Remember when 100MB was a lot?

OK, I stumbled upon Rapidshare information on Wikipedia which claimed to have 450 Petabytes. For those who wonder how many is that, take a little maths test here. 1,000 Terabytes is 1 Petabyes, while 1,000 Gigabytes make it 1 Terabytes and to reach that 1,000 Megabytes bounded 1 Gigabytes. So, you do the math!

I remember when I was in junior school, back then 1997/1998. My first PC that I was working with during computer classes in 1996 runs on MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 (every command needs to be invoked into prompt to have it executed), the space was 20MB - it is unimaginable to have a 20MB hard disk on modern PC in the year 2009.

In 1997, we have new PCs - this time the disk space is 750MB each which sounded pretty much ALOT! My first programming was on QBasic 4.5 and the compiled files would not be more than 50KB and 100KB was considered ALOT! Whilst simple programming nowadays in VB 6 would need around 250kb to 1MB. Very much different.

The time gap was only 10 years. In 1998 on 750MB, but in 2008 1GB sound so petty. My first PC, ran on 20GB, before I upgraded it into 80GB in 2003. In 2005, again I get another 160GB. In 2007, I get another piece of 250GB. In 2008, I bought another 400GB and 1TB disks.

If I can put all disk that I am currently working with: 20GB + 80GB + 160GB + 250GB + 400GB + 1,000GB make it 1,910GB in total or 1.9TB and this does not include another 160GB I have in my laptop. To be honest, I am already need for another 1TB to store more information that I downloaded from Rapidshare.

My first laptop, COMPAQ ran on 20GB and this ASUS runs on 160GB.

First flash-drive I have is 64MB which already alot because at that time I am using Iomega ZIP drive which support up to 250MB but was so much slow (connected through cable socket, not USB) and I appreciate that 64MB because it was faster, smaller and does not need extra power socket.

From 64MB, I got upgraded to 256MB for RM300 (in 2004) and again to 512MB (in 2005). In 2007, I get myself 4GB flash-drive (RM115) that I keep on using till today. To add more, my sister's PC that she bought in 1999 ran on 4GB hard disk, which is the same unit as my flash drive.

Unlike years ago, that I have to delete lot of files once I see my hard disk needs room - it is so much different today. I allocate one hard disk (or its partitions) to certain type of files. Movies, Ebooks, MP3s, Pictures (taken using digital camera), working files, etc... So much that at times, I forgot what I had stored and when I came across them, I would smile and say to myself "uh... another memory flashing across."

Best of all, I do have copy of files that I had done in 1998. Almost all files during computer classes and project in 1999/2000 (during Junior College), all the files during Prep-College (except one CD that I cannot recover anymore and contained the "best presentation ever made" for my batch) and all the files during undergraduates (except 1st year files due to some mishaps).

My next plan is to fork out a data server to run at 4TB as I need to backup huge data. Outlook emails, personal files and so many other files that I keep on downloading almost daily from Rapidshare.

Human's great evolution, from just under 1MB to 1TB!