Data storage. Genealogists never seem to have enough. We fill up huge disk drives and demand more. Now it looks like Japan's Hitachi Ltd. may be able to meet our needs.
This week Hitachi unveiled the world's first hard disk drive/DVD recorder that can store one terabyte of data. That's enough to record about 128 hours of high-definition television digital broadcasting or about one million books.
These models are designed for recording television signals in digital video format (Hence the expression, "DVD recorder;" this should not be confused with the physical disks that are also called "DVD disks."). However, I am sure that data recording models will be available soon after these TV models are released. The recorders will go on sale in Japan next month. They are expected to retail from about 130,000 yen (roughly $1,200 US dollars) for the cheapest model to 230,000 yen ($2,100 US dollars) for the one-terabyte recorder, which stores data on two 500-gigabyte hard disk drives.
I still remember the first hard drive that I ever purchased. I figured it was so big that I would never fill up those 20 megabytes.
