Wheels roll and roll

By the spring of 1987, the optical revolution had become a reality. The laser technology allowed us to beat the closest competitor Winchester tenfold (and wrote, with a capital letter). Optimem and Verbatim, the pathogens of the time, prepared prototypes of rewritable optical drives, while experts and analysts built long-term plans. One of the world's pillars of scientific support, well-being and today, Popular Science in the article “Erasable optical disks” did not leave any chance of magnetic recording. The publication ended with the forecast of Professor Bill Meyklzhona, by that time already a former employee of General Electric, who gave 35 years of study of magnetism. In his opinion, magnetic recording devices had only ten years to live, nothing more.

Verbatim today is engaged in LED lighting and raw materials for 3D printing. Many commentators are no longer on the live list. And the HDD market is healthy, and the demand for storage is breaking records. The total capacity of hard magnetic disks, shipped last year, exceeded 800 exabytes, which is three times more than the famous Notre Dame de Paris .

And yet the magnetic disks go away. They leave and take away all the data from the house. Sparing neither a photo from the sea nor a science fiction library. Where they go is unknown. They will be somewhere high in the mountains and not in our area. In the clouds, more precisely.

Retail has no need for HDD marketing in the user market. Even Western Digital instead of the flagship brand WD Gold now sells what has always been under the label - Ultrastar , a reliable and high-quality thing. Server device.

By the way, thanks to the infusion of fresh blood HGST, the WD server segment demonstrates vitality and enviable progress . After all, housewives now wear SSD. However, the solid-state design and WD, and Seagate safely "missed." Then I had to walk, bargain in the market, so that I could stay on it. Seagate took control of SandForce, Western took the entire crop in the bud by buying SanDisk.

Now for SSD the marketing wave works. But the naive brands of the past, exploiting the predatory nature of the water element (Barracuda from Seagate, even earlier Pirahna from WD), will only be stuffed in the museum of technical revolution.

And what about the HDD? Soon we will forget about them, as we forgot about the tape? Not so: survived the announcements of 100TB drives, survive and tiled recording. At home it will not be needed anyway.