More recent leaps in hard drive capacity evolved from the adoption of methods, which stood the magnetic bits of data upright on a drive platter as opposed to longitudinal recording, which laid them down flat on the platter surface. By standing them up, more data could be crowded into the same space, increasing the areal density of hard drives.

As with all technology, evolution led not only to innovation, but to obsolescence. Remember the floppy disk? Nowadays, hard drives seem to be giving way to solid-state storage, or nonvolatile memory, which is quickly overtaking the market.

Even Hoagland, who has an affinity for hard drives, admits that for personal use. "The is a good example. It offers [a solid-state drive with a storage capacity] that was adequate 10 years ago for a laptop. Now it's quite adequate because people can do a heck of a lot with that."

"If you want to store every movie ever made in your home, you may buy a hard drive. But typically, if you can get it off the when you want to see it, why would you want it on your disk drive?" Hoagland said. "My next computer won't have a disk drive."