Disk Storage Drops to Dime per Gigabyte
Combining constantly dropping hard disk storage pricing with the holiday desperation on the part of retailers everywhere gave me a sign I've been anticipating: a 1TB (yes, one terabyte, or 1,000 gigabytes) hard disk drive with a $100 or less price tag. I saw an ad for a 1TB Samsung hard disk for $99.
This drive was in the bottom third of a full page, full color ad by Fry's, the big box technology store. They're also the ones with the 8GB USB drive for $10 I mentioned earlier.
Does a casual user or small business really need a terabyte or more of storage? When I started, my word processor files all fit onto a 5.25 inch floppy disk – along with the word processor program. Looking at it from that perspective, a 1TB drive reeks of ridiculousity.
Yet more storage is always better. Look at what winds up on personal computers today: graphical operating systems like Windows or OS X, music files, and videos from pocketable video cameras like the Flip or even a modern cell phone. Music and video files burst through storage barriers quickly.
So buy yourself a 1TB drive. In fact, buy two, because you need to backup your new 1TB drive somewhere, and a second 1TB drive is a good start. We'll talk later about where else to store your terabyte of digital distractions.
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