The Evolution of Data Storage

 The human brains ability to store a vast amount of information is still a mystery to the scientist. While we can remember and recall a lot of information, It is still difficult for us to remember each detail of that piece of information. Storing information in books and paper was not an permanent option due to their volatility. We are generating more data than ever before. Of course that means we need to store all of it somewhere. So let's see the about the data storage method throughout the years:

1) PUNCH CARDS(1890):

These are Super retro. Punch cards were the first mechanical storage method. The earliest computers were programmed using stiff sheets of paper with commands and other data represented by the presences and absences of holes in pre-defined positions. It could store up to 0.08 KB of data which is equal to 80 characters that could be stored on the card. Back in 19th century, punch cards were used in mechanical devices such as looms and player pianos. These were widely used in computer programming till 1980's. Although punch cards are now obsolete as a medium of storage, we still use it in some voting machines aur testing programs.

2) MAGNETIC DRUMS(1932):

Having a storage capacity of 48KB(about five .docs file), Magnetic Drums were originally invented by Gustav Tauschek in 1932 but were not used in computing until US Navy codebreakers developed it during world war II. One drum is 16 inches long with 40 tracks and spun 12,500 revolutions per minute. These are metal cylinders coated with magnetic iron oxide material that store data and programs. Magnetic Drums were earlier used as primary storage device. For many years drums formed main working memory of the computer. But now-a-days it is used as an auxiliary storage device

 3) WILLIAMS-KILBURN TUBE(1947):

Willams-Kilburn Tube after the inventor Freddie Williams and Tom Killburn was an early form of computer memory. It was the first form of Random-Access digital storage device and used successfully in several computers. The first tube hel 1024 bits or 128bytes of data which could approximately fill 128 characters. That means you would need 72 tubes to store a single JPG image file ;)

4) MAGNETIC TAPE DRIVE(1951):

Magnetic tapes were first used to store data in 1951 on the UNIVAC-1 the first commercially produced computer in US. Originally made to reacord audios it became they became the new storage method by choice. A1200 ft roll tape held about 231KB of data which is about 10 pdfs and 23 formatted .docs files. This medium is still used today, often for older older backup storage systems.

5) MAGNETIC CORE(1951):

The first core memory used in a computer stored roughly around 2KB of data i.e. a small PNG file or 2000 characters. It was a form of random access memory for 20 years from 1955 to 1975. Invented in 1951, Magnetic memory was first used in Whirlwind Computers. It uses toroids(rings) of hard magnetic material as transformer cores, where each wire are threaded through the core servers as a transformer winding. As recently as 2004, magnetic core transformers are still found in service in a telephony control 
service.

 6) HARD DISK DRIVES-HDD(1956):

A Hard Disk Drives or HDD is an electro-magnetic storage device to store and retrieve digital data using one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnetic material. First introduced by IBM it was in 1956, it weighed over a ton and was of the size of a refrigerator. With 3.75 MB of storage the first HDD had enough space to hold a whole mp3 file, a low resolution video of neraly 45 seconds or 5 million characters of text. HDD are still in use today with portable models becoming smaller and smaller each year with high storage capacity.

7) FLOPPY DISK(1967):

IBM developed the first floppy disk which greaty increased the convenience of data handling. The first 8-inch floppy disk held 80Kb of data enough to hold 8 formatted .doc files. Composed of a thin and flexible of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly a square plastic enclosure lined with a fabric that removes dust particles from the spinning disk. Floppy disks are read from and written to by a Floppy disk drivers(FDD).

Looks the the save icon;)

8) COMPACT DISK-CD(1982):

The first highly portable optical storage, Compact Disks were invented by Sony and Philips in 1982. Begun as the medium of sound recordings, compact disks quickly became a method for data storage due to its expansive 700MB of portable space. The first commercially available audio CD Player, thee Sony CDP-101 was released in October in Japan. Although it was 12 cm in diameter when first released, it could store more data than the personal computer's hard drive. The sale of CDs have been eclipsed in recent years.

 9) ZIP DRIVE(1994):

The home of floppy disk. Introduced in 1994 by Lomega, the zip driver is a removable floppy disk storage system. The first zip driver could hold about 100 minutes of mp3 audio. That is equal to 20 minutes of low-resolution video or 1/7 of the CD. Zip drivers were originally lanuched with the capacity of 100MB, then 250 MB and finally 750MB. The format became the most popular superfloppy products which filled the niches in late 1990s portable storage market but was ever enough to replace 3.5 inch floppy disks. Zip driver fell out of favor for mass portable storage during late 2000s. But still, some organizations use Zip drivers today.

10) DIGITAL VIDEO DISC(1995):

The first DVD had 1.46GB of storage big enough to hold a short movie or 2 CDs. Invented by Toshiba, Sony, Philips and Panasonic, DvDs came to be in 1995. The medium can store any kind of digital data and is widely used for computer software and other computer files as well as video programs watched using DvD players. They were later eclipsed by the Blue-ray Discs.

11) SD-CARD(1999):

Size not matters. Unless you're getting smaller, more portable data storage that is. Secure Digital abbreviation of SD is a non-volatile memory card format developed by SD Association(SDA). It was introduced in August 1999 by joint efforts of SanDisk, Toshiba and Panasonic. The first SD could hold around 64 MB of data which is enough to carry 50 photos or 13 mins of low resolution video. Today, the capacity of SD cards are as high as 1TB.

12) USB FLASH DRIVES(2000):

A rewritable plug and play storage device, USB flash drivers were first sold by IBM and Trek Technology. It is a data storage device that includes flash memory without an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, re-writable and much smaller than an optical disc. The first flash drives developed held 8MB of data which is equal to 1/2 e-books, 90 secs of low-resolution video or 800 .doc files. Most of these weigh less than 30 grams. Since first appearing in the market in late 2000s, there storage capacity has increased while the prices have dropped. As of 2018 2TB flash drives are the largest available in terms of storage capacity that cost approx 27k.

13) BLU-RAY OPTICAL DISC(2003):

Blu-Ray Disc(BD), often know as simply Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc storage format designed to supersede the DVDs capable of storing 25GB of high-definition videos at HDTV 720 and 1080p which is around 32 CDs. Sony cranked up optical disc storage up to 3.3 TB today. The plastic disc is 12 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs or CDs. Conventional Blu-Ray Disc contains 25 GB of data per layer, with dual layer disc i.e. 50 GB of data, it is the industry standard for feature-length video discs.

 13) CLOUD DATA STORAGE(2006):

Your data in the ether. Now your storage capacity depends on the plan you pay for. The options are endless.

Cloud computing is believed to be invented by Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider in the 1960s with his work on ARPANET to connect people and data from anywhere and anytime. In 1983, CompuServe offered it's consumer users a small amount of disk space that could be used to store files they choose to upload. In 1994, AT&T launched PersonaLink services, an online platform for personal and business communication and entrepreneurship. This was the first to be all web based and referenced in their commercial as "You can think of our electronic meeting place as the cloud". Amazon Web Services introduced their cloud storage services in 2006 and has gained wide spread recognition and adaptation as the storage supplier to popular services such as SmugMug, Dropbox and Pinterest. With cloud storage, remote databases are used to store information, made accessible at anytime via Internet. As cloud technologies improve cloud storage will become less and less expensive:)

#FUN FACTS:)

• According to recent studies over 1 ExaByte(1,073,741,824GB) of data is stored in cloud.
• Experts estimate that more than
  
  
  2,700,000,000,000,000,000KB
  

  
  i.e. 2.7 Zettabytes of data exist in the digital universe today.
• About 90% of the data has been created in the last few years.
  
• We generate about
  
  

  2,500,000,000,000,000KB
  
  

  i.e. 2.5 quitillion bytes of new data everyday.
• This number is growing day by day, that means we'll need a lot more data storage in the future.

And Stay tuned with TechyPLADS a lot to come!! and comment any thing you want us to write about..

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