My first computer, a Mac Classic, did not come with a hard drive. I had to have it installed for extra money. It had a storage capacity of 40 megabytes.
Since then, gigabytes have entered the consumer lexicon as data storage capacities rose. With the arrival of terabyte-size drives, we have another SI prefix, "tera," that will get wide public exposure. In my pharmacy studies, I did come across the femtoliter as a laboratory quantity. In fact, it was in a text explaining the nature of the difference between U.S. and SI laboratory quantities. Quoting Carleton MacDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Although the press release (and their web site) are mentioning a 3.5 "inch" > form factor, it is highly unlikely that it is actually being manufactured to > that non-standard. This is probably a 90 mm disk, with the size description > dumbed down for the American audience, and reflects the continuing > convention to use American measurement, not used anywhere else in the world, > to describe certain computer features. > > > > That said, a big hard drive will certainly be useful. > > > > Carleton > > > > > http://news. > <http://news.com.com/Here+comes+the+terabyte+hard+drive/2100-1041_3-6147409. > html> com.com/Here+comes+the+terabyte+hard+drive/2100-1041_3-6147409.html > > Last year, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies predicted hard-drive > companies would announce 1 terabyte drives by the end of 2006. Hitachi > was only off by a few days. > > The company said on Thursday that it will come out with a > 3.5-inch-diameter 1 terabyte drive for desktops in the first quarter, > then follow up in the second quarter with 3.5-inch terabyte drives for > digital video recorders, bundled with software called Audio-Visual > Storage Manager for easier retrieval of data, and corporate storage > systems. > > The Deskstar 7K1000 will cost $399 when it comes out. That comes to > about 40 cents a gigabyte. Hitachi will also come out with a similar > 750GB drive. Rival Seagate Technology will come out with a 1 terabyte > drive in the first half of 2007. > > The two companies, along with others, will tout their new drives at the > upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and will show off > hybrid hard drives, as well. > > A terabyte is a trillion bytes, or a million megabytes, or 1,000 > gigabytes, as measured by the hard-drive industry. (There are actually > two conventions for calculating megabytes, but this is how the drive > industry counts it.) As a reference, the print collection in the Library > of Congress comes to about 10 terabytes of information, according to the > How Much Information study from U.C. Berkeley. The report also found > that 400,000 terabytes of e-mail get produced per year. About 50,000 > trees would be necessary to create enough paper to hold a terabyte of > information, according to the report. > > Who needs this sort of storage capacity? You will, eventually, said Doug > Pickford, director of market and product strategy at Hitachi. Demand for > data storage capacity at corporations continues to grow, and it shows no > sign of abating. A single terabyte drive takes up less space than four > 250GB drives, which lets IT managers conserve on computing room real > estate. The drive can hold about 330,000 3MB photos or 250,000 MP3s, > according to Hitachi's math. > > Consumers, meanwhile, are gobbling up more drive capacity because of > content like video. An hour of standard video takes up about 1GB, while > an hour of high-definition video sucks up 4GB, Pickford said. > > Consumers, though, tend to be skeptical of ever needing more storage > capacity. > > "We heard that when we brought out 1 gigabyte drives," Pickford said. > > The boost in capacity for desktop drives comes in part through the > introduction of perpendicular recording technology to 3.5-inch-diameter > drives. In perpendicular drives, data can be stored in vertical columns, > rather than on a single plane. Drive makers have already released > notebook drives, which sport smaller 2.5-inch-diameter drives, with > perpendicular recording. The 1 terabyte drives will be Hitachi's first > 3.5-inch drives with perpendicular recording. > > Drive makers convert to perpendicular recording when the need for areal > density, the measure of how much data can be crammed into a square inch, > passes 125 gigabits. The terabyte drive (and the 750GB drive) can hold > 148 gigabits per square inch, or 148 billion bits. Hitachi's previous > 3.5-inch drives maxed out at 115 gigabits per square inch. > > The hard drive turned 50 last year, and over the past five decades data > capacity has increased at a fairly regular and rapid pace. The first > drive, which came with the RAMAC computer, weighed about a ton and held > 5MB of data. > > Hard-drive scientists say that increases in capacity will continue > because of technologies like heat-assisted recording and patterned > > -- Paul Trusten, R.Ph. Public Relations Director U.S. Metric Association, Inc. Phone (432)528-7724 www.metric.org 3609 Caldera Boulevard, Apartment 122 Midland TX 79707-2872 USA mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.grandecom.net/~trusten
