Nowadays everybody uses the computer at home, at work and at school. This generates incredible amounts of digital content that needs to be stored. The demand for storage devices has grown considerably and it led to the development of the terabyte hard disk. It seems huge and it really is, but if it used to be reserved for the needs of large corporations and institutions, it is now becoming popular in a lot of house and offices because people need to store more and more digital files.
“Terra” comes from a Greek word that means “monster”. You can easily imagine the storage capacity that the terabyte hard disk offers. A terabyte actually means a million megabytes, a trillion bytes or a thousand gigabytes. It is indeed a great storage capacity that will turn out to be sufficient for the needs of basically everyone.
Just for you to realize how big a terabyte hard disk really is, you have to know that you can store on it over 300,000 photos and over 250,000 audio files in mp3 format. Ten such hard disks would be enough to host the entire collection of images in the Library of Congress. When it comes to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a terabyte hard disk can store 1,000 copies. If someone wants to print the entire information that can be contained in one terabyte, he would need to use paper produced from over 50,000 trees.
You might imagine that no one needs such an immense storage capacity, but the truth is that many people do. At home, in school and at work we produce digital content all day long. This not only needs to be stored, but also needs to be backed-up out of security reasons. More than that, the demand for storage capacity has also increased together with the development of new applications and software. Nowadays complex applications require a lot of hard disk space in order to be installed. Software that reproduces high definition audio and video content, computer assisted design (CAD) applications and games with complex graphics are examples of software that we use daily and needs a significant amount of space in order to function. Computer applications will probably continue to evolve in time and they will need more and more physical resources as they become more and more complex.
For instance, if you have a video file in standard format that is one hour long, you will need around gigabyte of space for it. If the video file of the same length is in high definition format, it will take four times more space on your hard disk. Having a terabyte hard disk is easier and simpler than having four 250 GB ones and it also needs less physical space.
The storage capacity of hard disks will probably continue to increase in order to match future needs and it is believed that hard disks capable of storing 100TB per square inch are going to be developed in the future.

Lately the terabyte hard disk is not considered that big anymore. Twice the storage capacity is available at 5400RPM and 7200 RPM. Some of these hard disks use the new SATA 6 Gbps interface which is not extremely useful for now. The terabyte hard disk has completion because the 1.5 TB hard disk is now available, but it is still more advantageous in terms of price and performance. The terabyte hard disk uses two 500 GB platters and Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 was the first hard disk that integrated the two platter in a 7200 RPM product.

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