Disk capacities

Don Y · 2026-11-14T11:10:20+00:00

One can understand why semiconductor memory tends to follow certainsize patterns.But, there is no similar constraint on spinning rust (or, SSDs,for that matter).So, why do disk sizes seem to follow a particular pattern?250G, 500G, 1T, 2T, 4T, 8T, etc.?Yes, there are some oddballs in the mix -- 320G, 640G, 750G, 1.5T,3T, 14T, etc. -- but, for the most part, the "doubling" ratio seemsmost common.Marketing?Why don't we see manufacturers trying to nickel-and-dime eachother -- 2.1T, 4.4T, etc.

Nov 14, 2026 Last reply: 2 minutes ago 22 Replies

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Don Y 59 minutes ago

But, just so happens to end up a "nice number"?

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John R Walliker 50 minutes ago

I don't use smart image creators. I just use dd. Then sha256sum on the original and the copy.

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Don Y 2 minutes ago

Clonezilla is a handy tool to have in your kit. Almost foolproof in operations (once you've been through it a time or two).

By crating small/compressed images, you can preserve more of them without losing information. And, can restore them much faster than dd(1)-ing an image (that is likely largely empty) onto a fresh medium.

E.g., it takes about 3 hours for me to: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/daX bs=1024k for a 2T disk. Double that for 4T. Double again for 8T.

But, to restore the image of the actual *active content* on that disk can take as little as several minutes (10GB/minute), regardless of the target disk size.

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