From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stan Hoeppner Subject: Re: support for drives larger than 2TiB Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:08:05 -0500 Message-ID: <4C4B7255.2070505@hardwarefreak.com> References: <4C4AB952.9030705@kernel.org> <1279974966.11927.26.camel@lithium.local.net> <92061.1279979348@localhost> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mo-65-41-216-221.sta.embarqhsd.net ([65.41.216.221]:53705 "EHLO greer.hardwarefreak.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753041Ab0GXXII (ORCPT ); Sat, 24 Jul 2010 19:08:08 -0400 Received: from [192.168.100.53] (gffx.hardwarefreak.com [192.168.100.53]) by greer.hardwarefreak.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 791426C072 for ; Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:08:06 -0500 (CDT) In-Reply-To: <92061.1279979348@localhost> Sender: linux-ide-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ide@vger.kernel.org To: "linux-ide@vger.kernel.org" Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu put forth on 7/24/2010 8:49 AM: > As a side consideration - moving from 512 to 4K moves the associated limit from > 2 TiB to 16 TiB. Given the current rate of device density increase, how much > time will that buy us, and what do we do then? The crystal ball tells me that SSD adoption will kick this date a little farther into the future given that SSD capacity lags mechanical by a large margin. In the not too distance future, PCs/laptops/netbooks will all transition to shipping with SSD as their sole/main internal storage device, with USB3/eSATA thumb drives of 1TB and above permanently replacing external USB/eSATA mechanical drives. Servers will probably transition at about the same time to shipping with solely SSD storage internally for boot/OS and maybe some other primary and a little secondary storage, with mechanical storage being optional, whether internal or external. Mechanical in the form of FC/iSCSI SAN and NAS arrays will still rule large data needs well after the aforementioned transitions above. -- Stan