What Will We Have Tomorrow?

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When I started working in the IT industry, 1.44 Mb floppy disks were the main means of transferring files between computers. I used to lust after an Iomega Zip drive which could hold up to 100 Mb data. Fortunately, I never acquired one, and instead received permission from my manager to buy a CD writer which could write CDs holding 650-700 Mb data.

I currently have about one hundred and fifty 1.44 Mb floppy disks. They would be capable of holding about one third of one CD’s capacity of data. Worse, I have a similar number of blank CDs which would hold about 100 Gb data. I never use them to back up my files though because I have a 1.5 Tb external hard disk drive which is far more convenient and has a very small footprint. It has about as much storage space as 2300 CDs or 1,041,666 floppy disks.

Actually, it is arguable whether the external hard drive has a smaller footprint. It is 130 mm wide and 200 mm long, so occupies a footprint of 260 square cm.

If I stacked the 2300 CDs (they have a diameter of 120 mm), they would have a footprint of 113 square cm.

The floppy disks would have even less of a footprint being 90 mm x 94 mm, making a footprint of only 84.6 square cm.

However, the external hard disk drive is only 4 cm high which compares favourably with the 2300 CDs stacked 3.45 metres high, or the 1,041,666 floppy disks stacked 3.6 km high. (Not to mention the health and safety risks, and planning permission required for the largest free-standing structure in the world)

If you have a use for about 150 floppy disks, then please let me know. I am looking to be free of them.