5 ms·

I will never not be astounded by the rate storage has increased in my lifetime. My first PC had a whopping 20 megabyte hard disk that occupied not one but TWO 5

by donatj 3y ago

I will never not be astounded by the rate storage has increased in my lifetime. My first PC had a whopping 20 megabyte hard disk that occupied not one but TWO 5.25” drive bays and appeared something like the following https://www.priceblaze.com/st4121-Seagate-Storage-Hard-Drives https://www.priceblaze.com/st4121-Seagate-Storage-Hard-Drive...

agumonkey 3y ago
Somehow similar, started with 50MB. I remember when 1GB became the norm, when 10GB became affordable (and seemed infinite).. and 100GB .. 500 .. 1000. Very strange feeling.
TacticalCoder 3y ago
> My first PC had a whopping 20 megabyte hard disk that occupied not one but TWO 5.25” drive bays My first HDD was for a Commodore Amiga 500 and it was sold with its enclosure, so it was quite big too. I remember it did cost (in Europe) the equivalent of about $1000: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/36474/Reference-40MB-Amiga-SCSI-Hard-Drive/ https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/36474/Reference-40MB...
blueboo 3y ago
Agreed, it’s truly mind boggling. My moment: coming home from a computer show with a spectacular deal — $80 for an 80Mb drive to be installed in our Compaq 286 suitcase unit. (Imagine having 100mb!)
shiroiushi 3y ago
I'm not that astounded at all. Hard drive sizes have barely changed in 10 years. Sure, flash storage keeps increasing, and 4TB on an SD card is pretty amazing, but it's not a hard drive, and SD cards aren't really that reliable, nor can they be used as long-term offline storage. Good ol' spinning rust HDs are the only thing that make any sense for archiving data right now, unless you have enough data to make LTO tapes economical (and here you have to worry about the tapes being readable with newer generations of drives, so you still have to cycle the data to newer tapes). (Re)writable optical discs were supposed to serve this purpose, but they utterly failed at it.
- RetroTechie 3y ago
  > and SD cards aren't really that reliable, nor can they be used as long-term offline storage. It would be very nice if there was storage that was more durable & reliable than current tech. As opposed to just bigger & cheaper. Eg. that glass-based storage Microsoft is working on. If that makes it to market, even a few dozen GB per media, write-once, would be very tempting. I don't need ever-increasing # of TBs. I need [whatever I have stored] to not disappear randomly. Hell, in this aspect even floppies in early 80s out-did current day flash storage. Yeah I know good backup procedures protect against data loss. But that doesn't make random-failing-storage-without-warning any less pita.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    >Hell, in this aspect even floppies in early 80s out-did current day flash storage. As an interesting aside, you can roughly estimate's someone age from internet comments when they talk about the reliability of floppy disks (or lack thereof).
- gambiting 3y ago
  >>Hard drive sizes have barely changed in 10 years. I mean, they kinda have. From what I can find online, the largest capacity 3.5" drive you could buy in 2014 was 12TB. Now in 2024, the largest drive seems to be this 30TB Seagate - not quite a 3x increase, but close: https://petapixel.com/2024/01/18/seagates-new-30tb-hard-drive-is-the-largest-ever/ https://petapixel.com/2024/01/18/seagates-new-30tb-hard-driv... What hasn't really moved is the price - I feel like even few years ago a £100 could get me a 4TB drive, and the same is true today, the capacity vs cost ratio hasn't really followed the same curve as it did with SSDs.
  - Leo_Verto 3y ago
    That's because there's a floor to HDD prices regardless of size. If you want maximum storage per unit of currency spent, you'll be looking at 16-20TB drives which go for 15-16€ per TB in my area. By comparison, 4TB drives tend to go for 20€+ per TB. But I agree that SSDs have moved much more rapidly and am looking forward to them finally surpassing HDDs on the price front too.

by donatj 3y ago

agumonkey 3y ago

Somehow similar, started with 50MB. I remember when 1GB became the norm, when 10GB became affordable (and seemed infinite).. and 100GB .. 500 .. 1000. Very strange feeling.

TacticalCoder 3y ago

> My first PC had a whopping 20 megabyte hard disk that occupied not one but TWO 5.25” drive bays My first HDD was for a Commodore Amiga 500 and it was sold with its enclosure, so it was quite big too. I remember it did cost (in Europe) the equivalent of about $1000: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/36474/Reference-40MB-Amiga-SCSI-Hard-Drive/ https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/36474/Reference-40MB...

blueboo 3y ago

Agreed, it’s truly mind boggling. My moment: coming home from a computer show with a spectacular deal — $80 for an 80Mb drive to be installed in our Compaq 286 suitcase unit. (Imagine having 100mb!)

shiroiushi 3y ago

I'm not that astounded at all. Hard drive sizes have barely changed in 10 years. Sure, flash storage keeps increasing, and 4TB on an SD card is pretty amazing, but it's not a hard drive, and SD cards aren't really that reliable, nor can they be used as long-term offline storage. Good ol' spinning rust HDs are the only thing that make any sense for archiving data right now, unless you have enough data to make LTO tapes economical (and here you have to worry about the tapes being readable with newer generations of drives, so you still have to cycle the data to newer tapes). (Re)writable optical discs were supposed to serve this purpose, but they utterly failed at it.

RetroTechie 3y ago
> and SD cards aren't really that reliable, nor can they be used as long-term offline storage. It would be very nice if there was storage that was more durable & reliable than current tech. As opposed to just bigger & cheaper. Eg. that glass-based storage Microsoft is working on. If that makes it to market, even a few dozen GB per media, write-once, would be very tempting. I don't need ever-increasing # of TBs. I need [whatever I have stored] to not disappear randomly. Hell, in this aspect even floppies in early 80s out-did current day flash storage. Yeah I know good backup procedures protect against data loss. But that doesn't make random-failing-storage-without-warning any less pita.
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  >Hell, in this aspect even floppies in early 80s out-did current day flash storage. As an interesting aside, you can roughly estimate's someone age from internet comments when they talk about the reliability of floppy disks (or lack thereof).
gambiting 3y ago
>>Hard drive sizes have barely changed in 10 years. I mean, they kinda have. From what I can find online, the largest capacity 3.5" drive you could buy in 2014 was 12TB. Now in 2024, the largest drive seems to be this 30TB Seagate - not quite a 3x increase, but close: https://petapixel.com/2024/01/18/seagates-new-30tb-hard-drive-is-the-largest-ever/ https://petapixel.com/2024/01/18/seagates-new-30tb-hard-driv... What hasn't really moved is the price - I feel like even few years ago a £100 could get me a 4TB drive, and the same is true today, the capacity vs cost ratio hasn't really followed the same curve as it did with SSDs.
- Leo_Verto 3y ago
  That's because there's a floor to HDD prices regardless of size. If you want maximum storage per unit of currency spent, you'll be looking at 16-20TB drives which go for 15-16€ per TB in my area. By comparison, 4TB drives tend to go for 20€+ per TB. But I agree that SSDs have moved much more rapidly and am looking forward to them finally surpassing HDDs on the price front too.