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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!"

18 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Incomplete by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Funny

    The article fails to include the Library of Congress, to which all other storage mediums should be compared...

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    1. Re:Incomplete by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 4, Funny

      A good metric in general, but in this case the first page would consist of a zero, a decimal point, and lots of other zeros followed eventually by a significant digit.

      If I want to read a whole lot of nothing I'll go to Digg...

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    2. Re:Incomplete by gnick · · Score: 4, Informative

      Crud. That big long post and I had GB == TB all the way through... The only places I had it right are where I screwed up TB v GB on both sides... To be fair, though, you mangled it too - 1.6/1000 != .16. Let's try that again:

      Punch Card (960 bits) ~= 0.000000000006 LOCs
      Audio Tape (1400 kB) ~= 0.00000000007 LOCs
      Magnetic tape (35 kB) ~= 0.00000000175 LOCs
      8" floppy (1.2 MB) ~= 0.00000006 LOCs
      5.25" floppy (1.2 MB) ~= 0.00000006 LOCs
      3.5" floppy ~= 0.000000072 LOCs
      SmartMedia (128 MB) ~= 0.0000064 LOCs
      LS-120 (240 MB) ~= 0.000012 LOCs
      CD (700MB) ~= 0.000035 LOCs
      Zip drive (750 MB) ~= 0.0000375 LOCs
      MiniDisc (1 GB) ~= 0.00005 LOCs
      Jaz drive (2 GB) ~= 0.0001 LOCs
      Magneto-optical drive (2.6 GB) ~= 0.00013 LOCs
      Microdrive (8 GB) ~= 0.0004 LOCs
      DVD (8.5 GB) ~= 0.000425 LOCs
      Colorado backup (14 GB) ~= 0.0007 LOCs
      HD-DVD (30 GB) ~= 0.0015 LOCs
      SD (32 GB) ~= 0.0016 LOCs
      Blu-ray (50 GB) ~= 0.0025 LOCs
      USB flash (64 GB) ~= 0.0032 LOCs
      Compact flash (100 GB) ~= 0.005 LOCs
      IBM Magnetic Tape (1 TB) ~= 0.05 LOCs
      T10000 Magnetic Tape (1 TB) ~= 0.05 LOCs
      2.5" portable hard drive (1 TB) ~= 0.05 LOCs

      Better?

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    3. Re:Incomplete by Hatta · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's nicer with metric prefixes.

      Punch Card (960 bits) ~= 6 picoLOCs
      Audio Tape (1400 kB) ~= 70 picoLOCs
      Magnetic tape (35 kB) ~= 1.75 nanoLOCs
      8" floppy (1.2 MB) ~= 60 nanoLOCs
      5.25" floppy (1.2 MB) ~= 60 nanoLOCs
      3.5" floppy ~= 72 nanoLOCs
      SmartMedia (128 MB) ~= 6.4 microLOCs
      LS-120 (240 MB) ~= 12 microLOCs
      CD (700MB) ~= 35 microLOCs
      Zip drive (750 MB) ~= 37 microLOCs
      MiniDisc (1 GB) ~= 50 microLOCs
      Jaz drive (2 GB) ~= 100 microLOCs
      Magneto-optical drive (2.6 GB) ~= 130 microLOCs
      Microdrive (8 GB) ~= 400 microLOCs
      DVD (8.5 GB) ~= 425 microLOCs
      Colorado backup (14 GB) ~= 700 microLOCs
      HD-DVD (30 GB) ~= 1.5 milliLOCs
      SD (32 GB) ~= 1.6 milliLOCs
      Blu-ray (50 GB) ~= 2.5 milliLOCs
      USB flash (64 GB) ~= 3.2 milliLOCs
      Compact flash (100 GB) ~= 5 milliLOCs
      IBM Magnetic Tape (1 TB) ~= 50 milliLOCs
      T10000 Magnetic Tape (1 TB) ~= 50 milliLOCs
      2.5" portable hard drive (1 TB) ~= 50 milliLOCs

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  2. The one-page version by damn_registrars · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those who don't want to go through several pages of ads, is here.

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  3. 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.

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    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 jasonwc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You're assuming Blu-Ray disks will continue to have only one or two layers. However, 8 and 16 layer disks have been produced, and would be readable by any current Blu-Ray player with a firmware update.

      Pioneer produced a 16 layer, 400 GB disk a few months ago, and they're attempting to produce a 1 TB disk by 2013.

      Also, I dispute your claim that there is not much difference between 480p and 1080p video. The detail level on some Blu-Ray's is simply staggering (e.g. Dark Knight, Planet Earth, Lost S04). Differences are especially apparent on animated content where production is all digital.
      For example, Wall-E and Ratatouille look amazing.

        It is far superior in color reproduction, vibrancy, and detail than DVD. There's also the benefit of lossless audio. Most Blu-Rays now come with lossless 24/48 khz tracks 5.1 or 7.1 tracks. This is significantly superior to the 448 kbit Dolby Digital tracks provided on most DVDs.

      Source: Wikipedia

      "In December 2008, Pioneer Corporation unveiled a 400 GB Blu-ray disc, which contains 16 data layers, 25 GB each, and will be compatible with current players after a firmware update. A planned launch is in the 2009-2010 time frame for ROM and 2010-2013 for rewritable discs. Ongoing development is under way to create a 1 TB Blu-ray disc as soon as 2013.[92]."

    3. Re:to Blu-ray by timeOday · · Score: 4, Interesting
      But paying a few hundred bucks for a hard drive was normal then, too, and now it's not.

      And when data CDs first came out (mid-80s), they stored several times more than a high-end hard drive. Somewhere along the way, optical media fell far, far behind.

    4. 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...

  4. Back in my day... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...we notched lines on sticks. And we LIKED IT THAT WAY. We even developed a counting system out of it. See?

    IIIVIIIX

    That's 10. Ignore the previous notches. Some young whippersnappers thought it would be funny to do "subtractive" forms whereby IV would be "four". Oooo. I'm so impressed. Not. GET OFF MY LAWN.

    Oh, and they forgot about magnetic drums. :-P

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  5. The Egyptians said it best: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bird : Bird : Giant Eye : Pyramid : Bird : Giant Eye : Dead Fish : Cat Head : Cat Head : Cat Head :

  6. Jaz Drive by Thelasko · · Score: 4, Informative

    I worked with a bunch of Jaz Drives back in the day. One person dropped a disk, and it failed. The disk was inserted into a drive, and the drive failed. Another disk was inserted into that drive, and that disk failed. It spread like a plague through all of the machines.

    All of the money and data lost due to those things still makes me cringe.

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  7. what about hard drives? by wjh31 · · Score: 4, Informative

    It manages to list lots of faliures and successes, but still managed to miss HDD's and SSD, y'know, the sporta thing where people probably store most of their data

  8. Re:Forgot one. by JustOK · · Score: 5, Funny

    Clay tablets!?!?!? You young whipper-snappers with yer mobile devices. In my day we used a cave wall. Better resolution.

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  9. Re:the good old days of data storage by cbelt3 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    NOT an urban legend. Happened to me with a 550 card program at Mizzou in 1975. I was running through the halls to go get it punched on the auto-collator (I think that's what it was called- a machine that punched the extra columns on the right (73 through 80) in sequence so you could resort the cards. And I tripped, and the cards went flying.

    Fortunately I had a printout because I'd just run the program, so I just went back and keypunched the whole damn thing. And left the cards in the hall. I was a faster typist than a sorter.

  10. IBM Reference by HockeyPuck · · Score: 4, Informative

    To get a better look at where storage came from, head on over to IBM's Archives: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_intro.html Then check out the historical product profiles, documentation and videos: http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_reference.html

  11. MaximumPC helps IBM disseminate misinformation by metasonix · · Score: 4, Informative

    Quote: "The long length presented plenty of opportunities for tears and breaks, so in 1952, IBM devised bulky floor standing drives that made use of vacuum columns to buffer the nickel-plated bronze tape."

    Wrongo, buddy. Stop cribbing from IBM's website. IBM is notorious for making themselves out as "pioneers" for every computing technology.

    The first magnetic-tape drive for a computer to ACTUALLY BE SHIPPED was the Univac Uniservo drive. First system with drives went to the US Census Bureau in December 1951--more than a year before IBM shipped their first tape drive. (and yes, it used nickel-plated bronze tape.)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_tape_data_storage
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNISERVO