Source: https://www.scribd.com/doc/235024900/Unit-6-Analysis-1-Memory-Cost
Now think about the amount of storage we will have 45 years from now.
It really is insane that 1TB micro SD cards exist now
Tbf, very few people had a hard disk at home in 1980. And if they did, it was a smaller capacity. The IBM PC XT shipped with a 10 MB drive in 1983.
Local storage will be illegal in 45 years.
I didn't think about that, "you'll own nothing and be happy" plan...
I remember my parents taking us to the Gateway store, and the guy who helped us said something along the lines of “This PC has 12 gigs; you’ll never run out of space!”
Napster hit the scene within a few months. Started getting “low disk space!” warnings real quick.
don't worry, at this rate we'll be back to that pricing in no time...
Only for SSDs. HDDs are under $100 for 2TB drives. Economy of scale plus lower demand makes those physical drives super cheap.
$100 for 2TB is terrible though, ideally we get 1TB or more per $5
All hard drives, including HDD's have at least gone up a bit. But, everybody prefers SSD's, so obviously those will be higher. People install the OS on the SSD then use a huge HDD to install the games on.
I bought 4 4tb HDDs for $500 total last year, went to buy a spare last month and they're $250 each now. So no. Not even a little bit true.
You better look again, all my shit has went up.
Uh wrong. The drive's I Bought last year have more than doubled. In price. Hdds not ssd. Insanity.
super cheap
That's what a slim 2.5" (so, fairly cutting-edge tech) 2TB cost almost 10 years ago, and a couple of years later the same drive was around $70. This isn't some kind of amazing deal in 2026.
i believe datacenter demand is driving up HDD prices too though to a lesser extent
Yep! Also, some people don't care about the speed of an HDD, as long as it has a ton of storage.
Yeah about that…
Now look at 10TB drives.
You checked Walmart for those? Might be a decent price if they actually have them in stock.
All the oldies flocking here to tell everyone about how cool their tiny hard drives were.
Hi, I had a 25mb hard drive and it was awesome. Technology!
Hi, I don't remember the size of my first HDD, I guess about 40 MB. Was a pretty big boy, filling a whole 5,75 " slot. What I remember most about it, was that my father told me to always park it.
I had a 186 (or possibly an 8088?) in the mid 80s as my first PC. It ran on two low density 5.25" floppy drives, with no internal HD. My uncle bought himself a new HDD and gave me his old 20MB drive. When I was next at the local computer store, I asked how much a 20MB drive costs, and my jaw hit the floor!
I didn’t think 186 was a thing.
Seemed to go straight from 8086/8088 to 80286.
It was a thing
My 1st was an apple ][ plus clone with a controller for 2 8” floppy drives. I ran a BBS off of it.
My second computer had a 20 MB HDD and it was wonderful to have soooo much space compared to the previous computer which had no HDD and 3 floppy drives.
Then a year later I added a second 20 MB HDD and was absolutely swimming in space.
Back then a 'large' app was 100 KB. You'd spend all day writing code and produce a 13 KB file.
I can spend all day writing code and end up a couple kB lighter.
Those thimgs were huge too. 14 mb and it was the size of a router.
I remember getting my first Seagate ST-225 21 MB (no not a typo) drive for $800.
I remember getting my first 10MB hard drive, c. the 80s. I remember holding it in my hands and marveling at how I could put ten million bytes in this little enclosure and just... carry it around, if I so chose. Not that I was inclined to; that thing was heavy.
Eventually, after the drive failed, I took it apart and pinched the absolute fuck out of my finger between the two neodymium magnets. Blood was spilled.
Computers used to be fun. They still are, but they used to be too.
Seagate 2TB bare drive: $70. When it's not on sale. Which it is right now.
Price per GB: 3.5 cents
over $100 now. was about $55-60 a year ago. a 2tb today costs more than the 'cheap' smr 8tb drives i got ~ 18 months ago.
I once bought a 20MB HDD for about 1000.
Who would ever need 20Mb?? You're just wasting money at this point.
20Mb != 20MB
20Mb == 20MB / 8
I know. But my autocorrect did not. And I didn't care enough to fix, since it didn't make a difference for the joke lol
False
8b == 1B
20(8b) == 20(1B)
20((8b) * 1000000) == 20((1B) * 1000000)
160000000b == 20000000B
(160,000,000b == 20,000,000B)
(160Mb = 20MB)
1b == 0.125B
20(1b) == 20(0.125B)
20(1b) == 2.5B
20(1b * 1000000) == 2.5(1B * 1000000)
(20,000,000b == 2,500,000B)
20Mb == 2.5MB
Okay yeah I wasn't reading properly.
Mine only cost $300 sometime in the late 80s. Computer prices kept on declining all the way from 1950 to 2016.
(edit to make a better guess at start and end years — 2016 because it was the year of the 1080ti)
Long live the 1080ti
i think the lt.kernel hard drive i got for my c64 around then was $700 for 40mb.. used
Damn son!
Apple coming in at the highest cost per GB sounds about right, but holy shit their price was absurd.
I bought a 30MB HD for around $700 circa 1990.
I owned a Zip drive with 100 megs in 1991. It cost a pretty penny.
So my head exploded when I saw USB drives for $20 that held 128MB almost a decade later.
20 years later, you will be doing the same thing.
Almost as much as in 2026.
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