Nimbus Hosting, a web hosting company, have found out that although we are storing colossal amounts of data, thousands or even millions of times more than ten or twenty years ago, but the cost of storing it has dropped enormously.
For example, to store amount of data equaling one episode of Game of Thrones, it would have cost you £27,200. The same amount of data can be stored for free on services like DropBox or Google Drive.
To store one episode of Game of Thrones, we would need:
- 6,666,667 punch cards
- 348 magnetic tapes
- 7273 8″ floppy disks
- 556 3.5″ floppy disks
- 0.4 of a DDS-1 Tape
- 5.71 mini discs
You can see the shift, the evolution of data storage, visualised in this infographic:
https://www.nimbushosting.co.uk/evolution-data-storage/
And you can see the full data-set here.
More below
We are living in the age of technological revolution. Things are changing at an incredible pace. But because we are living through it everyday, sometimes we don’t fully appreciate the rate of development. That’s why Nimbus have compiled their latest infographic, which displays how our data storage needs have changed and how the technology has evolved to match them. The results of their study are pretty stunning.
Not only are we storing colossal amounts of data, thousands or even millions of times more than ten or twenty years ago, but the cost of storing it has dropped enormously. Take the following examples:
To store one episode of Game of Thrones, you would need:
- 6,666,667 punch cards
- 348 magnetic tapes
- 7273 8″ floppy disks
- 556 3.5″ floppy disks
- 0.4 of a DDS-1 Tape
- 5.71 mini discs
To store Beyoncé’s Lemonade song, you would need:
- 29,167 punch cards
- 1.5 magnetic tapes
- 32 8″ floppy disks
- 2.5 3.5″ floppy disks
- 0.4 of a mini disc
To store one HD movie, for example Star Wars: The Force Awakens, you would need:
- 125 million punch cards
- 6,521 magnetic tapes
- 136,363 8″ floppy disks
- 10,416 3.5″ floppy disks
- 7.5 DDS-1 Tapes
- 107 mini discs
To store 1,000 photos from your last holiday, you would need:
- 21 million punch cards
- 1,143 magnetic tapes
- 23,909 8″ floppy disks
- 1,826 3.5″ floppy disks
- 1.32 DDS-1 Tapes
- 18.79 mini discs
To store the new version of the classic video game DOOM, you would need:
- 375 million punch cards
- 19,565 magnetic tapes
- 409,090 8″ floppy disks
- 31,250 3.5″ floppy disks
- 22.5 DDS-1 Tapes
- 322 mini discs
In comparison, to store the original version of the same game from 1993, you would need:
- 19,500 punch cards
- A little more than 1 magnetic tape
- 22 8″ floppy disks
- 2 3.5″ floppy disks
- 0.001 DDS-1 Tapes
- 0.02 mini discs
Those numbers are pretty incredible. Just imagine having to load more than 7,000 8” floppy disks just to watch one episode of GoT. That’s a job more epic than the series itself. But the really shocking statistic comes when you look into the cost. If you were using 3.5 inch floppy disks, it would cost you just shy of £2,000 pounds of storage for one episode. You’d need a mortgage just to watch series one.
The smaller 3.5 inch floppy disk was introduced in 1981 and was used well into the 90s, so in 25 years, we’ve managed to reduce the cost and increase the capacity thousands of times over. Just think about that next time you store your files for virtually nothing in the cloud.
