Seagate Confirms 3TB drive in 2010

[KeithP]

No price or specifics though...

http://hothardware.com/News/Seagate-Confirms-3TB-Hard-Drive-Coming-In-2010/

But the shift to 3TB won't come easy, and it's going to take the support of a lot of companies not named Seagate to make it happen. For starters, you'll need updated drivers and BIOSes to make use of all three terabytes, and you'll need equipment capable of understanding Long LBA Addressing. Seagate says that Windows XP won't be able to see the drive (or if it does, only a small portion of it), and only the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Vista will be eligible to see it.

-KeithP

 

[VirtualLarry]

Is long LBA different than 48-bit LBA? At 512 bytes per sector, doesn't 48-bit LBA allow up to something like petabyte HDs?

And aren't HD mfgs moving towards 4KB sectors, to reduce the overhead of the ECC data on the drive, allowing for larger effective capacities, with the same capacity platters?

The biggest problem is the MBR partition format, it is limited to 4billion sectors, which is 2TB with 512byte sectors.

EFI and/or GPT is needed for bigger HDs, but existing BIOSes don't support booting off of GPT. So either BIOSes need upgrading, or someone needs to develop a seconary GPT OS loader (located on a CD or USB flash drive), or those new add-on SATA3 PCI-E cards need to include a BIOS that also supports booting off of GPT drives.

 

[tcsenter]

I suspect it will be a 4K per sector drive.

 

[gevorg]

So what is the hard drive size limit of current BIOS/motherboards, without the upcoming updates? 2TB?

 

[Danube]

Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket..

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

It will be great as long as the drives last more than a few hours out of the box.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Yeah, its the MBR that creates the 2TB issue.

Yet another reason why hackintoshing rocks- I have been using GPT since Snow Leopard's release...

 

[sandorski]

733gb on my 2 HDs, approx 400gb Free. Gonna be awhile before I need a 3tb HD.

 

[RebateMonger]

It's interesting that these latest articles on 3 TB disks don't have the term, "GPT" in them, but do mention Long LBA. Furthermore, I'm not familiar with any 32-bit OS limitation of GPT. Does this mean that the disk industry is moving to something other than GPT for "big" disks? Or is "Long LBA" related to "GPT"?

Here's the "Thinq" link mentioned in the "Hothardware" article:
http://www.thinq.co.uk/news/2010/5/17/exclusive-seagate-confirms-3tb-drive/

This article mentions the need for UEFI, 64-bit OS, and the GPT partition table.

 

[C1]

This will happen & is an opportunity for someone. One of the issues with having huge amounts of storage is organizing it so that information can be readily identified/found/recovered. So I think that there is opportunity for creative software organizers & search & recovery systems.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Furthermore, I'm not familiar with any 32-bit OS limitation of GPT.

XP doesn't support GPT at all.

Vista and 7 32bit don't work, and require a hybrid GPT structure.

64bit Vista and 7 work fine with GPT.

 

[RebateMonger]

Vista and 7 32bit don't work, and require a hybrid GPT structure.

Hmmm...this GPT FAQ from 2008 says, "ALL versions of Vista and Server 2003 can read, write, and boot from GPT disks":
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx

But this MS KB, published a few months earlier, says that 32-bit versions won't support EFI, so they won't be able to boot:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946557

 

[ViRGE]

Hmmm...this GPT FAQ from 2008 says, "ALL versions of Vista and Server 2003 can read, write, and boot from GPT disks":
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx

But this MS KB, published a few months earlier, says that 32-bit versions won't support EFI, so they won't be able to boot:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946557

All of which is correct. 32bit versions can read GPT disks but can't boot from them (due to a lack of UEFI); 64bit versions can read GPT disks and boot from them (provided UEFI is available).

 

[poofyhairguy]

All of which is correct. 32bit versions can read GPT disks but can't boot from them (due to a lack of UEFI); 64bit versions can read GPT disks and boot from them (provided UEFI is available).

Which of course is Microsoft BS.

On my Tri-Boot netbook, only the 32 bit Windows 7 needs me to mess with Hybrid GPT (using gptsync). Both OSX and Linux can handle GPT disks just fine in 32 bit mode, booting and otherwise.

It is almost if Microsoft arbitrarily decided that anyone who needs more ram than 3GB or a disk larger than 3TB can get the 64 bit version. Then they made the bonehead mistake of not putting forth a unified version (like OSX did) for Windows 7- it still is split into 32 bit and 64 bit versions.

The long term effect is that economies of scale won't cheapen these 3TB drives as quickly as we watched 1TB+ drives fall (even though I think the 1.5TB Seagate disaster helped with that process) because a good chunk of the market can't use them. Also I bet Seagate will get tons of bad press from ignorant people who can't get their new 3TB drives to work with 32 bit Windows, and of course that will be Seagate's fault.

This exact kind of mess is why I am so happy that hardware accelerated Flash finally came to OSX so I can move to hackintosh full time and nuke all my Window installs from orbit...

 

[Golgatha]

Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket..

Buy more baskets and have a copy of all the eggs in each one. Keep one basket with the copied eggs held securely offsite.

 

[Nothinman]

It is almost if Microsoft arbitrarily decided that anyone who needs more ram than 3GB or a disk larger than 3TB can get the 64 bit version.

Not almost, they did so blatantly.

 

[RussianSensation]

I think before they release a 3TB drive with 5-6 platters, I'd much rather have a 2 or 3-platter 2TB drive.

 

[Voo]

Then they made the bonehead mistake of not putting forth a unified version (like OSX did) for Windows 7- it still is split into 32 bit and 64 bit versions.

The only reason why Windows still has 32bit versions is because enterprises still have enough ancient legacy applications (I pity those poor IT guys that have to support 16bit programs..) and probably for net/notebooks. And why not? If correctly programmed that's just a compile switch (well it sure won't work that nice for such a large and grown application like Windows, but they probably spent some time cleaning that mess up).

There's no reason for consumers to buy 32bit versions for any modern desktop/notebook and it seems like most OEMs also jumped on that bandwagon, so I don't see why that should be a big problem.. I mean 3TB disks on a netbook? What are the chances that the bios will support that?


Other than that.. 6 500gb platters sound like a really really bad idea in either case. Or will those be 750gb platters?

 

[Nothinman]

If correctly programmed that's just a compile switch (well it sure won't work that nice for such a large and grown application like Windows, but they probably spent some time cleaning that mess up).

Actually it should mostly work, most of the code in Windows is C and C++ with only the very low level stuff being architecture specific. NT started out running on 4 architectures before MS dropped support for Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC. Although since adding support for AMD64 and Itanic they're back up to 3 architectures now.

 

[RebateMonger]

While it's not totally clear how this is all going to work out, most of it is still a non-issue, since there ARE no 3 TB disks and it's unknown how many Intel-based motherboards are able to handle UEFI at this point. Most folks live happily with the 160 GB hard drives that came with their systems five years ago and are still nearly-empty.

 

[Voo]

Actually it should mostly work, most of the code in Windows is C and C++ with only the very low level stuff being architecture specific.

Yeah and it's completely impossible in C to rely on some facts that just won't hold true for 64bit systems
I'm sure they had some problems (there are some rather intricate things), but they had to do that already when vista came out, so no reason not to sell 32bit versions.

Also iirc there won't be any more ia64 versions, so they're down to more or less just x86.. not really surprising though.

 

[Fayd]

Buy more baskets and have a copy of all the eggs in each one. Keep one basket with the copied eggs held securely offsite.

lol, the egg analogy really breaks down when you take it to that level.

 

[Voo]

lol, the egg analogy really breaks down when you take it to that level.

Yeah eggs just don't work as well as cars for that.

Anyone?

 

[boomhower]

Yeah for cheap 2TB drives.

 

[yinan]

This wont really be a problem will it? Boot drive 2TB or less storage drives of 3+TB.