This is a sponsored article in association with Dabs.com
If you missed it then we've reported that Western Digital has already released the world's first staggeringly huge 3TB hard drive.
This makes for another milestone in drive capacities and another breaking of a legacy storage limitation, this time the 2.19TB limit imposed by older drives only supporting a maximum 32-bits worth of blocks, or 4.29 billion in old money.
But just as Moore's law for processors helps constantly drive up speeds while driving down costs, the ever increasing 'areal density' – the technical term for data density – of hard drive platters helps drive up capacities while costs fall. And that only leads to one thing: stunning deals on storage.
Currently Dabs is having a bonanza on all types of storage be it internal, external or solid state. To kick things off it's already listing that spectacular 3TB Western Digital drive for pre-order at just under £190, which works out at an incredible 6.3p per gigabyte. But if you're using that metric to measure value-for-money you should be eyeing up one of the 2TB drives – with many on offer at under £75 these are costing you as little as 3.75p per gigabyte. An absolute bargain.
If raw speed is more your thing rather than out-and-out capacity, this bit's for you. We're finally seeing decent solid state hard drives falling just below the £100 mark. Take the OCZ 60GB Vertex 2 drive, which can be snapped up for just under £98.
Compared to old-style mechanical spinning disk hard drives that's pricey £1.64 per gigabyte, which is forty times more expensive but the performance return is something you can't put a value on. These 2.5-inch drives will put a healthy performance boost into any desktop or laptop system, as they run rings around their spinning brethren.
On the move
You shouldn't miss the external options on offer either.
The one that really tweaked our interest is the well-known and popular Western Digital MyPassport Essential 250GB model, it's currently available for just £34.99. We're not sure how long that bargain is going to last, so if you're after some bus-powered external storage we'd snap one of these good-looking drives up pronto.
Or for just £10 more there's the Iomega 500GB 2.5-inch Select drive, this is again bus-powered so there's no need for an annoying external power supply. Both of these are perfect for when you need to take some serious storage on the move.
