The growth in data storage capacities of digital storage devices continues to increase at a rapid rate. Need to store 2 terabytes (TB) of data on a single hard disk drive? No problem, Western Digital has an answer. Need to easily transport 64 gigabytes (GB) of data between computers on a flash memory drive? Corsair has a solution. This post looks at gigabytes (GB) and terabytes (TB) and a couple recent advances in the capacities of hard disk drives and flash memory drives – also known as thumb drives, USB drives, or USB memory keys.
Western Digital 2 TB Hard Disk Drive
Recently Western Digital released the WD20EADS Caviar Green SATA hard disk drive that provides a huge 2.0 TB storage capacity in a 3.5” format drive. It was only a few months ago that I wrote about Seagate’s 1.5 TB drive as the newest record holder. Now Western Digital has leapfrogged Seagate by 500GB. In addition to the massive storage capacity the new drive also touts lower energy consumption and lower operating temperatures.
As a point of reference: 1 terabyte (TB) = 1,000 gigabytes (GB) = 1,000,000 megabytes (MB). To put this in context let’s assume a digital photo requires 3 MB of storage space. A 2.0 TB hard disk drive could hold over 600,000 digital photos. For digital music let’s assume that an average song requires 4 MB of space – this means that the new 2 TB Western digital hard disk could hold approximately 500,000 digital songs or over 30,000 hours of music – that’s a lot of listening. A rather staggering amount of data for one little 3.5 hard disk drive.
Corsair 64 GB Flash Memory Drive
Providing a new level of high capacity data transportation, Corsair released their largest capacity Flash Voyager flash memory drive earlier this year which features a storage capacity of 64 GB. All in a small ruggedized, rubberized key that according to Corsair, “Reviews of the Flash Voyager have it shown laundered, baked, frozen, boiled, dropped, and even run over by a SUV. After all the punishment it receives, the drive continues to work.”
With all that capacity the Flash Voyager is still small enough that it also comes with a lanyard that can clip onto the device to help you avoid losing the valuable piece of hardware and the data it may contain. The Flash Voyager offers Plug & Play functionality in Windows Vista, XP, 2000, Linux 2.4 and later, Mac OS 9, X and later. The Voyager also includes a limited 10-year warranty.
