10 Cents a Gigabyte

Another landmark day in computer technology occurred recently.  I received an ad selling a 1 terabyte disk drive for $89.99 or 10 cents per gigabyte.  Now for comparison what does this mean?  A survey of the Arizona courts found that the paper files both current and past in more than 170 courts could fit on less than 3 terabytes or $270 less tax and shipping worth of drives.  Of course in a real server situation we would want to do a RAID, etc. But the achievement is significant nonetheless.  Other numbers listed in the ad show that the drive would hold:

• 424 two-hour DVD-quality movies or-
  
• 1500 hours of VHS-quality video or
• 880 days of around-the-clock MP3 audio or
• 373,000 vivid digital photos or
• 2132 action-packed games!