Michael brings up good points. 1TB in a notebook isn't the same as 1TB in a SAN, but that exasterbates the problem even more. People assume it is and keep more data around that needs to be backed up and protected. While most of the 200GB of stuff on your laptop might not be important, there might be 2 or 3GB that is and that might translate into 6GB on the network or 3GB + xx time on tape.

I know it's the job of the storage administrator, but I'm not sure that I want the end users worrying too much about it. At least some of them. If the sales guy has his cubical a mess, does it matter? He's paid to sell. Might even be worth it to pay someone else to clean it. It's the same with the hot programmer, not sure that it's valuable to have them cleaning stuff up or sorting through various data.

I think some type of HSM system could be very helpful here, I'm surprised that it hasn't been a technology that's become more mainstream.