Outer Rim Territories

Musings, ramblings, and nonsense from the fringe of space and time
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The Progression of Technology

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Apparently technology is advancing... Sitting on my desk are four hard drives (usually split between work and home) amounting to 1.75 terabytes. Total cost for the drives was 1/3 the cost of the first hard drive my dad purchased back in grade school. This is 88,500 times the amount of storage for 1/3 the price. Amazing. (More amazing is that the drives are 75% full with audio recording and video editing projects. Ouch.)

Posted December 2, 2006 by Christopher Gillespie 
Dec 04, 2006
Der Bettler said...
Amazing, indeed. It was not long ago that a "terabyte" was almost a fictional amount of storage. Now I find myself as well measuring my contents in terms of terabytes. Of course, not being disciplined enough about removing raw video once I'm done editing makes for a very cluttered RAID array!

Might I recommend getting a cheap enclosure for that internal SATA drive? You don't want an errant static-laden finger to zap the disk controller.

Dec 04, 2006
Christopher Gillespie said...
Yeah, I haven't gotten around to getting a case. I think I wrecked one drive with that interface already. Sweet! (not)

There are too many on the market. Who knows which enclosures are good enough? I'd like to avoid fans if I can.

Dec 05, 2006
Der Bettler said...
I recommend looking through newegg.com. I have bought more parts from them than I care to admit, and they've usually got good stuff for less than most other places.
Dec 05, 2006
Christopher Gillespie said...
Yeah, I did. They had two many, all affordable. I too am a loyal customer to them and the grand total is a number to be feared. Well recommended!
Dec 05, 2006
ghp said...
Yup, I remember when I got that first 20MB hard drive in 1988 (on my Mac SE) - I wondered how I could *ever* fill such an expanse! LOL!

And, then, in '91 when I built my first PC, which had two (!) 100MB drives... well, I was just too cool, knamean?

Now, I've just got a modest 400GB available on the home network...

What's also amazing, perhaps even moreso than storage capacity, is RAM. The first computer we had, a Radio Shack Color Computer (shortly traded in for a TRS-80 Model III) in 1982, had 4K of RAM (and we had the cassette tape drive -- we didn't need no stinking floppy disks!) Then, my Apple IIc (1984) had a whopping 512K (but with two (!) floppy drives! w00t!). And I was quite the big man when my SE got upgraded from 1MB to 4MB (at a whopping $250/MB) in 1989. That first PC I built? 8MB of RAM (running a 386DX-25MHz - no SX for this kid!), even though very few apps even knew enough to take advantage of anything above 640K.

Now, the G3 (storage server) has 768MB, the TiBook has 1GB, my CoreDuo iMac has 1GB, and the PC (the last of the hobbyist computers, used by the wife & kids) has 2GB.

Technology sure is fun, ain't it? :cool:

Dec 05, 2006
ghp said...
Oh yeah, I fully concur with the awesomeness that is Newegg!