For the last couple of weeks, my editor has given me assignments to tackle the issue of hard disks and cloud storage. It seems much of the conclusions by tech experts is that hard disks are dead and that we are moving to USB flash drives or cloud storage. What do you think? It's amazing that a one terabyte hard drive is $70, while a one gigabyte hard drive was $1,000 in the mid-1990s.
I kind of scoffed at cloud storage, but I'm starting to consider it a little more these days after I've had several hard drives, both my main ones as well as my back up drives completely fail on me the past few years. The only thing that concerns me is that I have over a terrabyte of data on my system right now, and I can't imagine how long it would take to get all of that uploaded to some cloud storage. I really don't want my internet connection tied up all day trying to backup files.
As an old timer, I don't see them going away anytime real soon. You still need a hard drive on a computer for basic functionality and some of us do still use the hard drive for storage on home computers. I am still a bit leary of using cloud storage but do back up our important documents on thumb drives. I would not feel comfortable putting them in cyber space...too many hackers in the world.
I used zip drives for storage for a few years and only relatively recently got into storing on USBs. Yeah I took way too long to make the move. I am frankly amazed by the space that is on one of these little sticks. A lot more space and a lot less money than the zip discs. The USBs are getting even cheaper too. Ryder13
Well, I have a Drop Box account and I use it as a storage area of almost all of my e-books. I haven't tried Google's and Apple's cloud storage yet though, even if I own some Apple products because I still get confused by their respective interface. I'm still using my USBs and external hard drives for my storage and I still find using them easier.
This... ... and this. I've been meaning to try cloud storage but both things mentioned above made me think it twice. I have a lot of used space in my HDD and a slow wi-fi connection. It would take ages to upload everything. As for flash drives, I still find them quite useful. I use mine to watch whatever movie or series I want on my TV and mainly for college projects when I have to give a presentation or something.
By hard disk you are referring to floppy disk, then yes they are indeed dead. Look at the more recent models of desk top and lap top computers. They have USB connections but no floppy disk drive. Now a days people use flash drives, zip drives, and of course Cloud storage as their back up devices. So the day of the floppy disk are definitely over.
Even though Cloud-based storage is the future, i still don't trust people enough to handle all of my date. I prefer using an external HDD to keep everything safe and away from danger. Of course that there are stuff to worry about, but it's mostly safe.
I will never understand the logic behind uploading all of your data to someone else's computer system. Are we so incompetent that we can't manage saving our data to our own storage devices? Always beware of giving up things for the sake of "better" security and convenience. Instead of using a cloud service, just get an external USB drive that meets your storage needs and use software to mirror your data to the external drive in the background. It's the same thing minus the constant internet traffic of shuttling your data to someone else. Flash drives are cheap and portable, too. It's really just a matter of being a tad bit more organized to achieve the same benefits. Plus, you get to keep your data. Hard drives will never go away. They will evolve to better technologies, though. WHEN one of these cloud services suffers a catastrophe that compromises some of the data, the novelty will start to wear off.
Considering you need a hard drive for basic functionality I would have to say those so-called experts are idiots. Further more anything that requires additional resources to function is flawed. What happens if your internet is down? What happens if you simply can't access it? What happens when inevitability the terms/conditions change? I'd rather not have my data held hostage because of that kind of behavior.
I don't think it will ever be obsolete, since sensitive information will always be best kept close to you. I do see cloud storage taking some part of that market, though, but only if they are able to provide more space for free than what they have now. Since they are mostly paid monthly services, I doubt anyone will pay that much to just keep a library of movies and music online. Until they surpass the price and convenience of buying a hard drive, cloud storage will remain as only backup in my opinion.
I don't really believe that hard drives are dead or dying, matter of fact they are here to stay if they were dying then the new 1, 2 or even 3 TB hard drives wouldn't be available.
Of course not. The hard drive is here to stay. cloud storage is not that reliable. I just use it for backup. Flash disks are mainly for transferring files from one computer to another. And, where would you store all the games that you play on your PC??? Would you install them in cloud storage and in flash disks? Lol.
Wait, the original post is referring to the internal hard drive. No wonder I misunderstood what was being said here. There is just no way a computer can run without the internal hard drive. This is the main brain of the computer, the mother board of it. Yes, external storage systems such as the cloud may help on wear and tear on internal hard drives, and take some of the storage obligations away from this part of the computer, but they will never replace it. The only thing that can replace an internal hard drive on a computer, is another internal hard drive plain and simple. This is like saying that we can remove the human brain and someone could still function with an external one connected to them, not at all possible.
