Decade of Storage: From USB to Cloud Storage (infographic)

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on January 18th, 2011 by Ashleigh Davis

To store a gigabyte’s worth of data just 20 years ago required a 500-pound machine the size of a refrigerator. Today, we carry gigabytes of data around in our pockets in our smart phones, mp3 players, and laptops.

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2000

  • Commercial production of the USB (Universal Serial Bus) flash drives capable of holding 8MB of memory – that’s 5x more than floppys at the time. Today you can get USB flash drives with up to 256GB (portable drive). The USB flash drive’s solid state design also one-upped floppys by eliminating the moving parts that made the floppys prone to damage.
  • The “I Love You” virus is unleashed. The virus eventually costs consumers over $10 billion, becoming the most expensive computer virus in history. The resulting data loss from the virus’ damage underscores the value of backing up data.

    • 2001

  • Apple’s iPodMP3 player with 5GB (about 1000 songs) hits the consumer market selling 125,000 units in less than two months. In 2003, Apple launches iTunes, an online digital music storage service. Today, an iPod Touch can store up to 64GB.
  • Bram Cohen authors the peer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol and its first file sharing program, BitTorrent. The protocol is used to power many popular download sites, like Shareaza and LimeWire and continues to drive the need for more consumer-end storage capability.

    • 2002

  • Development begins on blu-ray disks after years of squabbling about patent ownership of the small blue diodes needed for production. Blu-rays replace DVD red laser technology with shorter wavelength blue rays capable of holding up to 25GB (single layer) & 50GB (dual layer).
  • The one billionth PC is sold. This milestone comes 27 years after the introduction of Sphere I, considered the world’s first PC, shipped with a mere 4KB of RAM.

    • 2003

  • The Internet turns 20. The adoption of TCP/IP protocol in 1983 offered greater access and laid the groundwork for expanding the Internet to the World Wide Web it is today.
  • The floppy disk drive becomes obsolete. Dell follows Apple by not including floppy drives in PCs in favor of CD-rewritable drives.

    • 2004

  • 300,000 US households own a network storage device. By 2010, the number jumps to 10 million.
  • MySpace, Facebook, and Flickr launch. These sites represented a new breed of social websites specializing in storing massive amounts of user data.

    • 2005

  • IBM introduces the Millipede chip able to hold one trillion bits of data per square inch. The chip stores data using thousands of levers about 10 micrometers wide instead of the traditional magnetic disks found in hard drives.
  • “Me at the Zoo” is the first video uploaded to You Tube. Holding about 45TB of data, You Tube stores over 14 billion videos with 34,560 hours of video uploaded daily.

    • 2006

  • Cloud computing introduces the idea of securely storing unlimited amounts of data without physical, onsite hardware.
  • Twitter launches with the first tweet: “Just setting up my Twttr” from co-founder of Twitter. Today, Twitter handles over 65 million tweets and about 800,000 search queries per day.

    • 2007

  • First 1TB hard drives ship. At the time, it was the largest capacity hard drive available.
  • The iPhone is introduced by Apple at Macworld. The iPhone is credited with popularizing the multi-touch screen phone, the first phone to come with its own operating system, and the only phone with access to the popular Apps Store. The first iPhone included 8GB of flash memory and the recently released iPhone 4 comes with as much as 32GB.

    • 2008

  • U.S. households consume about 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008. That’s the equivalent of 100,500 words and 34GB gigabytes per person.
  • The battle between HD-DVD and Blu-ray comes to an end. Toshiba announces it will no longer make HD-DVDs due to the crushing market popularity of Blu-ray technology.

    • 2009

  • Micro holographic storage material able to hold 500GB of data on a DVD-size disc is unveiled.
  • Sixty years ago, Konrad Zuse builds the first fully functioning electro-mechanical computer called the Z2.

    • 2010

  • The first 3TB external hard drive, the largest to date, reaches consumer markets. It has enough space to hold 120 high-definition movies.
  • Just 19 years after it revolutionized data storage, Sony stops making 3.5in floppy disk.

    • About the Author

    This is a post written and contributed by Ashleigh Davis.

    Ashleigh Davis joined Rackspace in 2011 as a Marketing Analyst for the Online Marketing team at Rackspace. She handles marketing automation strategies and nurture efforts, constantly pushing the envelope to test new methods of marketing and communication. Prior to joining Rackspace, Ashleigh had acquired more than seven years of successfully managing online marketing campaigns.

    Ashleigh has an MBA in Project Management from the University of Texas at San Antonio and a Bachelor of Science in Public Relations from the University of Texas at Austin.

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    41 Comments

    [...] takes a look at a Decade of Storage: From USB to Cloud. To store a gigabyte’s worth of data just 20 years ago required a 500-pound machine the size of a [...]

    avatar Decade of Storage: From USB to Cloud on January 18, 2011 | Reply

    “Apple’s iPodMP3 player with 5GB (about 1000 songs) hits the consumer market selling 125,000 units in less than two months. Earlier in the year, Apple launches iTunes, an online digital music storage service. Today, an iPod Touch can store up to 64GB.”

    The itunes store was launched in 2003 not 2001. A couple years after the original Ipod.

    avatar Paul on January 18, 2011 | Reply

    Thanks for catching that one for us!

    avatar Ashleigh Davis [Racker] on January 18, 2011

    Also, it is:

    Not 3.6 Zetabyte PER household but 36 GB per household as of your info.
    Please change the heading.

    Secondly, the new BD’s don’t hold 100 MB but GB in write-only mode.
    Please correct this as well!

    avatar Phil on January 20, 2011

    [...] Jan 18 2011 via rackspacecloud.com [...]

    avatar el/ed/tech » A Decade of Storage on January 18, 2011 | Reply

    [...] I’m not normally a fan of infographics, but Rackspace has put together a brilliant one describing advances in data storage over the last decade. [...]

    avatar 10 years of data storage in one pretty infographic | DJ Flux on January 18, 2011 | Reply

    [...] posted this interesting infographic today, via their blog, that takes a look at the last ten years of data storage. It’s hard to believe that over 20 years ago a 500-pound machine was used to carry 1GB worth [...]

    avatar Decade of Storage « Welcome to Jmart on January 18, 2011 | Reply

    Bram Cohen authors the peer-to-peer (P2P) BitTorrent protocol and its first file sharing program, BitTorrent. The protocol is used to power many popular download sites, like Shareaza and LimeWire and continues to drive the need for more consumer-end storage capability.

    BitTorrent was not the first P2P protocol, Gnutella was. Gnutella was released in early 2000. And Gnutella powered Shareaza and LimeWire.

    Also, While an iPod touch can infact store 64GB; a better comparison would be the 160GB iPod Classic. Which is actually a direct descendant of the original iPod.

    avatar Cullen Murphy on January 18, 2011 | Reply

    It is kind of mind boggling. I have a picture somewhere on my hard drive of 5x5x5 metal box being loaded into the side of an airplane. It was a 50 megabyte hard drive headed to IBM. We’ve come a long way from dual floppy 5.25 360k computers to portable terabyte hard drives. Then again with the bloatware we use, that storage is critical.

    avatar Affiliate Toolbox on January 18, 2011 | Reply

    [...] Rackspace has put together a brilliant infographic depicting the advances in data storage over the last decade. [...]

    avatar Infographic: A Decade of Data Storage | Daringminds.com on January 18, 2011 | Reply

    [...] Rackspace, a cloud computing and cloud hosting company based in Texas, has put together a brilliant infographic depicting the advances in data storage over the last decade. [...]

    avatar Infographic: A Decade of Data Storage / Brainyloft Press SOHO / Feed Your Brain on January 18, 2011 | Reply

    Decade of Storage: From USB to Cloud…

    To store a gigabyte’s worth of data just 20 years ago required a 500-pound machine the size of a refrigerator. Today, we carry gigabytes of data around in our pockets in our smart phones, mp3 players, and laptops….

    avatar dressagenews.com on January 19, 2011 | Reply

    Decade of Storage: From USB to Cloud…

    To store a gigabyte’s worth of data just 20 years ago required a 500-pound machine the size of a refrigerator. Today, we carry gigabytes of data around in our pockets in our smart phones, mp3 players, and laptops….

    avatar designfloat.com on January 19, 2011 | Reply

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    avatar Decade of Storage: From USB to Cloud « Netcrema – creme de la social news via digg + delicious + stumpleupon + reddit on January 19, 2011 | Reply

    [...] a produit une illustration à la fois amusante et instructive qui démontre l’évolution du stockage personnel pendant [...]

    avatar L’évolution du stockage entre 2000 et 2010 — Ovologic on January 19, 2011 | Reply

    No words about Iomega solutions ? zip floppy was popular in the early 00′s

    avatar Alexandre on January 19, 2011 | Reply

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    avatar Infographic. Decade of Storage: From USB to Cloud Storage « rascarlo on January 19, 2011 | Reply

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    avatar Infografía – Del USB al Cloud Storage | Saasmania on January 19, 2011 | Reply

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    avatar Una decada de almacenamiento de datos (Infographic) | mediogeek.com on January 19, 2011 | Reply

    “1 GB = a truckload of paper”? 1 GB of WHAT??? 2MB of text data, printed out on only one side, will easily fit in a 3-ring binder. Ever packed a 48-foot trailer, Statistics Boy?

    avatar Rhing Vames on January 19, 2011 | Reply

    Typo in the image?

    http://c0179631.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/online-storage-decade-hires2.gif

    “Blue Ray discs pass the 100GB mark. Using BDXL technology, write-only discs can hold 100MB and re-writeable discs can hold up to 128GB.”

    I’ll be buying the RW versions then ;-)

    avatar Henry on January 20, 2011 | Reply

    If that was accurate, we’d be back in 2000, right? Too funny. The graphic has been corrected.

    avatar Ashleigh Davis [Racker] on January 21, 2011

    [...] cette infographie très instructive publiée sur le blog de Rackspace, on part de la présentation en 2000 d’une clé USB de 8Mo, on nous informe des conséquence [...]

    avatar [Infographie] 10 ans de stockage de données: de la clé USB au cloud computing on January 20, 2011 | Reply

    [...] rackspacecloud // [...]

    avatar The Curious Brain » A Decade of Data Storage on January 21, 2011 | Reply

    [...] importantly, he found a pretty awesome poster illustrating the entire history of digital storage.   If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing [...]

    avatar you can still buy zip disks | 香港新媒體協會 on January 21, 2011 | Reply

    [...] Just 19 years after it revolutionized data storage, Sony stops making 3.5in floppy disk. via rackspacecloud.com [...]

    avatar Rackspace Cloud Computing & Hosting | Found Marbles on January 23, 2011 | Reply

    [...] Entwicklung in gerade mal zehn [...]

    avatar Das Kraftfuttermischwerk » Infografik: Datenträger 2000-2010 on January 24, 2011 | Reply

    It’s Konrad Zuse, not Conrad Zuse. Please correct this mistake as well.

    avatar yes I can on January 24, 2011 | Reply

    [...] Source: Rack Space Cloud [...]

    avatar 8 MB to 3 TB in 10 Years! « My Travel Across The WEB….. on January 26, 2011 | Reply

    [...] I’m not normally a fan of infographics, but Rackspace has put together a brilliant one describing advances in data storage over the last decade. [...]

    avatar 10 years of data storage in one pretty infographic : David Fergus on February 2, 2011 | Reply

    [...] Amazing what you can store in the cloud and how simple a trend looks in hindsight. [...]

    avatar Howard Lindzon » Blog Archive » Too The Clouds Alice on February 3, 2011 | Reply

    Nice image of a punch card as a background. About 10 bytes / inch, 80 bytes total.
    Ashleigh, aren’t you glad you’ve crowdsourced proofreading the article?

    avatar Wally Bee on February 3, 2011 | Reply

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    avatar Teknologeek.com » El Costo por Gb a Travéz de los Años on March 13, 2011 | Reply

    [...] Image by: Rackspace [...]

    avatar Storage [Infographic]: 2000-2010 – The Storage Effect on March 23, 2011 | Reply

    I’d like to use some of this data for a talk and would like to cite properly. Embedding is not an option. Can we discuss via email above? Thanks.

    avatar ML on May 30, 2011 | Reply

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