HDD Capacity Growth Demands: The Upward Spiral

Some of you may be wondering if/when perpetually growing per-hard drive capacity trends will overshoot demand. Perhaps some personal perspective will be of value. My wife, a rabid snow skier, has become obsessed with the in-progress Winter Olympics, specifically the high-def ATSC broadcast available in the Sacramento, CA viewing area. As I've mentioned in the past, we use our Mac mini as our HDTV PVR, in conjunction with an Elgato EyeTV 500. Even though I recently dropped a 100 GByte Seagate Momentus 2.5" HDD into the system, replacing the original 40 GByte drive, she's still happily filling every spare nook and cranny of available capacity. And at roughly 8 GBytes per hour, filling the drive doesn't take long. Video will, indeed, be the engine that keeps the HDD treadmill going.