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Computer drive sizes over the years (lemmy.zip)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I just got a new laptop today and when I saw the ssd it blew my mind. Most of my old drives are like the second from left and it's what I think of as a normal drive, buying a standard ssd still feels small to me. But look at that tiny thing to the right! It's the size of a postage stamp!

Assuming I managed to find the right specs (it is a Microscience hh-1050): The monster on the far left is from 1990, holds 40mb, read/write of 0.625mb/s, and weighs almost exactly 2kg. The baby on the far right I got in the mail today, holds 1tb, read/write of 5150mb/s, and weighs about 2.85 grams.

So we're looking at 25,000 times more storage, 8,240 times faster, and 1/700th the weight! And the one on the right is just 1tb, they make one that same model but 2tb. I can barely believe it exists even though I'm literally holding it in my hands.

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[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Oldest hard drives I've dealt with were 4RU. Those systems also had me attaching reels of tape with write enable rings.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

It'd be gnar if the smallest one was also a magnetic platter hard drive.

The smallest old style hard drive I can think of is the iPod. But now I want to know if any magnetic platter drives got smaller than that... 🤔

Afaik, it's all been solid state after that. Even newer iPods.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Oh wow. I didn't even know that was a platter drive! I'm kinda glad I kept that thing.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

As far as I'm aware 1.8" is the smallest form factor for mechanical hard drives.

[-] bdonvr 1 points 5 days ago

Nope, they did make 0.85" ones. Here's someone taking one apart: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QB0KdAj54xg

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[-] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

It really is amazing, and just popping an m.2 into a motherboard directly is just so... easy. And I think Gen5s are what, 2.5x faster than what you're showing here?

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[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

I think I have two I could put on the left side. A "full-height" 5.25 inch drive with 5 megabytes and a DEC removable disk platter assembly, somewhere over a foot in diameter and 8 to 10 inches high. I don't remember how much capacity that had. It was for a RP04 or RP06 drive.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

You could go back further to the drives mini computers used to use, which basically for in a file cabinet. Or old mainframes, which were the file cabinet.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

It’s a bit misleading, you could have used an sd card long ago

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

what's the one on the right?

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

WD_Black SN770M. There are 1/2, 1, and 2tb models I have the 1tb version here. https://www.newegg.com/western-digital-1tb-sn770m/p/N82E16820250263

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

It's an M.2 NVMe or sata drive.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Do manufacturers use the extra space for larger batteries, or just to make the product smaller overall?

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

This is for desktop PC. But the correct answer is overall smaller because if you only had spinny drives a lot of small devices wouldn't be possible.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Yes.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Having grown up along with the computer industry, sometimes I have that surreal sense of awe when I remember where we came from and what I used to consider cutting edge. Just upgraded my computer with a few SSDs, one an M.2, and before I put it in I was looking at it and trying to come to grasp with the scale of things (size and speed) vs. my first C-64 computer and Datasette. I know the numbers...they don't convey the difference in the head.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

And it will continue...

Soon we'll have 100TB "drives" the size of a thumb nail for 50€.

We'll all (we geeks anyways) walk around with the Wikipedia, all Star Trek movies and so on in our pocket :-)

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

The 1TB and up microSD cards blow my mind.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

And they all last until about the same date

[-] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

The new hard drives are almost the size of old SD cards (not the micro ones).

[-] [email protected] -5 points 4 days ago

Women had it good back then.

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this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025

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