Data Storage Sizes
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007I had a couple of interesting questions posed to me today that I thought were worth sharing. Both related to backup type storage media sizes. The first was about memory sticks, and the assumption, (rather than a question) that a memory stick is bigger than a DVD. The second was asking how much info a CD can hold.
So I thought it was timely to add a quick chart of the current state of affairs in storage:
before we start, some rough idea of the size of some things:
1 character =1b (byte)
1024 characters 3 pages of text =1kb (kilobyte usually pronounced "k")
Approx 1 million characters 1 small text encyclopedia 1 digital camera image =1Mb (Megabyte usually pronounced "Meg")
Approx 1 billion characters 1000 digital photos 1/4hr of video =1Gb (Gigabyte usually pronounced "Gig")
and here are some things to put all that data onto, along with some rough prices:
Floppy Disk 1mb $1.00
CD-R 700Mb $0.50
DVD-R 4.3Gb $1.00
512Mb Memory Stick 512Mb $20.00
4Gb Memory Stick 4Gb $66.00
Pocket Hard Disk 120Gb $165.00
3.5 External Hard Disk 320Gb $186.00
There are lots of reasons you cant directly compare each of those items, like speed, size, durability and rewritability, which means that some media types are better than others for different purposes.
For example: 75 DVDs will hold the same amount of information as a 320Gb Hard Disk, for a fair bit less money, but you can only write to the DVD once.