One Terabyte Hard Disk

After turning 50, the hard disk has finally reached a capacity of 1TB (Terabyte, equals 1,000 Gigabytes). At the next Consumer Electronics Show manufacturers will be showing off the new drives.

Due to high data density the drives will be using perpendicular recording technology. Basically, data will be stored vertically to the disk, as opposed to longitudinal recording. Wikipedia has more info and a picture that helps understand this better. The bottom line is that more data will fit on a square inch of a platter.

The 3.5" drives will be available soon for consumers. You may think you don't need that much space, but you will eventually. Games get larger, video editing is getting easier and thus more popular, and downloading music isn't going away. Some people run an external hard disk on USB for backup purposes. Eventually you'll rock a TB too! Expect to spend around $400 USD.