday period. That's pretty hard to resist.
With uber gobs of unused capacity, consumers won't feel a need to clean
out the trash. They'll just collect more trash, and rely on just one
spindle to store it all. Wonder what is the lab cost to recover from a
dead 20TB drive.
I haven't looked at the performance attributes of such huge spinners.
Most consumers buy on capacity, like buying big USB flash drives that
are super slow for writes.
Do NOT throw away your older drives with capacity less than 2TB. You
might not be able to buy them again. I doubt whether manufacturers would ever produce low capacity but reliable, resilient traditional hard drives.
Just had a spring clean, threw out anything less than 500 GB. 500 GB is
still enough to be useful.
On 4/12/2025 7:46 pm, Woozy Song wrote:
Just had a spring clean, threw out anything less than 500 GB. 500 GB is
still enough to be useful.
If their SMART data are a-ok, maybe you should keep them. :)
Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
Do NOT throw away your older drives with capacity less than 2TB. You
might not be able to buy them again. I doubt whether manufacturers
would ever produce low capacity but reliable, resilient traditional
hard drives.
Just had a spring clean, threw out anything less than 500 GB. 500 GB is still enough to be useful.
On 12/4/2025 5:46 AM, Woozy Song wrote:
Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
Do NOT throw away your older drives with capacity less than 2TB. You
might not be able to buy them again. I doubt whether manufacturers
would ever produce low capacity but reliable, resilient traditional
hard drives.
Just had a spring clean, threw out anything less than 500 GB. 500 GB is
still enough to be useful.
Anything less than 500 GB could be 30 years old.
I am surprised that old of a drive would still turn.
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
On 12/4/2025 5:46 AM, Woozy Song wrote:
Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
Do NOT throw away your older drives with capacity less than 2TB. You
might not be able to buy them again. I doubt whether manufacturers
would ever produce low capacity but reliable, resilient traditional
hard drives.
Just had a spring clean, threw out anything less than 500 GB. 500 GB is >>> still enough to be useful.
Anything less than 500 GB could be 30 years old.
Your memory of HDD capacities 30 years ago is extremely optimistic!
I'm yet to find a personal use for >500GB storage, and don't use
any drives bigger than that. I did recently test and sell most of
my stash of 40GB IDE drives made in 2004 on Ebay for $15-$20 each,
and they went fairly quickly.
I am surprised that old of a drive would still turn.
I'm posting from a 30 year old PC with a corresponding 2GB HDD
installed and still working fine daily. Although of course I have
had many younger HDDs fail on me too.
Woozy Song wrote:
Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
Do NOT throw away your older drives with capacity less than 2TB. You
might not be able to buy them again. I doubt whether manufacturers
would ever produce low capacity but reliable, resilient traditional
hard drives.
Just had a spring clean, threw out anything less than 500 GB. 500 GB
is still enough to be useful.
Anything less than 500 GB could be 30 years old. I am surprised that
old of a drive would still turn.
I'm yet to find a personal use for >500GB storage, and don't use
any drives bigger than that. I did recently test and sell most of
my stash of 40GB IDE drives made in 2004 on Ebay for $15-$20 each,
and they went fairly quickly.
Anything less than 500 GB could be 30 years old. I am surprised that
old of a drive would still turn.
On 6/12/2025 2:57 am, Lynn McGuire wrote:
Anything less than 500 GB could be 30 years old. I am surprised that
old of a drive would still turn.
No, should be around 16 years. I still got a 160G SATA hard disk, bought
in year 2005.
On 6/12/2025 3:49 am, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
I'm yet to find a personal use for >500GB storage, and don't use
any drives bigger than that. I did recently test and sell most of
my stash of 40GB IDE drives made in 2004 on Ebay for $15-$20 each,
and they went fairly quickly.
I still have a working Maxtor IDE 60G, and a clicking IBM Deskstar. :)
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
On 12/4/2025 5:46 AM, Woozy Song wrote:
Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
Do NOT throw away your older drives with capacity less than 2TB. You
might not be able to buy them again. I doubt whether manufacturers
would ever produce low capacity but reliable, resilient traditional
hard drives.
Just had a spring clean, threw out anything less than 500 GB. 500 GB is
still enough to be useful.
Anything less than 500 GB could be 30 years old.
Your memory of HDD capacities 30 years ago is extremely optimistic!
I'm yet to find a personal use for >500GB storage, and don't use
any drives bigger than that. I did recently test and sell most of
my stash of 40GB IDE drives made in 2004 on Ebay for $15-$20 each,
and they went fairly quickly.
I am surprised that old of a drive would still turn.
I'm posting from a 30 year old PC with a corresponding 2GB HDD
installed and still working fine daily. Although of course I have
had many younger HDDs fail on me too.
On 12/5/2025 1:49 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> wrote:
On 12/4/2025 5:46 AM, Woozy Song wrote:
Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
Do NOT throw away your older drives with capacity less than 2TB. You >>>>> might not be able to buy them again. I doubt whether manufacturers
would ever produce low capacity but reliable, resilient traditional
hard drives.
Just had a spring clean, threw out anything less than 500 GB. 500 GB is >>>> still enough to be useful.
Anything less than 500 GB could be 30 years old.
Your memory of HDD capacities 30 years ago is extremely optimistic!
I'm yet to find a personal use for >500GB storage, and don't use
any drives bigger than that. I did recently test and sell most of
my stash of 40GB IDE drives made in 2004 on Ebay for $15-$20 each,
and they went fairly quickly.
I am surprised that old of a drive would still turn.
I'm posting from a 30 year old PC with a corresponding 2GB HDD
installed and still working fine daily. Although of course I have
had many younger HDDs fail on me too.
I am trying to remember my last head crash. I believe it to be a 200 GB Samsung. The head dragged a 1/8 inch deep groove in the platter, I was impressed.
Lynn
Just had a spring clean, threw out anything less than 500 GB.
Do NOT throw away your older drives with capacity less than 2TB.
You might not be able to buy them again.
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