Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsme.general (
More info?)
Yeah, it's the same as the ever increasing RAM. Interesting, I found
this in regards to storage and terabyte usage:
Terabytes in use
A typical video store contains about 8 terabytes of video. The books in
the largest library in the world, the U.S. Library of Congress, contain
about 20 terabytes of text. The Internet Archive currently has about 1
petabyte of data.
Personal computers containing a terabyte or more of storage space have
recently become possible using combinations of high-capacity consumer
hard drives. As of 2004, drives exceed 300 gigabytes in size, so storage
capacity totalling a terabyte or more can be reached using as few as 3
or 4 hard disks, at a street cost of as little as US$500, down from over
US$1000 in 2003. (source: www.pricewatch.com)
A petabyte is either 1000 terabytes or 1024 terabytes, depending on the
usage. (aka Exabyte)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabyte
I think that in regards to home computers the real question is how much
can one really use or need. I mean the Library of Congress has 20
terabytes, imagine yourself sifting through 20 terabytes of data on a
home pc, you'd be lost or you just simply wouldn't have time to sift
through and use all that information, good for pack rats I guess! Or
you could store thousands of movies...
John
Mike M wrote:
> However what will be the position in ten years time? Remember that the
> article you mention was written six years ago 1999.
>
> In the around 1970 I remember the joy at my university having managed to
> obtain a grant to purchase a 1MB core box for our IBM360. Hand wired
> with ferrite cores and cost a mint!
> In around 1985 I remember buying the first hard disk for my PC. 30MB
> which had to be partitioned as the system couldn't access more than I
> think a 20MB partition. I can't remember the cost of the controller and
> disk but it wasn't cheap.
> In 1993 we purchased a new departmental server with a total of 3GB of
> storage, 2x600MB and 2x1200MB scsi drives. Cost in excess of US$10,000
> Now in 2005 two of my PCs each have in excess of ½TB of storage. A box
> with 4x 250GB SATA drives can be put together for well under US$2000.
>
> So perhaps an exabyte of storage won't be that fantastic a thought in
> 2015. As to who will need that amount of storage is another thing but
> raw high definition AV data certainly eats up storage.
>
> John John <audetweld@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote:
>
>> Mike M wrote:
>>
>>>> terabyte (TB) = 1000GB (or rather 1024GB)
>>>> exabyte = 1000TB (or rather 1024TB)
>>
>>
>> To put it in perpective "it might be interesting to think about just
>> how big even one exabyte is. One exabyte is 1 billion gigabytes.
>> Let's say you need 1 exabyte of storage and decide to purchase 25 GB
>> hard drives. In order to have one exabyte of storage, you would need
>> almost 43,000,000 of these 25 GB drives. At about $US200 for the
>> drives (with volume discount, tax not included), this works out to
>> just over US$ 8.5 billion. That doesn't include the controller cards
>> or chassis to hold these drives. I don't want to think about how long
>> it would take to format the drives."
>>
>> Of course 25 GB drives don't cost $200 now a days but even at $10 a
>> pop that would add up to $430,000,000 just for the drives! Plus tax
>> of course...
>>
>>
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/community/columns/questions/peeran16.mspx
>>
>>
>> John
>
>