Terabyte drive

[Munjibunga]

OK, I just installed a terabyte drive on my computer. In the early 1980s, my company bought a ten megabyte drive for our brand new IBM PC AT (think 80286 chip). It cost $4,000 for that drive. At that price per byte, my new drive would cost $400 millon. It was $199 at Price Club (Costco if you're not from San Diego).

Just a few years ago I visited a school district's computing center, where they had 4 terabytes of drives on line. It consisted of four full-height computer racks in a refrigerated room. My drive is the size of a Harry Potter book.

When I graduated from college, there was no such thing as a PC. When I was in 10th grade, there were no calculators, cell phones, CDs, iPods, MP3s, digital cameras, GPS, laser pointers, Wiis, Gameboys, HDTVs nor the greatest invention of all time, the TV remote control. We did have transistor radios, but there were no integrated circuits, so your radio would have two to six discrete transistors, each the size of a pencil eraser. Think how big a computer with 10 million transistors would be if each were that size. Let's not even talk about if they were tubes.

Discuss. (Save the "you're old" crap).

[hbarcat]

Some years ago my brother bought a 1GB drive for his 486 and I told him he was an idiot because he was never going to need that much space.

[McHaven]

It's just ridiculous how fast technology changes. I just bought a 500gb external hard drive, and it's just absolutely huge and I got it for under 100 dollars. Filling it up is fun though. I'm having a field day thinking of how much music I could have on there. I already have about 18 days worth of music, just from 25 gigs.

[CamMcIntyre]

I bought a 250gig external from Best Buy i think 2 years ago for $170. A month or two later-on sale for $100, and now-even less.

I've only made a dent in about 80 gigs. It has all of my music, pictures, videos, some games. Once i get more of this used up [or if it dies]-i'll probably buy whatever is in the $180-200 range at the time.

[FL Knifemaker]

I remember my Dad buying his first calculator. It would add, subract multiply and divide. It was expensive too

I remember my first computer, a 386/20. I thought that was amazing at the time.

[Marcury]

Desktop computers are now way more powerful than the old Mainframes that took up whole floors of an office building, needed temperature control and used punch cards.

The first computer I used took 51/4" floppies that held 360kb of data now you can buy flash drives that hold up to 64GB.

I just put together a Raid array that is 1.75 TB. It amazes me how powerful PCs have gotten.

And does anyone remember the joys of SCSI?

[richnota]

In the mid-nineties I was doing advertising for Digital Equipment Corp. We did an ad for a RAID array. The marketing team was talking about how in the "future" companies would move to terrabytes.

Darn....Im livin' in the future!

Now where is my jet pack?

[tplyons]

I remember when my dad got his first 8MB hard drive. I think it was something like $700. Now, one digital photo is bigger than that.

I remember when a megapixel was a high quality, $4000 camera.

I remember when my home network was entirely coax (between two computers)

And lastly, I remember my dad's first portable computer:



Released: March 1983
Price: US$3590 (two floppy system)
How many? 53,000 in 1983, the first year
Weight: 28 pounds.
CPU: Intel 8088, 4.77MHz
RAM: 128K, 640K max
Display: 9" monochrome monitor built-in
80 X 25 text
Color graphic card
Storage: Two 320K 5-1/4" disk drives
Ports: 1 parallel (expansion card)
OS: MS-DOS

Beat those specs. LOL.

[iamlowsound]

Originally Posted by hbarcat

Some years ago my brother bought a 1GB drive for his 486 and I told him he was an idiot because he was never going to need that much space.

I have downloaded more than that in the last two hours.

lowsound

[tplyons]

Originally Posted by iamlowsound

I have downloaded more than that in the last two hours.

lowsound

Porn?

[Chunk-O-Funk]

When I was in high School (graduated 1985) we had a computer processing department (vocational high school) and IIRC the computers the students used were pretty much the size of a refrigerator. I have no idea about the power or capacity. I think they had tape drives, as in a reel to reel system.

My first job out of high school was my introduction to computers. Far from being a PC yet. Small green screen and a keyboard. No mouse. No graphics of any kind. It pretty much handled inventory and invoicing and book keeping. That's about it.

All the information was held on these large disc that were probably about 24" in diameter and inside a round housing. At night I would have to run a program to backup everything. I would pull out one of these disc, put in the copy disc, and then run the backup. The actual "computer" was about 3'X3' and about 4' deep. Again, not sure about the capacity of the disc, but it held nothing more than what a word processor does today, so I assume it wasn't much.

What a transformation we've been through. A cel phone has more processing power and digital storage than what I first used. The computers I have now has 500GB internal and another 500GB on an external drive. I really haven't even made a digital dent in either one of them.

[iamlowsound]

Originally Posted by tplyons

Porn?

Music. Downloaded a few discography's at a really high bitrate.

lowsound

[steve21]

Where's my flying car goddammit.

[RWP]

Back before PCs I worked on mini computers with state of the art hard drives about 2 feet square. They were 5 megabyte and I thought that was incredible. I have no idea what they cost but I suspect about as much as a car.

I can remember my Dad paying $400 for a Sharp calculator that would add, subtract, multiply and divide. Wish we still had it.

[tplyons]

Originally Posted by RWP

I can remember my Dad paying $400 for a Sharp calculator that would add, subtract, multiply and divide. Wish we still had it.

We just got rid of ours too.

[chicago_mike]

My daw runs around 2 TB's. I could really use about 5 TB's of storage right now. To keep all my work, sessions, and libraires. I like keeping libraries seperated by drives, not just folders. Since external sata cases and drivers are cheap, its pretty easy and smart to make libraries and backups. RAID isnt too neccassary unless maybe you do video in final cut or something.

My first computer was a Tandy Color Computer 3. CoCo 3 as it was called...128 whoppin K!

School computer rooms were installed with Tandy Model II's. wow....thats like the time before dirt.

[iamlowsound]

My families first computer was a commendor 64. Good times and fun games.

lowsound

[chicago_mike]

Commodor!

Lets see:

Thrasher, or something like that, some kind of skateboard game

Paradriod : real cool robot game

Space Taxi : Classic

[RWP]

I still have one of these. Worked too the last time I tried it. Tandy PC-1

[Ray Holt]

It really is amazing how quickly things have advanced.


But seriously. I didn't realize you were that old.