Seagate Becomes First To Ship 2 Billion Hard Drives

Since being founded in 1979, Seagate has shipped two billion hard drives worldwide, which the company claims is the first to achieve such a feat. However, what's probably more impressive is the fact that half of those hard drives were shipped within the last four years alone, while the first half took nearly 30 years.

That statistic alone proves that storage needs are increasing year-over-year, and the bigger that files get, the more storage space consumers will need to use. While a 1TB hard drive might have been considered overkill a few years ago, it's now pretty much considered standard in most computers today, with some users creeping up into 2TB and 3TB territory.

Seagate claims that according to analysts, user-generated HD video, pictures, and other digital media needs are expected to quadruple in the next two years, mostly thanks to new formats coming out, including 4K video, which is four times the size of 1080p full HD content. So, if you think a 1TB drive suits you now, you'll be begging for more come 2015.

Of course, this isn't surprising at all. I'm sure you remember the days when a hard drive with 80GB was more than plenty to store all of your files and programs, but in today's world, just your programs and all of your most-vital files can easily take up a couple hundred gigabytes, and that's not even counting all the media you have lying around.