3 ms·

Today's $60 1TB drive would have cost $1 trillion in the '50s

15 points by jaybol 16y ago

Mithrandir 16y ago
Quote: 'One way he [Al Hoagland] tries to illustrate the importance of modern storage systems to school children for whom technology is ubiquitous is to ask them a random question, such as "What's the height of the Hoover Dam?" When the kids all jump on a nearby computer to search for the answer, he then asks them where the information came from... 'They just stare. It's a total blank," he said. "That's the frustration when you worked on something to make that possible, but you're not even recognized. Most people just want to see a 3D movie, they don't much want to know what made it possible.' Says a lot about today's society.
- jswinghammer 16y ago
  I was with him until the 3D movie part. Who actually wants that?
  - xiaoma 16y ago
    Lots of people do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)#Box_office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)#Box_office
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Sure, but you can understand some level of apathy for those details in most people. We're all "tech" people and so such details are going to interest us. But do you wonder in any depth how, for example, that bottle of milk made it to your fridge (the answer is not necessarily all that simple). Even some of the more technically minded programmers I know have zero interest in how a CPU works on a physical level and how they were developed :) But one of those kids he describes might have a deep interest in how to get eggs from chickens, or how to cut hair, or.... you can never really predict what it is that will arrest them. (case in point; I was trying to teach my scouts about how GPS worked the other day and they kept getting distracted with how the GPS enclosure was moulded [because of the odd shape]. No interest in the technology :)) I've never had much concern about people's disinterest in how tech works, so long as there are enough of is who do care :)
Luyt 16y ago
And this article makes it also perfectly understandable why software in those days would store years as '85' instead of '1985'.
- MichaelGG 16y ago
  It just leaves me wondering, if space was so important, why represent numbers as character data/BCD? I'm assuming it must have been some holdover from punchcards or some other input format?
dotcoma 16y ago
it's probably more like $120 in Italy, just to give you the idea...
- masklinn 16y ago
  Source? Because in France depending on the site/boutique it can be as low as $58… including VAT [0], though the lowest prices are generally ~$70 (again, including a 19.6% VAT) [1] [2] [0] http://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,wd-1to-s-ata-ii-8mo-caviar-green,371811 http://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,wd-1to-s-ata-ii-8... [1] http://www.materiel.net/disque-dur-3-5-pouces/hitachi-deskstar-7k1000-c-s-ata-1000-go-32-mo-53771.html http://www.materiel.net/disque-dur-3-5-pouces/hitachi-deskst... [2] http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00095581.html http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00095581.html
- ugh 16y ago
  I don’t think that’s the case. You can get 1TB drives from amazon.it for €53 ($70) [1] which closely mirrors prices in other European countries, for example Germany [2]. I didn’t even look for the cheapest drives, just the first one that came up. [1] http://www.amazon.it/Samsung-HD103SJ-Spinpoint-F3-HardDisk/dp/B002MQC0P8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1293702645&sr=8-2 http://www.amazon.it/Samsung-HD103SJ-Spinpoint-F3-HardDisk/d... [1] http://www.amazon.de/Samsung-Spinpoint-HD103SJ-interne-Festplatte/dp/B002MQC0P8/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1293702583&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.de/Samsung-Spinpoint-HD103SJ-interne-Festp...
  - dotcoma 16y ago
    ops, sorry, I thought we were talking about external drives.
igorgue 16y ago
... jumping into my DeLorean DMC-12
ZipCordManiac 16y ago
It also would have encompassed several factory spaces.
elblanco 16y ago
Weird http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2050168 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2050168
dlsspy 16y ago
The iPad's storage would've been adequate 10 years ago? I'm pretty sure I didn't have a laptop with 32-64GB of storage in 2000 and I did just fine. My current laptop drive is about 100GB (SSD) and it's pretty roomy (considering I store my big media on an external 1TB USB drive).
- catch23 16y ago
  I remember back in the day, my first very own computer (Pentium 2, 266Mhz) had a 6.4GB drive and I could still put a bunch of games & applications on it without worrying about disk space. These days, a single game like starcraft 2 requires around 9 gigs of disk space. It's crazy to think that 10 years from now, your average application will require 100GB of disk space, which will still be nothing compared to your 10TB drive. Maybe future games will be packaged in their own virtual machine since everyone will be running a hypervisor normally.
  - shadowpwner 16y ago
    Assuming a linear model, and that compression won't improve.
  - masklinn 16y ago
    > It's crazy to think that 10 years from now, your average application will require 100GB of disk space Doubtful. Outsite of games, "your average application" is still mostly in the 10~100MB range, and generally on the lower end of the spectrum. And I'm talking desktop: on OSX, Acorn is 35MB, Address Book is 20MB, Adium is 73MB, Camino is 48MB, Colloquy is 22MB, Delicious Library 2 is 42MB, Divvy is 3.7MB, ForkLift is 25MB, Handbrake is 15MB, iCal is 53MB, mail is 77MB, Reeder is 9.3MB, RipIt is 6.6MB, … Of course on the other hand Emacs is 133MB, iMovie is 256MB, iTunes is 158MB. But really, games and multimedia (video and audio) are the eaters of disk space. In no small part because games are full of multimedia data and multimedia files are simply huge as they're continuously increasing in quality.
    - cookiecaper 16y ago
      OS X programs are a really bad benchmark for average program size. Many of them contain two binaries -- one for PPC and one for Intel -- so that inflates the size significantly. OS X also just tends to have bigger applications, I'm not sure what all is in there; maybe larger icons or maybe OS X just requires a lot of extra big files somehow. For instance, the VLC 32/64-bit package for Intel on OS X, which is the first linked download and the one users are mostly likely to click, is ~40MB whereas the Windows download is ~20MB (the OS X 32-bit only is ~24MB). The Arch Linux package is a 6MB download. Stuff on OS X just takes a _lot_ more disk space. Arch Linux's package for emacs (http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/ http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/) is 89.7MB installed, whereas your post indicates that on OS X emacs consumes 133MB. So really the space requirements will even less for non-OS X users.
dsgrweger 16y ago
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Sharlin 16y ago
Today's $60 1TB drive would not have been possible in the '50s for any price. Equal storage capacity? Sure. Equal storage density, power usage, throughput speed, seek times? So much beyond simply impossible that it's not even funny.

15 points by jaybol 16y ago

Quote: 'One way he [Al Hoagland] tries to illustrate the importance of modern storage systems to school children for whom technology is ubiquitous is to ask them a random question, such as "What's the height of the Hoover Dam?" When the kids all jump on a nearby computer to search for the answer, he then asks them where the information came from... 'They just stare. It's a total blank," he said. "That's the frustration when you worked on something to make that possible, but you're not even recognized. Most people just want to see a 3D movie, they don't much want to know what made it possible.' Says a lot about today's society.

jswinghammer 16y ago
I was with him until the 3D movie part. Who actually wants that?
- xiaoma 16y ago
  Lots of people do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)#Box_office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar_(2009_film)#Box_office
ErrantX 16y ago
Sure, but you can understand some level of apathy for those details in most people. We're all "tech" people and so such details are going to interest us. But do you wonder in any depth how, for example, that bottle of milk made it to your fridge (the answer is not necessarily all that simple). Even some of the more technically minded programmers I know have zero interest in how a CPU works on a physical level and how they were developed :) But one of those kids he describes might have a deep interest in how to get eggs from chickens, or how to cut hair, or.... you can never really predict what it is that will arrest them. (case in point; I was trying to teach my scouts about how GPS worked the other day and they kept getting distracted with how the GPS enclosure was moulded [because of the odd shape]. No interest in the technology :)) I've never had much concern about people's disinterest in how tech works, so long as there are enough of is who do care :)

Luyt 16y ago

And this article makes it also perfectly understandable why software in those days would store years as '85' instead of '1985'.

MichaelGG 16y ago
It just leaves me wondering, if space was so important, why represent numbers as character data/BCD? I'm assuming it must have been some holdover from punchcards or some other input format?

dotcoma 16y ago

it's probably more like $120 in Italy, just to give you the idea...

masklinn 16y ago
Source? Because in France depending on the site/boutique it can be as low as $58… including VAT [0], though the lowest prices are generally ~$70 (again, including a 19.6% VAT) [1] [2] [0] http://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,wd-1to-s-ata-ii-8mo-caviar-green,371811 http://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,wd-1to-s-ata-ii-8... [1] http://www.materiel.net/disque-dur-3-5-pouces/hitachi-deskstar-7k1000-c-s-ata-1000-go-32-mo-53771.html http://www.materiel.net/disque-dur-3-5-pouces/hitachi-deskst... [2] http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00095581.html http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00095581.html
ugh 16y ago
I don’t think that’s the case. You can get 1TB drives from amazon.it for €53 ($70) [1] which closely mirrors prices in other European countries, for example Germany [2]. I didn’t even look for the cheapest drives, just the first one that came up. [1] http://www.amazon.it/Samsung-HD103SJ-Spinpoint-F3-HardDisk/dp/B002MQC0P8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1293702645&sr=8-2 http://www.amazon.it/Samsung-HD103SJ-Spinpoint-F3-HardDisk/d... [1] http://www.amazon.de/Samsung-Spinpoint-HD103SJ-interne-Festplatte/dp/B002MQC0P8/ref=sr_1_3?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1293702583&sr=1-3 http://www.amazon.de/Samsung-Spinpoint-HD103SJ-interne-Festp...
- dotcoma 16y ago
  ops, sorry, I thought we were talking about external drives.

igorgue 16y ago

... jumping into my DeLorean DMC-12

ZipCordManiac 16y ago

It also would have encompassed several factory spaces.

elblanco 16y ago

Weird http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2050168 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2050168

dlsspy 16y ago

The iPad's storage would've been adequate 10 years ago? I'm pretty sure I didn't have a laptop with 32-64GB of storage in 2000 and I did just fine. My current laptop drive is about 100GB (SSD) and it's pretty roomy (considering I store my big media on an external 1TB USB drive).

catch23 16y ago
I remember back in the day, my first very own computer (Pentium 2, 266Mhz) had a 6.4GB drive and I could still put a bunch of games & applications on it without worrying about disk space. These days, a single game like starcraft 2 requires around 9 gigs of disk space. It's crazy to think that 10 years from now, your average application will require 100GB of disk space, which will still be nothing compared to your 10TB drive. Maybe future games will be packaged in their own virtual machine since everyone will be running a hypervisor normally.
- shadowpwner 16y ago
  Assuming a linear model, and that compression won't improve.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > It's crazy to think that 10 years from now, your average application will require 100GB of disk space Doubtful. Outsite of games, "your average application" is still mostly in the 10~100MB range, and generally on the lower end of the spectrum. And I'm talking desktop: on OSX, Acorn is 35MB, Address Book is 20MB, Adium is 73MB, Camino is 48MB, Colloquy is 22MB, Delicious Library 2 is 42MB, Divvy is 3.7MB, ForkLift is 25MB, Handbrake is 15MB, iCal is 53MB, mail is 77MB, Reeder is 9.3MB, RipIt is 6.6MB, … Of course on the other hand Emacs is 133MB, iMovie is 256MB, iTunes is 158MB. But really, games and multimedia (video and audio) are the eaters of disk space. In no small part because games are full of multimedia data and multimedia files are simply huge as they're continuously increasing in quality.
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    OS X programs are a really bad benchmark for average program size. Many of them contain two binaries -- one for PPC and one for Intel -- so that inflates the size significantly. OS X also just tends to have bigger applications, I'm not sure what all is in there; maybe larger icons or maybe OS X just requires a lot of extra big files somehow. For instance, the VLC 32/64-bit package for Intel on OS X, which is the first linked download and the one users are mostly likely to click, is ~40MB whereas the Windows download is ~20MB (the OS X 32-bit only is ~24MB). The Arch Linux package is a 6MB download. Stuff on OS X just takes a _lot_ more disk space. Arch Linux's package for emacs (http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/ http://www.archlinux.org/packages/extra/i686/emacs/) is 89.7MB installed, whereas your post indicates that on OS X emacs consumes 133MB. So really the space requirements will even less for non-OS X users.

dsgrweger 16y ago

-------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ Gold autumn, personality Men’s clothing + Shoes, Travel bag that grabs an eye coat + Chao packet Free transport -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------ -------- http://ta.gg/4wt http://ta.gg/4wt ------

Sharlin 16y ago

Today's $60 1TB drive would not have been possible in the '50s for any price. Equal storage capacity? Sure. Equal storage density, power usage, throughput speed, seek times? So much beyond simply impossible that it's not even funny.