The evolution of a terabyte of data | Heart Internet Blog – Focusing on all aspects of the web

We’ve witnessed a rapid evolution of data storage over the last 50 years – from clunky 1-tonne behemoth machines that would barely store a 5-minute mp3 file in the 1960s to thumbnail-sized micro SD cards with capacities of 512 gigabytes today.

As the size required to store data has shrunk over the years, the cost of data storage has plummeted. Moore’s Law may be observation and prediction rather than science, but it’s proved incredibly accurate so far!

In 1956, the very first hard drive manufactured by IBM – the RAMAC 350 Disk File stored only 5MB of data, weighed a tonne and cost about $160,000.

Five years later, the RAMAC became obsolete and was replaced by the IBM 1301, which could store 28 megabytes of data.

Fast forward to 2013, Kingston released the highest capacity USB flash drive to-date: a 1-Terabyte USB Flash Drive called the DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3 weighing just 45g. 2014 was even better for data storage; SanDisk released the first 512GB SD Card and hard drive manufacturers; Western Digital introduced the first 'helium filled' 10-terabyte desktop hard drive for the consumer market.

7DayShop’s “Evolution of a Terabyte of Data” Infographic aims to illustrate how 1-terabyte of data would have been stored over the last six decades, with the highest capacity storage devices and tech available at each period.

There are some really interesting statistics to crunch through on this infographic!

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