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A History of Storage, From Punch Cards To Blu-ray

Posted by timothy on from the isn't-that-right-joey dept.

notthatwillsmith writes "Maximum PC just posted a comprehensive visual retrospective about data storage, starting with the once state of the art punch card and moving through the popular formats of yesteryear, including everything from magtape to Blu-ray discs. It's amazing how much data you could pack on a few hundred feet of half-inch magnetic tape!"

6 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. to Blu-ray by Daimanta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Personally, I don't see Blu-Ray working like DVD and CD did. When the CD was released it was huge compared to HDDs. I remember possessing a 4GB drive, 7 CDs would match that. And CDs were pretty cheap by that time. Then came the DVD which was 100 times better than old magnetic tapes(I still have some of those lying around, dumb spacefillers).

    Now we have expensive Blu-ray which is 25GB per disc(50 for dl) and it's not at all impressive. It doesn't kick the ass of DVD. I can live with the quality DVD for a quite a while it's nothing compared to the ugly mess that we call VHS-tapes. They are not impressively big(with 1TB drives around for ca. eur. 100) and they cost a ton. Not only is the optical drive prohibitly expensive, the discs themselves do not come cheap). When the price of a Blu-Ray disc is 6x that of a DVD(they carry around 6 times the storage, sounds fair to me) call me again. Until that time, HDDs and DVDs will do just nicely.

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
    1. Re:to Blu-ray by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It sounds like you don't remember the costs of CD and DVD burners and media when they first came out. In 1997 or 1998, a CD burner cost about 300 bucks, with media easily being 5-10 bucks a pop. When DVD burners came out a few years later, the prices were similar. Now we're onto Blu-ray, and again, the prices are about the same. Give it a few more years and prices will be about $40-50 for the burners and $20-25 for 15 blanks.

    2. Re:to Blu-ray by comm2k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is far superior in color reproduction

      No it is not, it is still 8bpc and uses the same color sub-sampling (4:2:0) as DVD/DVB/ATSC etc...

  2. Re:Incomplete by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Um....by your own estimation 1 LOC = 20TB...not GB.

    You fool.

    SD (32 GB) ~= 1.6 LOCs

    v.

    SD (32 GB) ~= .16 LOCs

  3. Re:18th Century? by maxume · · Score: 2, Insightful

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacquard_loom

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  4. Missed ours by hurfy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seems to be focused on REMOVABLE media since they skipped most HD info entirely.

    They still missed what i used for many years, the removable platter or disk pack. I fought with our Wang computer for over 10 years doing backup onto a 13MB removable HD platter. 80MB drive with multiple platters, the top one being a removable cartridge. Lugged one (well, two actually) of those suckers home each week for ages.

    At least i won that fight...the Wang now sits vanquished in my dungeon...waiting until i get brave enough to turn off everything else in the house and see if it still fires up :) Everyone needs at least one Hard Drive that weighs more than they do!

    I agree some of the dates were a little premature...common manufacture dates perhaps, not usage.

    And then there is the not so common dates....we still use the T1000 Travan tape drive daily and the Jaz drive is still hooked up :)