What's Wrong With 750(710)GB Drives

Seagate is getting gasps of admiration from the computer media for its new 750GB hard drive -- 50% bigger than the next biggest drive for ordinary desktop computers.

I wouldn't want such a thing. Consider the problems:

- the drive fails with 750GB of my precious data on it. (I think my computer's D drive is failing this week. On average, one hard drive fails in my office each year.)

- how the heck do I back it up?

Or, more succinctly, _what_ do I back it up to? My computer would needs something larger than 750GB, and it would have to be fast, because...

... because do you know how long a 750GB-backup takes? Even at speeds of 1GB/min, it would take half a day.

Okay, so there is a use for a 750GB drive: to back up my desktop computer's dinky 37GB, 75GB, 152GB, and 230GB drives. Which reminds me of 1991 when I bought a 105MB hard drive for a great price of only $400. Or when working at CADalyst magazine, and we got our first AT-class desktop computer (1987?). We bought a model from NEC, because it had a 30MB drive for the same price as the equivalent IBM AT, which had only 20MB.

Thirty megabytes. Big enough to hold a half-hour of today's MP3 music.

Oh, and that 750GB drive won't actually have 750GB. Hard drive makers have redefined MB and GB smaller in order to make their drive seem larger. That 750GB drive will have capacity of just 710GB, I figure.