jlariv8957 wrote:
Well,
The only interest of that kind of drive is storing media files like AVI or MP3
but do we have any need of such a huge capacity ? just think what we're doing with some little gigs hard drive with an amiga !!
I think it' just to be more attractive on mall adds or just to be the "strongest of the hearth". Do you really need the 256mb that your graphic card have ??
In line with Dan's comment, the fact is that media data is large. Sure, all you kids do is pirate movies these days (or occasionally digitize your collection), but how about creating, say, a digital camera that's "always on," from which you later pull the frames you want?* "PVR"ing multiple channels at once, just in case you want to go back over one? Infinite undo?** Storing your CD collection
losslessly, so you actually
can pitch all those discs?
Not to mention that, even if you're unlikely to fill the space, filling it is a brick wall -- if you haven't been trapped with 1MB free lately, think how much time you waste culling and sorting, while "infinite" storage gives you the freedom to play fast and loose.
*Yeah, we're getting there already, and those "life recorders" pitched by likes of MS Research sound a bit iffy, since they destroy the idea of ephemerality from the get-go. But narrow it down a bit, and think of the artistic purpose -- no more missed shots, just wave your camera at what's going on, the shutter button serving just to "bookmark" frames of interest (and ensuring they don't get overwritten, when the end of the disk is finally reached).
**Of course, that trades out the time you spend starting from scratch for time spent protecting your privacy, but you could just remember to flush when you're done with a project, rather than have the computer
assume you want to lose all your work. :-)
