Mixsonian Larry

Computer Storage over the Years

In 2015 or so I made the display below of different storage media that I had used over the years.

Computer Storage

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
  1. 14 inch platter from a IBM disk unit. Eight of these would be stacked together in a single unit with  a quarter inch gap between them. The total capacity of all 8 plattres was 256 MB. Abt. 1971

  2. An 8 inch floppy disk, single sided, 128 KB.  Later came double sided disks that held 256 KBFrom my first computer, an IMSA 8080, in 1977.

  3. 5¼  inch floppy disk, double sided, double density, 800 KB, abt. 1979

  4. 3.5 inch floppy disk, orginially 360 KB, then double sided 720 KB, and in the end double sided double denisity 1.44 MB. It was still called a floppy disk even though it had a hard shell beacuse there still was a floppy disk inside.
    This partcular disk was for Microsoft Windows 3.0 Device Driver Kit. Abt. 1991

  5. Zip Drive, 100 MB, 1998.

  6. HP Optical drive, single density, 1.3 GB. 1995. From my project for at the US Navy project.

  7. Microsoft Windows 95 CD, 720 MB. 1995. This was a pre-release of Windows 95.

  8. America Online (AOL) CD, 720 MB,  2002

  9. SD Card, 256 MB, Abt. 2002

Since making the display, increasing smaller SD cards have come out, each with higher densities. I now use mostly 64 GB Micro SD cards for storage althought you can now get 1 TB cards.
SD Cards