Remember when everything you needed fit into a bunch of nifty floppy disks? (yes, I’m that old) What about the first time you got a hard disk?
Matt Komorowski was lucky enough to get his first computer during the early 1990s—which came with a 30GB hard disk—and he was ” wondering how I could possibly fill all 30 megabytes of hard drive space, even if I had a thousand years.” now we know how short-sighted that supposition was. Like Matt, I’m looking to buy a 1 terabyte hard disk soon, probably for or with my next computer, as it takes only …read more

With 1 terabyte hard disks costing less than $100, it’s pretty amazing how far we’ve come.
Consider this: back in the early 80s, according to a random commenter on Reddit, this totally awesome 10MB hard drive from XCOMP went for a shade under $3400. Check out the ad below and be awed!

The details? The 4MB version was priced at $2898, and the ad copy made sure to highlight the benefits of this hard disk line compared to… 5 1/4″ and 8″ floppies. And as this was before everyone started using DOS, compatibility with the CP/M OS was advertised as a plus. …read more

Tom’s Hardware recently put a bunch of “hand-held drives with up to 500GB” through their respective paces. All drives connect to PCs via USB 2.0. Despite the curious choice of including a 320GB and (a 1.8″) 120GB drive in that round-up, the conclusion is clear:

Consumers: Go Samsung
That leaves Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital. Performance differences clearly shouldn’t dictate your purchasing decision here. All three offer backup and encryption paired with great style. Samsung clearly focuses on consumers, while Seagate and WD also support synchronization and go after real enthusiasts.
Enthusiasts: Pick Seagate or Western Digital
Seagate has the optional drive dock that …read more

To be clear, Western Digital actually released the RE4-GP series of enterprise-class hard drives, with a max capacity of 2 terabytes. That’s two-thousand gigabytes by the way, in case you were wondering.
Aside from such roomy capacity, the RE4-GP series promises a 64MB cache (your high-end consumer-level hard drives usually features 32MB only), and a sustained transfer rate of up to 110 megabytes per second. There are four platters within the unit, each capable of storing 500GB each.
Only about 7 to 8 watts are needed to run the hard disk, highlighted as part of Western Digital’s marketing strategy to show how …read more