The Invisible Disk

Voice of the DBA

I saw a post recently about the incredible shrinking computer, where a software consultant had written down his predictions for the future. In this case, he writes about a computer shrinking smaller than today, essentially to one chip, with docking stations wherever you need them. We're already at the place where many of us have an extremely powerful computer in our pockets in the form of a mobile phone. I'm still amazed that I bought a phone recently with half a terabyte of storage.

A few years ago I gave a keynote where I looked at the changes in disk storage, starting with an IBM hard drive being loaded onto a plane. The capacity was 5MB. I remember working with KB floppy disks and MB hard drives, and lots of different connection technologies: IDE, ESDI, SCSI, and more. I've seen disks shrink from a 5 1/4" form factor to mere wafers with today's NVMe drives.

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