Data capacity then and now, pretty amazing!
HardwareFor a high school assignment back in 2003 I had to demonstrate competency in a spreadsheet application by entering data and creating several charts, or to use the exact language from the assignment sheet: "You must demonstrate competency in a spreadsheet application by entering data and creating several charts". I used the amount of rewritable computer data capacity I had on hand as my data.
ASIDE: Before I started using Macs as my primary machines I used Office 97 on my Windows machines. Even in 2003, I saw no compelling reason to use anything newer than Excel 97!
Well here we are in 2008 and by chance while I was pouring through my backups trying to find an old text file, I found that old Excel spreadsheet file and was absolutely flabbergasted (is that a word?) by the hard disk sizes! So to put things into perspective I decided to quickly open the file in Gnumeric and add data from my recent drives, and just for fun the data from some of our older machines (I didn't bother with my dad's AT or anything older!).
File sizes are shown in the hard disk manufacturer's advertised sizes which assume 1 kilobyte = 1000 bytes
| Year | Total Capacity | Drives |
|---|---|---|
| 1994 | 0.1GB | internal We gave up on MS-DOS DoubleSpace compression! |
| 1997 | 5GB | 4GB internal 100MB Zip disks x10 |
| 2003 | 190GB | 80GB x2 in Windows desktop 30GB in iBook 15GB iPod 3G |
| 2008 | 4195GB | 60GB in MacBook Pro 750GB in DIY FreeBSD desktop 80GB in iBook 160GB in Armada M300 15GB iPod 3G 60GB iPod 5G 160GB USB 2.0 Iomega 320GB USB 2.0 WD 400GB FireWire 400 Seagate 500GB FireWire 400 Maxtor 750GB Gigabit NAS WD 1TB Gigabit NAS WD |
And what would these four capacities look like in comparison to each other if they were put into a fun but fairly useless graph?
