Data Storage has really gone a long way

I got one of these thumb drives a week back and was a bit amused at how small it was yet it can carry as much as 16GB of data. Data storage has really gone a long, long way in the last decade.

I can still remember ten years ago, back in college, when I got a new Seagate HDD with a 13GB capacity for Php5,500USD 94INR 7,945EUR 89CNY 683. Today, you can get that for the same or even bigger capacity at a fifth of the price and with the size of a regular SIM card.

16gb flash drive

In those days, the rate was about Php500USD 9INR 722EUR 8CNY 62 per GB. Today it’s about Php5.60USD 0.10INR 8EUR 0.09CNY 0.69 per GB (a 1.5TeraByte Seagate HDD costs Php8,370USD 143INR 12,091EUR 136CNY 1,039). That’s almost a hundred folds cheaper byte for byte.

Go back another half a decade and the difference is even much bigger — my first hard drive was a 20MB HDD from Priam (a hard drive manufacturer back in the 90s).

If you can just plot the rate for storage capacity and their price, I’m sure we’ll be talking petabytes in the next decade.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

22 Comments

moejun says:

16 years ago

yeah, my first harddisk was a 16 gb seagate, which cost a small fortune.
- Reply
moejun says:

16 years ago

wait, i meant 13 mb as in megabyte harddisk
- Reply
Luigi Francisco says:

16 years ago

ako naman ang natatandaan ko pang naabutan ko is 64mb flash drive = Php 1.2k
- Reply
Erin says:

16 years ago

Classic conversation quote around circa 95:

Me: 20MB yung nabili kong hard disk para sa Wearnes PC sa bahay.
Friend: 20MB! Ano balak mong gawin sa computer mo, server?

good old memories. :D

ciao!
- Reply
tank says:

16 years ago

naalala ko tuloy ung 8mb ko na flash drive na 2.3k bili ko ahuhuhu. tagal na nun.
- Reply
unsatisfied says:

16 years ago

dami ng available ngayon sa CDRking na 16GB..
- Reply
Pedro says:

16 years ago

my old sony-ericson w800 with MEMORY STICK PRO DUO with 516mb which i had to buy at 3k because of a defective Memory Stick that was included.But now with 3k, 4gb PRO DUO is already considered expensive…how time flies…

and 1gb or 2gb of memory space was already considered big in those “good old days”; but now 8gb is not enough…

and to think not long ago i didnt even know what a byte was…
- Reply
kiko says:

16 years ago

abe, what’s the brand of your storage device? how much? where I can buy that stuff? i like that one too. the one in the pics
- Reply
seoulbox.com says:

16 years ago

My very first HDD was a Seagate 40GB mga anu pa ko nun, grade 5. now, 1st year college na, hindi na kasya ang 1TB. am now running on 4.5TB on my desktop PC. full of photography/film stuffs.
- Reply
Anne says:

16 years ago

I’m constantly amazed at how much storage has gotten cheaper. I remember paying P5k for 20GB way way back. Now, I have a 16GB thumb drive that I got for p1.2k only, and 320GB HDD is now normal in most laptops.

Now, if only SSD prices could fall faster…
- Reply
Gene says:

16 years ago

Just 4 years ago, the cost of a 256MB china mp3 player from CDRKing is 2900 pesos!
- Reply
ogago21 says:

16 years ago

i remember when i was in elementary, my mom bought me a desktop pc with four 5gb hard drives for more than 40k pesos

moore’s law: The prediction by Gordon Moore (cofounder of the Intel Corporation) that the number of transistors on a microprocessor would double periodically (approximately every 18 months).
- Reply
Andre Marcelo-Tanner says:

16 years ago

the 1 GB hard drive! :) and a pentium 100 wooohoo!
- Reply
information says:

16 years ago

According to Moore’s Law, “the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits will double every year”.

You are a Computer Engineer.. I think you heard this one yuga.
- Reply
Darren says:

16 years ago

that’s really true. bigger volume of capacity but smaller size. I read a news one or two years ago, it said “storage technology goes with pornography” which is really part of truth. hehe
- Reply
Angelo Panares says:

16 years ago

hehehe

memories come back on how excited I was back then to get an upgrade from 500mb to 1.2GB HDD, I was so happy then.
- Reply
AloofKid says:

16 years ago

I remember upgrading my 500MB HDD to 2GB, I was in 6th grade, hahaha. I also remember when my dad gave me a 125mb flash drive, now I can buy 4GB Flash drive with the same price :)

Sir Abe, saan nyo po nabili yan and how much? pretty neat yung design eh :) I might get one:)
- Reply
Abe Olandres says:

16 years ago

Kingston sa CDRKing. Forgot how much exactly but it’s around Php1.5k
- Reply
GensanBoy says:

16 years ago

My first HDD was 1.2g on my 586 pc. Now im shopping for a TB for my PC. My 1st thumb drive or flash disk was 64mb, it cost me 3k pesos. I was the very 1st to use such device in our company. Some people haven’t even heard or know what that thing was. They were still carrying those 3 inches floppy. Now I got a 16g and an 8g flash drive with me. Both are cheaper than the 64mb that I had. Moores Law is really a reality. I hope the Philippines will also adapt specialy with the pricing. BTW I just hate it when I am being asked for my USB instead of saying thumb drive or flash disk. I would want to say: ummm, my usb is in my laptop/pc but I did bring my thumb drive. duh! peace!
- Reply
kenshinflyer says:

16 years ago

I remember my old Pentium MMX 166MHz PC. It had a 2GB hard drive, and it was the second high-spec back then…

Nowadays, I could buy a 2GB thumb drive the size of a small nailcutter…
- Reply
james braselton says:

16 years ago

HI THERE YOU ARE RIGHT WE ALREADY AT TERABYTES IN A GOOGLE LIGHT YEARS WE SHOULD BEYOND UNLIMITED OR INFINT DATA WITH A BLACK HOLE MICRO SD CARDS
- Reply