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My first HDD was 40 meg (in a ~$6000 inflation adjusted computer). For the same price it's eminently feasible to get a system (computer + a NAS or three) with 4

by drats 15y ago

My first HDD was 40 meg (in a ~$6000 inflation adjusted computer). For the same price it's eminently feasible to get a system (computer + a NAS or three) with 40 TB. If my calculations aren't wrong that's enough for over ~77.6 years (24/7) worth of compressed audio @ 128 kB/s.

iwwr 15y ago
How much is that (the price of the 40meg HDD) as a percentage of your income now? Is it the same as a similar specialist back then?
- drats 15y ago
  This was a home computer, but it was still a significant purchase for dual income professionals. 1989 release price in the USA with the same upgrades we had US$2899 (without monitor?), then the screen (14"), software, printer and "outside the USA price hike" must have made up the other ~$1101. I get far bigger usb sticks for free at conferences these days. Raspberry Pi + a screen or a bottom of the line netbook for $200 is hundreds of times more powerful. 133 times more powerful if we just talk 1989-mhz (12mhz) to 2011-mhz (atom 1.6gighz), which is inaccurate. So things have gotten about 30 times cheaper and insanely more powerful. Edit: to address your question more directly it was like a "second hand car" purchase maybe ~10% median annual household income vs ~0.3% these days for the netbook. This is all back of the envelope stuff though.
  - podperson 15y ago
    Back in 1991 we took out a special insurance policy to cover the computers and hardware in our house (two professional coders). Just the hardware came to $22,000. (We figured the software was just licenses which couldn't effectively be stolen.)
rdtsc 15y ago
Of course if you have 40TB you might also want to have uncompressed audio & also have video. Every single hard drive I got so far, no matter how big it seemed at the time, I managed to fill with data. Generated data is like a gas, it will just expand to fill in the available space.
- onemoreact 15y ago
  For most people that space is taken up by caching other peoples work, AKA movies, programs, music etc. After I could stream HD content over my internet connection I feel little need to keep a local copy of most of these so I have actually started to use less HDD over the two years. It's still feels odd, I filled up a 750GB HDD then I got a 240 GB SSD and a 2TB HDD and yet I find I am useing less HDD now than before the upgrade.
evilswan 15y ago
My first HDD was on a Commodore Amiga and was a mighty 60Mb.
WalterBright 15y ago
Mine was 6Mb. I had to build my own interface card and I/O driver for it (for my Heathkit H11). And it was still enormously useful over those floppies.

by drats 15y ago

iwwr 15y ago

How much is that (the price of the 40meg HDD) as a percentage of your income now? Is it the same as a similar specialist back then?

drats 15y ago
This was a home computer, but it was still a significant purchase for dual income professionals. 1989 release price in the USA with the same upgrades we had US$2899 (without monitor?), then the screen (14"), software, printer and "outside the USA price hike" must have made up the other ~$1101. I get far bigger usb sticks for free at conferences these days. Raspberry Pi + a screen or a bottom of the line netbook for $200 is hundreds of times more powerful. 133 times more powerful if we just talk 1989-mhz (12mhz) to 2011-mhz (atom 1.6gighz), which is inaccurate. So things have gotten about 30 times cheaper and insanely more powerful. Edit: to address your question more directly it was like a "second hand car" purchase maybe ~10% median annual household income vs ~0.3% these days for the netbook. This is all back of the envelope stuff though.
- podperson 15y ago
  Back in 1991 we took out a special insurance policy to cover the computers and hardware in our house (two professional coders). Just the hardware came to $22,000. (We figured the software was just licenses which couldn't effectively be stolen.)

rdtsc 15y ago

Of course if you have 40TB you might also want to have uncompressed audio & also have video. Every single hard drive I got so far, no matter how big it seemed at the time, I managed to fill with data. Generated data is like a gas, it will just expand to fill in the available space.

onemoreact 15y ago
For most people that space is taken up by caching other peoples work, AKA movies, programs, music etc. After I could stream HD content over my internet connection I feel little need to keep a local copy of most of these so I have actually started to use less HDD over the two years. It's still feels odd, I filled up a 750GB HDD then I got a 240 GB SSD and a 2TB HDD and yet I find I am useing less HDD now than before the upgrade.

evilswan 15y ago

My first HDD was on a Commodore Amiga and was a mighty 60Mb.

WalterBright 15y ago

Mine was 6Mb. I had to build my own interface card and I/O driver for it (for my Heathkit H11). And it was still enormously useful over those floppies.