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As can be clearly seen in the advertisement to the left, today's hard disk drive (HDD) prices have fallen to the point where editing of even uncompressed 720p or 1080i high definition footage doesn't impose excessive costs when it comes to storage. 
But seriously, this advertisement dates from September 1997, eons ago in computer terms, and demonstrates just how much the cost of storage has dropped over the years — by a ratio of about 100 to 1, to be precise, given that this one gigabyte (GB) IDE drive was offered for just under $100 per gigabyte whereas today's PATA and SATA drives go for under $1 per gigabyte.
While the cost per GB has fallen, storage capacity has increased, with 750 GB drives currently available (May 2006) and 1 terabyte (TB) drives expected within the next 6 to 12 months. [Update: August 2007: 1 TB drives are now available.] The recent jump in storage capacity is largely due to the employment of perpendicular recording technology.
Click the image for an enlarged (1200 by 1590 pixels) version.
Return to Frank's thoughts on HDV
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