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Thanks for the memory: the story of storage

techradar.com — In an age when RAM is measured in gigabytes and disk space is measured in terabytes, it's hard to imagine a time when storage had to be built by hand and every bit was sacred. But the history of computers is also the story of our ability to store data in myriad forms...

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 27, 2008

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  • justrasputin, on 12/26/2008, -0/+34One day, we used to keep records in "books" and look at them in "libraries." Hard to imagine, isn't it?
  • str1fe, on 12/27/2008, -2/+28E-books are in .pdf format, not .dll
  • avataros, on 12/26/2008, -5/+27Pfft. 640K should be enough for anybody.
  • AmazingSteve, on 12/26/2008, -0/+20I sort of miss the hell of having to write .bat and .config files for every other game I tried to play on a PC back in the day. Loading mouse drivers into high memory, eliminating others just to free up enough base ram to load up Falcon 3.0 on my blazing fast 386-33 with it's monstrous 40 meg HD and it's mind bending 8 meg of ram. God help you if you didn't know what you were doing back then.
  • Murdats, on 12/27/2008, -0/+1710 years ago we were using floppy drives with 1.44mb, today I have an 8gig microsd card the size of my pinky nail.

    and that is just 1 decade, imagine what will be common place in another, several terabytes? (you cant get any smaller, there is already a danger of accidental inhalation, and who wants to go woops I just inhaled 500 movies)
  • InorganicMatter, on 12/27/2008, -0/+14*will APPROACH infinity.

    /mathematician
  • zulelord, on 12/27/2008, -0/+13I still have my first hard drive... A 20MB monster that cost over $600 (with the MFM controller, yes it was an Atari computer)

    It is hard to imagine my $200 digital camera has a 2GB memory card not much larger than a postage stamp. I can't wait for 2050.
  • MiDNiGHTS, on 12/27/2008, -1/+12If you make it that long.
  • wonderbriefs, on 12/27/2008, -0/+10I'm still stoked about not having to blow into cartridges every time I want to play a game.
  • inlovingmemory, on 12/26/2008, -1/+11Not many people would make the initial link.
  • geekchic, on 12/26/2008, -0/+9I remember reading about an amazing new technology called the "laser disc" which could store an incredible Gigabyte of memory on it. It was write only, but the media at the time commented that you didn't need to delete old files, so vast was its storage capacity.

    How times change.
  • MtheoryX, on 12/26/2008, -0/+8The more things change, the more they stay the same.

    Case in point: Massive storage in Gmail is intended to alleviate the need to ever delete an email.
  • inactive, on 12/27/2008, -1/+815 or 20 years? try 3-5. In 15-20 years digital storage will reach the infinite.
  • Jo9100, on 12/26/2008, -11/+18Fall Out Boy? Really?
  • Zervaman, on 12/27/2008, -0/+7Just imagine what computing will be like in 15 or 20 years. The computer you are using right now will be a complete joke.

    What, you only have a 1 TB hard drive? 4 GB RAM? psssh.

    Can't wait for the future!
  • sanderton, on 12/26/2008, -1/+8I remember my dad teaching me how to "read" a punch card by hand back in the Seventies. Sigh.
  • Sp0rAdiC, on 12/27/2008, -0/+6If we make it that long.
  • Calcio, on 12/26/2008, -0/+6ahh punchcards. Happy days
  • ilikedemoon, on 12/27/2008, -0/+6'digg' was built up on technology related stories. What would be better?
  • wonderbriefs, on 12/27/2008, -2/+8No. You're not.
  • robbwindow, on 12/26/2008, -0/+5Some great historical information of the first computer? The Manchester baby 1948 awesome research, thanks for digg.
  • wonderbriefs, on 12/27/2008, -2/+7Huh?
  • ilikedemoon, on 12/27/2008, -0/+4what? read the story you ***** idiot!
  • inactive, on 02/25/2009, -0/+4smoke some more
  • kaffelars, on 12/27/2008, -0/+4"Just imagine what computing will be like in 15 or 20 years. The computer you are using right now will be a complete joke."

    The computer I'm using now is already a complete joke. I wish I had brought my own computer home for christmas.
  • mmmnoodles, on 12/27/2008, -2/+6thats what she sai-.... no, wait.
    i think i'm doing it wrong.
  • Darkhacker, on 12/27/2008, -2/+6Firstly, nobody can even cite a source for when Bill Gates said this. Secondly, even if he did say it, do you honestly believe he meant for all time? It's clear that if Gates ever did say this, he clearly meant until the next version of DOS. The context of this quote was that the IBM PC and version of DOS they were writing at the time, only allowed for 640 kilobytes of system memory. It should be painfully obvious to anyone that such a statement clearly implied the unspoken part: "until the next version". And back then, he would have been correct.
  • mrsteveman1, on 12/27/2008, -2/+6Fall out boy owns the phrase "thanks for the memory" now? What the hell?
  • dhughes, on 12/27/2008, -0/+3 My first "IBM compatible PC" in about 1994 had 420MB HD and I think it was 2MB of RAM (which was quite a bit).

    These days I'd say a common sized for hard drives is about 500 GB even though 1TB is available, and 3 to 4 GB of RAM is common (due to hardware limitations and not so common in the home 64-bit Operating System).

    A wild guess, which is the only way you can guess when dealing with computers, I'd say in 10 to 15 years just doubling those numbers you'll see PetaByte sized drives with maybe an 1 ExaByte drive on the horizon (SSD may allow capacities to grow quicker) and multi TeraByte memory or even a combining of system and storage memory into one instead of separate devices.

    Although with Quantum computing and holographic or some nano-quantum-holographic-diamond-molecular-spin invention who knows what will suddenly appear.
  • dhughes, on 12/27/2008, -0/+3 Dragon's Lair!
  • johnjohn71, on 12/27/2008, -7/+10Jesus... This guy will submit ANYTHING
  • jkirk7msa, on 12/27/2008, -1/+4RAW DATA.
  • inactive, on 12/27/2008, -1/+4People keep saying 'I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE FUTURE!'

    ***** that. See how computers are ramping up at such an exponential pace? Int he future, you'll drop $1200 on a state of the art rig, and it'll be completely obsolete in 1 month.
  • hilanderiam, on 12/27/2008, -0/+3I curse the days, when a few hours of creativity would come to a full stop, cause of lack of memory.
  • ilikedemoon, on 12/27/2008, -0/+3I bet if core memory was still being used today, those little 1GB flash drives would be a little bigger. you would have to carry them around on a semi truck.

  • Evilblobs, on 12/27/2008, -1/+4Iz it c00l to hate th Fall Out Boyz?
  • junkneo, on 12/27/2008, -0/+2The history of memory and the computer industry is the desperate attempt to simulate the Human mind. Wonder what the aliens are thinking.
  • Murdats, on 12/27/2008, -0/+2you mean its an attempt to surpass the human mind, but to surpass it we first have to match it.
  • iSinned, on 12/27/2008, -0/+2He's in the game for the fame.
  • 1892, on 12/27/2008, -2/+4thnks fr th mmrs
  • Evilblobs, on 12/27/2008, -0/+2If you buy something that is top-of-the-line, a CPU or video card, It generally takes about 4 months, at least, for it to be outdated.

    And even then, its not like it stops working, it's just no longer the fastest.


    1TB drives might exist, but it's not like one of my old 200GB drives starts holding less, I can still cram 250 movies on it. And i can still cram a movie to encode through an old Athlon64, it just wont do it as fast.
  • inactive, on 02/25/2009, -0/+2ahhh...Intel Core 2 Extreme Yorkfiled was released on Nov 2007, and got beaten by i7 on November 2008. quite a long period of dominance I would say. not bad. should add that the processor is still selling and being offered by Alienware.
  • ilikedemoon, on 12/27/2008, -0/+2650MB CD-ROMs in 1982? Amazing. That's about what it is now.
  • tgc1, on 12/27/2008, -1/+3I just purchased 2GB memory cards the size of my pinky fingernail (it was 5 bucks!). Micro SD cards are insanely small... when I pulled it out of the case I was astonished by how small it was. It was nearly twice the capacity of my first hard drive!
  • inactive, on 02/25/2009, -0/+2I bought a dell xps 730 h2c with intel core 2 extreme 3.8 ghz on october 2008, and it's already been outdated by intel i7. now i don't know when intel released qx9770 processors. gotta wiki it :P
  • inactive, on 12/27/2008, -0/+1Yeah, we're all just computer storage space creating more storage space for the beings that created us.
  • MtheoryX, on 12/27/2008, -0/+1I've been hearing about the death of mail, and email, for the past 5 years.

    I really don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon.
  • wonderbriefs, on 12/27/2008, -1/+2I did read the story. I didn't get that the title was a Fall Out Boy reference because I'm not familiar with their work.
  • latova, on 12/27/2008, -0/+1My future self is laughing at you from his hovercar while watching holoporn from his 1 million terabyte flash drive.
  • ilikedemoon, on 12/27/2008, -0/+1gocha! Now i get it. 'Thanks for the memory' = fallout boys
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