BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 01 Nov 12 - 11:58 AM

Sounds like my original IBM Portable which would have sold for about £1000 thirty years ago. Heavy but neat machine which had a detachable thermal printer. Two floppy drives, no hard drive, small amount of RAM that programs could be loaded into. No battery, huge 12V transformer. I think I was still using it ten years later, despite difficulty getting priter ribbons and paper. Converted to Apple with the gift of my brother's old IIe machine, which I seem to remember just had 40Mb hard drive.

I used to program ICL System 4 and later 2900 range mainframe machines.
"Tight" coding was essential then because of the exorbitant cost of storage. As costs came down, ways of organising storage changed. When I transferred Word Perfect files from my old Apple machine to MS Word files for the the next computer (a beige G3) about 2000, I was horrified to see my files expand from 2Kb to as much as 40Kb each - but the 4GB hard drive still wasn't full five years after.

Ross

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Snuffy
Date: 01 Nov 12 - 10:14 AM

My 1982 Osborne portable had 64k memory and no hard drive. The twin 5.25" drives took Single-sided Single-density floppies which would hold up to 91k. It came with Word Star and Visicalc and BASIC - one application per floppy. You had to put the program disk in one drive and your data disk in the other.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: DMcG
Date: 01 Nov 12 - 09:01 AM

Just noticed on another thread I was cookieless. The above two are from me. Apologies, my readers!

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Nov 12 - 08:23 AM

I should read before I post. That photo is from my university and the name of the website is the name of the IT manager at the time!

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Nov 12 - 08:22 AM

Did you every encounter drums? My university had one as part of an IBM 360-370 system.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,999
Date: 01 Nov 12 - 04:53 AM

Some history from a 2006 'PC World' article.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 01 Nov 12 - 02:11 AM

Bert...I'll try a different computer...I'm always up to listening to the Mudcatters.....(as long as they play better than their political posts!!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 31 Oct 12 - 08:28 PM

Some time ago an article appeared in one of my magazines that claimed to have identified the creators of the first hard drive.

Recollection (which may be slightly imperfect) was that the single disk was a half inch or so thick, and about 6 feet in diameter. They used a 10 HP motor to spin it at a few hundred RPM(?). The "medium" was red bridge paint (Rustoleum?) with iron oxide "pigment."

Total capacity, an enormous (about) 1 KB(?).

No recollection of what kind of machine they had to read/write on it.

No luck finding the article here (I think I posted a link in some thread?) since any query/sort with "hard" in it only brings up the usual inuendos and smutty smirks.

Also no luck at the most likely source - Smithsonian magazine's site; but it may have been in one of the "named" columns where they don't show the subject in the TOC. Or it may have been in another mag.

John

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: gnomad
Date: 31 Oct 12 - 05:35 PM

On this machine 6.4GB SSD (3.0 used, 3.4 available) all significant storage on external drives or cards. I could cut out a couple of browsers, a media player, and a few system tools if space were a problem, but see no reason to stint things. I doubt that Windows would fit on this, but a lightweight Linux system (Bodhi at the moment) is fine.

It purrs along quite happily for surfing and e-mails, will do word processing, music and videos if required. Of course it would be of limited use for what might be called serious computing, but that isn't what a netbook is designed for, and it isn't my forte.

One can use heavy artillery against mice, but a trap works too.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Bert
Date: 31 Oct 12 - 04:46 PM

GfS, Could be your browser settings.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: DMcG
Date: 31 Oct 12 - 11:34 AM


One of the first machines I used was an IBM with no hard drive. It had IBM-DOS (2.4 or something?)

Are we getting into 'when I was a lad?' stories? The first machine I used was an IBM1620, with no disk and 40K decimal (BCD) digits - it didn't understand binary. It could neither add nor multiply in hardware, but part of the memory was reserved for a lookup table of answers for such sophisticated stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 31 Oct 12 - 03:15 AM

GNU,
LOL!!!

Even though we've had fun with this thread, thank you for posting it. The info was useful!!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: gnu
Date: 30 Oct 12 - 06:30 PM

Bend over; I'll drive.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 30 Oct 12 - 03:30 AM

Bert, I clicked the link, saw the song, clicked on it..and nothing happened!........I know that sounds funny...but it was/is true.

This needs no extra commentary from me!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Bert
Date: 30 Oct 12 - 01:33 AM

I could always use an extra half inch. But of course Size Doesn't Matter.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 11:53 PM

Yeah, I think my "hard drive" is big enough. It's never failed me yet, and I ain't had no complaints from anyone.

- Chongo

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 09:59 PM

Well the 'mechanical' work is done...still recovering, which means I'll be plaguing Mudcat for a while.
I did have three months of NOthing to do or be responsible for, not even cooking, so I did get in a LOT of practicing, hours a day..and night, and some composing. Matter of fact, my chops got frighteningly awesome!
I trust you are well...well in your case, as well as can be expected..
I noticed that you haven't been sparring..ya' miss me?
Anyway, hope all is well with you.

On Guards,

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 07:18 PM

Greetings, GoofuS. How ya doin'? All repaired?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 06:36 PM

Hi Don.

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Don Firth
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 05:51 PM

So the sun gets a case of the burps, which it does from time to time, and we get hosed with a nice, big electromagnetic pulse.

That would be one helluva case of amnesia. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 05:17 PM

Oh no, JohninKansas, I'm not 'sensitive about it...just having fun with the lines...a little polishing up the chops.

I had another one, but I didn't post it....
It went like this:

With a last gasp of breath, her eyes rolled back in her head, and her head plopped back into her pillow. Her dark hair tousled, and curls stuck pressed to her perspired forehead, she fumbled for a cigarette and lit it with what little strength she had left. She was obviously exhausted, as if she was forced to give it her all.
A large male hand reached over and with a gentle finger, lovingly moved aside a lock of hair from her forehead.

"I love you", he whispered, "You OK?"

"Yes John, that was the best I've ever had, and you took me further than I've ever gone before in my life..I really mean it!"

She took another puff from the cigarette and exhaled slowly.

"Who's John?..I'm Tom"

"Oh, I'm sorry how stupid of me..I'm just not thinking straight..it was that good!"

"Well, Dorothy, I guess we're not in Kansas any more!"



And all in fun......

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 04:27 PM

When the Physics Dept mainframe at my uni had 8 kb of memory (yes, 8 kb for the whole Dept, back in 1973) then you HAD to write tight code.

When my employer's R & D people delivered my group's new Integrated Navigation System software in about 1990, we found that when loaded the software included over 700 Mb of gash code!

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 03:41 PM

As a wise old man once told me, "It ain't how big the hard drive or how fast the processor, but how tight you can write code that counts."

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Will Fly
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 10:24 AM

I remember going to a meeting of college librarians in the UK - way back - and attended a talk by the founder of OCLC. (Was it Fred Kilgour?). The UK branch was directed by a bloke called David Buckle.

We didn't join it...

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Rapparee
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 10:11 AM

Hah! MY first work piece was a blue terminal made by Beehive! It used a 600-something modem to connect to the mainframes (BIG boxes) in Columbus, Ohio. The screen display, if I remember aright, was green on black. We could log on, input new data and changes existing data to our needs -- library cards reflecting our changes were mailed to us so we could file in them in our card catalog.

The company was the Ohio College Library Center -- it's grown some since then. Poke around and see.

They've also lost their sense of humor....

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 09:54 AM

When I met my wife in 1980, she had a 1200 baud terminal, and worked late a night when mainframes were used less. Several times I drove out to the central 'place' to pick up huge boxes of printouts for her.

Later my office got a TRS-80, and we all soon learned...........to play Lunar Lander.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Rob Naylor
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 09:19 AM

The first personal computer that I owned (as opposed to using at work) was an Olivetti M24. This would be in 1985, I think.

I went for the extended memory option, so had a whole megabyte of that, but a lot of programmes couldn't use memory above the 640 kb line. It had an 8086 processor, but again I splashed out on the 8087 co-processor.

Standard models came with a 5Mb hard drive, but I went for the top-of-the-range, which came with an unheard-of 10Mb hard drive. Friends and colleagues thought I was crazy..."No-one will EVER need TEN MEGABYTES of storage" was a common response!!!

I've had about 4 Tb of stroage at home for well over a year, so I'm astounded that a journo a year ago was claiming that no-one would ever have enough data to warrant a 1 Tb drive!

Back in about 1991, the (relatively small) department I managed in a geophysical company became Sun Microsystems' first UK 1 Tb storage installation. Lots of 10 and 20 Gb housings. They were intrigued enough to send round a PR person and a techie to see what we were doing with it all!

Incidentally my main (monochrome, bulk document) printer at home is a Laserjet 5, bought in early 1997 and still working perfectly.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 06:53 AM

After a zx spectrum and a Commodore 64, my first real PC was an IBM AT.

No hard drive, only 5.25" floppies. The more complex programs involved multiple discs, used in sequence, with a serious wait at each disc change and the whole thing worked in geological time.

When the school I worked at upgraded their PCs and gave me a discarded RM Business Machine, with a twenty meg HD aand Window Box OS, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Amazing that such a short time later I have a machine which can download enough to fill that twenty meg in about 8 seconds.

And it's nowhere near state of the art.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Will Fly
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 05:53 AM

When I ran a university library cataloguing system - with around 40 terminals in various campus libraries in the early 1980s - we ran the whole thing on a mainframe machine with 80Mb. My first Apple Mac SE30 (around 1985) had around 10Mb of memory on its hard drive. How times have changed in 30 years...

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 04:38 AM

Darnitall.

Sorry if I hit a sensitive spot. I thought I was just tossing a little tease and I get combacks attacking my friends that the poor guy doesn't even know anything about.

Can we all say S.o.r.r.y. P.o.o.o.o r (itty bitty) GfS?

If I'd known it was somethin' you'd be so sensitive about, I sure would have been more careful about mentioning it.

(We'll just pretend nobody noticed.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 12:55 AM

...and furthermore....did any of them complain that your tongue was too small?...your fingers too small..your fist too small?
Really ol' chap..life is like a piano..you only get out of it how you play it!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 12:40 AM

One of the first machines I used was an IBM with no hard drive.

It had IBM-DOS (2.4 or something?) and IBM-Basic built into ROM, no place to save anything except on a 5.25" single-sided floppy (after I bought a couple). EAC let me "borrow" it to design the wing-fold geometry to make a doggy old "tactical jet" airplane sit on an aircraft carrier. (They had a newish "mainframe" that might have worked better, but nobody in my division knew how to turn it on, and they wouldn't let me play with it.) After I learned enough BASIC to write my own programs they didn't know that a PC could be hooked up to a printer, so they didn't have one to hook it to. I had to sneak back after closing time to steal a secretary's typewriter to write the report. (The program was classified and the secretary wasn't cleared to type it for me.)

I didn't get my own toy (a much more advanced machine, with DOS 3.4 and a 30 MB HD - mine at home) for another couple of years.

John

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 29 Oct 12 - 12:24 AM

John in Kansas: "GfS -Several ladies of my acquaintance have volunteered that in their experience the only men who recite that "not the size" line are the ones with little dinky stuff. ..."

..and then maybe your lady friends were really ball-cutters!
Be careful about who you believe!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Rapparee
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 11:46 PM

Our first machine was a Leading Edge -- if you remember that far back. I'm still using a HP 4L laser printer we bought in 1986 -- it's slow, but it works and I recently found that you can still buy a cartridge for it.

But I remember IBM machines that needed a 5.25 inch boot disk to start.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 11:38 PM

GfS -

Several ladies of my acquaintance have volunteered that in their experience the only men who recite that "not the size" line are the ones with little dinky stuff. ... .


Digitizing old (but significant to me) text books, notes, and business papers so far has cleared about 12 linear feet of bookshelf space for us so far. The only problem is that space was immediately filled with the stuff previously in piles on the floor. (But at least more of it is where I can get to it to decide what to scan next.)

I've also scanned and discarded all my old photos, and everything of significance for Lin's tribe. Lots of the scans are "better" than the originals since I did some restorations, and the photos were deteriorating much faster than the digitals will. Another few years and some of them wouldn't have had anything to restore.

The only "historical" family stuff left is a couple of 40 pound boxes that I scanned, but can't throw away until my %@$#^! sister answers my email to let me know if she wants any of them, but I'm optimistic since I only sent the email about 8 months ago. (She's even older than I am, so she probably gets around to stuff a little slower.)

John

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: MarkS
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 10:57 PM

And to think this all started with machines like the Commodore 64!

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 09:58 PM

It's not the size..but how you use it!....and don't tell me she didn't tell you that already!

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST,Stim
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 09:56 PM

We've become digitized horders. We can store more and more in less and less space. This is good because...

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Bill D
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 09:50 PM

"Need" is a funny word... I have already saved more stuff than I 'need'. Now I do WANT to digitize a lot of old family photographs...and I have enough space to do most of that.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 09:41 PM

I remember when IB broke the 48/64K barrier with PC1 at 640K. Somebody introduced a 10M hard drive about then. Myself thought who in the world would ever need even that much memory and storage! Can we really have come so far in technology in less than 30 years!!!!!!!!!

And don't even get me started on television, audio and telephone technology! in even less time.

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: GUEST
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 08:25 PM

so 1000 Geopbytes = 1 Lottabyte

1000 Lottabytes = 1 Fuckingenormousabyte

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: Bobert
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 08:22 PM

My stinger is as long as my right arm...

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it...

B;~)

Subject: RE: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 08:09 PM

10 petabytes?   That's just a start. A long way to go, I suspect. Here's a table of sizes going a bit higher that that (and starting lower):

Processor or Virtual Storage
· 1 Bit = Binary Digit
· 8 Bits = 1 Byte
· 1024 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
· 1024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
· 1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
· 1024 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
· 1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
· 1024 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
· 1024 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
· 1024 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte
· 1024 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte
· 1024 Brontobytes = 1 Geopbyte

Disk Storage
1 Bit = Binary Digit
· 8 Bits = 1 Byte
· 1000 Bytes = 1 Kilobyte
· 1000 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte
· 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte
· 1000 Gigabytes = 1 Terabyte
· 1000 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte
· 1000 Petabytes = 1 Exabyte
· 1000 Exabytes = 1 Zettabyte
· 1000 Zettabytes = 1 Yottabyte
· 1000 Yottabytes = 1 Brontobyte
· 1000 Brontobytes = 1 Geopbyte

Subject: BS: You think Your Hard Drive Is Big Enough?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Oct 12 - 07:44 PM

Internet Archive Passes 10 Petabytes

Devin Coldewey, NBC News

Internet Archive hits 10 petabytes of saved Net culture
Archive.org
26 OCT 2012

A banner celebrates 10 petabytes of data at an Archive.org event.

There are plenty of things on the Internet today that won't matter tomorrow, but this online world of ours is also a powerful way to store and browse all kinds of data from the past. The non-profit Internet Archive, which is dedicated to preserving all kinds of culture digitally, has recently hit an amazing milestone: 10 petabytes of stored data.

The collection comprises everything from World War II newsreels to classic literature to public domain music, and of course, the famous "Wayback Machine," with which you can visit many popular websites through the years.

This week saw the addition of the 10,000,000,000,000,000th byte to the pile — that's 10 petabytes, 10,000 terabytes, or 10 million gigabytes. That particular byte was likely mixed in with the recent and enormous 80-terabyte crawl of the Web's most popular sites. You could just visit the sites themselves, of course, but researchers looking to systematically analyze the content of millions of webpages can't be sitting around waiting for them to load. Huge downloadable archives like this are invaluable for their purposes.

Archive.org's blog post also notes that they have put up what they describe as "the first complete literature of a people," specifically that of the Balinese. It's an impressive feat and guarantees the survival of these vital historical documents. The effort is reminiscent of another, which is attempting to fully document endangered languages.

Such culturally important projects are a good reminder of the Internet's value apart from news and entertainment.

The Archive is free to browse, of course, and recently added the option to download files via BitTorrent, which should help keep costs down and accessibility up.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital.

[end snip]

I hope they've got a good index!!!

About a year or so ago, one tech news writer offered his opinion that "nobody could ever have enough data to use a 1 TB drive," and suggested that if you got one of the then new 1 TB ones you'd never have to buy another drive. (He has someone to do backups for him, of course.)

Including backups, I've got 8 TB worth of hard drives in regular use, a little over 2/3 filled, so the organization dedicated to "saving just about everything" has barely 2,000 times what I have (????) at my fingertips. A couple of thousand users with similarly greedy demands for data could match what they've done on purpose????

Considering that I don't have much music, and NO VIDEOS** on my drives, it seems likely that some here probably are using about that much - or at least a third of it if they don't keep backups.

** 2 hours of analog TV (VHS) takes about 5 GB, so 200 movies would fill 1 TB(?). We have (or I could say "she has") about 270 movie DVDs (commercial) and about the same in "home videos" on DVDs, but none that I feel compelled to backup for "her."

Is it really reasonable that they're still selling desktop computers with 100 GB (and smaller) hard drives?

And why don't I get more done now than when I only had 70 MB of hard drives and 640 KB RAM?

One more drive and I could save the MOABS thread!!!!

John