Disk space

I thought I'd just share how amazed I am at the cost of hard disks these days. Rather, I should say I'm surprised at the lack of a cost. For a hard disk over about 100 GB, you now pay less than $1 per gigabyte. I think it will call into question certain assumptions about the viability of hard disks as a backup medium.

Despite this amazing breakthrough, the 160 GB disk I purchased unfortunately can't be used to its maximum capacity with my ancient (2001) motherboard. This is due to the 28-bit limitation on physical addressing in the old ATA standard. Luckily a new standard has come out in the past year, but I'm yet to try the necessary BIOS and Windows upgrade.

In a related matter, look out for a post coming soon on sustainable storage of digital information. You might want to syndicate this page.

Portrait of Matt Ryall

About Matt

I’m a technology nerd, husband and father of four, living in beautiful Sydney, Australia.

My passion is building software products that make the world a better place. For the last 15 years, I’ve led product teams at Atlassian to create collaboration tools.

I'm also a startup advisor and investor, with an interest in advancing the Australian space industry. You can read more about my work on my LinkedIn profile.

To contact me, please send an email or reply on Twitter.