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Technology Stocks : Disk Drive Sector Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Yogi - Paul who wrote (7038)	8/30/1999 7:50:00 PM
From: Mark Madden	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9256

Paul, I save tons of data on my local hard drive that is no longer available on the Internet. For example, could anyone find how much a Fujitsu 9.0 gb hard drive sold for in August of 1997. I have saved the pricing trend of this drive from $1599 to todays $285. I save the pricing of over 75 drives from 4 different sources. I would not know how to find last week's prices on the Internet. I save research reports, studies, bid solicitations, and many things related to my business that often disappear from the Internet as others clean their servers. I can find most these items on my hard drive easier than surfing for them again. I save news stories and reports on the stocks I follow that I can easily find under the symbol. I normally review at least 6 months of this data before selling or making a purchase. Much of it is still available on the Internet but I would not want to dig it up chronologically. Much like my hard copy files I normally clean things out and start throwing things away when I start running out of space. I am not a complete junk collector (I can still get my cars in the garage) but I probably save more data than average. I anticipate my storage needs as increasing as I see more audio and A/V broadcasts of things I would rather listen to than read. Your point is well taken. Those that save things so they will not have to wait for another long download will no longer need to save those things when they have more bandwidth. You may be perfectly happy without saving the larger files with music and video. Server storage may become a big business. However, I do not think large corporations are going to store things for you free. They will rent you storage, sell you access or force advertising on you to pay for their efforts. The increased backbone bandwidth has already given us high growth in the server storage areas. IMHO new technologies are being developed that we haven't considered yet as communications are being planned for the last mile. I do not know how much bandwidth we will have in five years but I think there will be way more data to store. I have purchase six disk drives in the last 9 years. I find that small capacity disk drives work just as well as large capacity disk drives. They just don't last as long. Therefore I go for large capacity disk drives so I do not have to "clean house" as often. I no longer believe that my storage needs will max out. Although we differ in opinions, we will both probably change our outlooks as the future unfolds. Many large corporations are taking big gambles on what habits the public will have and how much we are willing to pay for service. The likelihood is great that several consumer strategies will be very successful. Regards, Mark