Physical Storage vs. Digital Storage
August 26th, 2009 by nateLast time we did one of these, we wanted to show you how much data we create with our digital lives. Now we want to show you how data storage has changed over the years. It’s pretty mind-blowing. Enjoy!
Tags: Info, Infographic, Interesting, Storage
August 27th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Wow, nice infographic!
August 27th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Nice diagram.
-1 for reference to MacBook Pro.
Could’ve just said average hard drive?
Apple fanboys >.>
August 27th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
quality not quantity
August 27th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
that’s lovely but there’s more out there than just ipods and imacs, this should be titled- “Physical Storage vs Macintosh Storage”
August 27th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Nice work!
Cassettes went to 120 minutes though. If I recall 12″ played at 16RPM went past 44 minutes.
Thanks for posting this.
August 27th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
staggering … !!!
August 27th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
In the 80’s a CD stored cda files… I have put 10.5 hours of MP3 on an 800MB disk!
August 27th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
120 GB * 1024 MB/GB = 122880MB / 700MB/CD = 175.54 CDs. There’s no reason you can’t store audio in the same format whether you use hard drives or compact discs.
August 27th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
thats really amazing.
August 27th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Stinking Mac fanboyism!!!
August 28th, 2009 at 12:02 am
AWESOME! very nice article! very well laid down!
August 28th, 2009 at 1:34 am
It is indeed mind blowing, yay on digital storage!
August 28th, 2009 at 1:58 am
I’m curious about ‘ VHS = 3.5 hours’. The standard tape I used to buy was an E-240 size i.e. 240min or 4 hours.
August 28th, 2009 at 2:36 am
Interesting…a little confusing at first because of the whole wax cylinder thing. didn’t know what that was. I was hoping that I would see a massive mound of paper and then a cd next to it…still cool.
August 28th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Shameless Apple advertisement ruined good idea.
/thread
August 28th, 2009 at 6:11 am
That really is mind-blowing – and beautifully presented. Thanks!
August 28th, 2009 at 6:54 am
Your math is all wrong. 5GB does not = 87.5CD, 87.5 CDs is closer to 68GB. Please re-check all numbers, as most of them are wrong.
August 28th, 2009 at 8:49 am
This is awesome. I featured it on my site today, The Daily Harangue… http://www.thedailyharangue.com/2009/08/era-of-digital-storage.html
August 28th, 2009 at 8:52 am
@wisd0m
He’s not calculating the amount of data a CD can hold, just how much music you can fit on it. If you don’t use MP3 CDs, then you would need 87.5 CDs to get the same amount of music as 5 GB of MP3s.
August 28th, 2009 at 11:20 am
wisd0m: The math used is 1 CD = 80 minutes of Audio which is correct. 117 hours / 80 minutes = ~87.5
My question is, how did you arrive at 117 hours for 5GB? That implies an mp3 bitrate of ~102kbps which is nowhere near average. Back when 5GB mp3 players were releases, the average bitrate used was either 128kbps or 192kbps which provide 93.2 hours or 62.1 hours of music, respectively.
And I agree with others, there was no need to use only apple products in coming up with these numbers. Any generic laptop or mp3 player would have done.
August 28th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
The math isn’t taking 800mb cd and shoving it into a 5gb ipod, it’s ripping the audio to mp3 and comparing the TIME not the SPACE. 1.2hrs into 117 hours
August 28th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Doesn’t this assume that all of the compression is lossy with regards to music? On a good system, a compressed MP3 is often distinguishable from an uncompressed file played on a regular CD. So there’s always some tradeoff…
August 28th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
“quality not quantity ”
Because once you put a book on the internet, it instantly loses quality, due to…word degrading…yeah.
August 28th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
i lol’ed. nice!
August 28th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
It says there are 10 billion photos on facebook, and that that is 10.000.000 albums, but you say that an album is 2×50 photos, so there are 100.000.000 albums on facebook… A 0 got lost in the mix.
Pretty cool though.
August 28th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Prettey pretty, but bimply counting playing times is kind of forgetting half of everything.
Since the CD also contains digital data, counting the ipod’s 5gb would really count as 7 cds worth of data.
MP3s are a lossy encoding, it should not so blatantly compared with the CD. Same thing going from the 12 inches to CD.
August 28th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Get a life.
August 29th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Wrong!
Records have extremely higher quality and CD audio.
Assuming the average 12″ record is ripped to 2GB of audio, a DVD only holds 2 records.
120GB only holds 60 record-quality records, which is nowhere near 83.3 days of audio.
Enjoy being awed, clueless people.
August 29th, 2009 at 4:11 am
Wisdom,
Watch your unites.
5GB = 117 hours of audio = 7020 minutes of audio. Using his posted conversion of 80 mins per CD, 7020/80 = 87.75 CDs
August 30th, 2009 at 12:00 am
you need to revise said math… also use generics…
August 30th, 2009 at 4:33 am
Regardless of whether or not the math is wrong, the infographic itself is gorgeous and very thought provoking. Nice work.
August 30th, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Yeah, don’t know that you really got the numbers straight…
August 30th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Whats wrong with reference to Apple Ipods and Mac Books? After all they ARE the market leaders … and thats what we are talking about here! In 20 years time we will be amazed at storage capacities … Microsoft will be long dead and gone by then … Apple will still be here … leading the market!
August 31st, 2009 at 12:30 am
He’s not talking about data storage on a CD, wisd0m, but about time of audio that can be recorded on its tracks.
Anyhow, I agree that even if this analysis is actually shocking, it’s also partial and stinks of Mac advertisement…
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Cool stuff. I’ll be using these in my Basic Computer Technology class today. Thanks.
September 9th, 2009 at 6:10 am
heh macdaddy made me chuckle
September 9th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
What’s up with mentioning mac?? Mac has nothing to do with it because they use the same flash memory and same hard drives the rest of the world can get. But since you mentioned mac, I would discourage anyone from using Itunes or Mac because they want to control your data with DRM rending your music virtually worthless. Mac not only wants to control your data, but the hardware you choose to use their OS on, and the software you are allowed to install on the Iphone, and the phone service, etc. Why would anyone want that? Stick with a PC running Linux.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Really makes this image look dated doesn’t it:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0000025I6/ref=dp_image_text_0?ie=UTF8&n=5174&s=music
September 13th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Oh my gosh, what high school did you go to?
September 14th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
What a dumb picture. Sorry, you can’t compare digital to analog when it comes to storage. You’re implying a CD and Vinyl hold the same audio information and that a minute of CD audio is equal to a minute of vinyl audio.
Or that all DVDs carry video encoded all at the same bitrate.
Or that apple is the only manufacturer of overpriced computers.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
How do you distinguish between ‘physical storage’ and ‘digital storage’? Anything you store on digital media is also physical, it is tangible and occupies 3 dimensional space, until the time comes that would allow us to store data invisibly.
September 15th, 2009 at 7:29 am
Excellent chart. Gives a great visualization of what data actually is!
As per the mac references, they’re FINE! The whole objective is to give the average consumer a reference point. EVERYONE’S heard of the iPod, it’s not a big deal. WHO CARES?!
Maybe the PC people are just jealous that they don’t hold a candle against Apple when it comes to consumer brand-name recognition.
September 15th, 2009 at 11:46 am
This is great. I suppose the hard part, though, is figuring out how much it will cost to preserve all the good digital data and migrate it forward. Work so far indicates that real digital preservation will cost staggering amounts.
September 15th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Nice giant ad for your site…
the info is already free though
September 15th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Now with zooming!
http://seadragon.com/view/ahg
September 16th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Looking at the backups at Wikipedia — they only take just over 3 Terrabytes. That’s a lot of current knowledge in a very small space.
September 17th, 2009 at 8:52 am
Nothing about the recording quality was mentioned. In that case a Blu-ray disk is the same size as a DVD, instead of being able to store about 10 times more information. This sucked.
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:42 am
VHS = 3.5 hours? Never heard of a 210 min tape before. Only seen 60, 120, 180, 340 and 400 min tapes. Of course that is only blank tapes, pre-recorded stuff would be cut to the length of the movie.
September 27th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
The MacBook Pro is listed with “entry-level” in italics, as if to emphasize. Can we realize here that 1) No Apple product is entry level, 2) If we were going to pick an entry level computer from Apple, it would be the MacBook, not the MacBook Pro, 3) Most people in the country cannot afford a MacBook (much less a Pro), 4) Apple is NOT the industry leader, and does not attempt to be.
For a standalone institution such as Mozy, I am incredibly disappointed to see such an absurd support for Apple products.
September 28th, 2009 at 4:44 am
The average of 60, 120, 180, 340, and 400 is 220. Could be the source of that number.
October 12th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Very creative way of representing visually such vast amounts of data.