Well, almost. Hitachi is developing hard drives that combine an older technology called Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR), with new more densely packed data regions, which they say will allow for a 4 TB (4000 GB) drive within the next three years. That will keep development in accordance with Kryder's Law, which talks about a doubling of hard drive density every 18 months. And to think, 12 years ago when I got a computer with a 1 GB HDD, I thought its vastness would prove totally impossible to fill.

While flash memory based solid state drives are now making inroads into the traditional platter based hard drive's domain, they can't come close to the traditional hard drive's cost per MB or storage density. Now with hard drives popping up in everything from cell phones to game consoles, the thirst for increased capacity is only growing. Even if you plan to save all 86 episodes of The Sopranos once they become available as HD downloads, with a 4 TB drive this should just about fill one tiny corner. — Michael Trei

Hitachi Global Storage Technology, via BBC Technology news