http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=381221

liz just pointed me the way to an article about terabyte-size memory cards on Slashdot and The Register. Transfer speeds of 120 Mbps and more.

Just recently I had plans to upgrade my 512Mb FlashCard to a card that has 1 Gb or more. Now I have doubts about upgrading so "soon". The same with buying a new hard disk... we just bought a LaCie 400 Gb BigDisk and we were quite happy with it. But it still is a bulky thing.

A lot has been written about what it means to have such memory cards. I am convinced it means the end of the hard disk era. And that means new possibilities and problems for programmers. The memory cards will be much faster than hard disks, moving the weak point in a system with regards to speed (transfer speed, reaction speed) from the storage device to other parts of a system. But memory cards are removable, so programs have to check more often wether the storage device is still there, or wether it is replaced by another device.

Many programs that I have been involved with, had to handle issues as free disk space (traffic logs, email system, database size etc). The problem of free disk space probably will never cease to exist, but with disk space of terabytes, such problems will be less important. I predict that new generations of programmers just never learn to check for available disk space. They will probably just never experience the "disk full" error.

Terabyte size memory cards... wow, the possibilities. Music, video, books, pictures, databases, literature. Even more than what I already have on my silly little 60Gb hard disk.