Isn't the block chain size growth hard coded to be linear?
10 mins per block, 1MB block size... scarily this is 52GB per year.
However, it is linear not exponential.
A 2TB drive, that's 40 years of block chain, so it's actually not that bad.
The block size ceiling is supposed to be a temporary measure and to be lifted before it becomes a limiting factor on bitcoin's usability.