This photo shows what 5MB of hard drive storage looked like in 1956. The IBM 305 RAMAC hard disk was state of the art, weighed just shy of a ton, required a forklift to be carried around, and was composed of 50 separate 24-inch discs that occupied 16 square feet. The annual cost of using it was a staggering $35,000 — steep even in today’s money. Nowadays most RAW photos outweigh the storage capabilities of that behemoth of an external hard drive…

(via Engadget via TexomaTube)

According to a survey conducted for SanDisk, 64% of adults in the US wouldn’t consider destroying their photo collections for $1 million. At the same time, the general public probably doesn’t spend nearly enough time and money ensuring the safety of those same photos. Well, SanDisk announced a new product today designed to help photos last at least as long as their owners do. It’s called the “Memory Vault”, and is a rugged flash drive that has the proven ability to preserve data uncorrupted — a big problem for ordinary hard drives — for up to 100 years. 8GB of storage will cost you $50, while 16GB is priced at $80.

SanDisk Memory Vault [SanDisk]

It’s a good time to be a digital photographer — massive hard drives are becoming cheaper than ever, making it so photo-enthusiasts don’t have an excuse for not backing up their data redundantly. Here’s an interesting look at how the price of a Gigabyte of storage has changed over time:

YEAR — Price of a Gigabyte
1981 — $300,000
1987 — $50,000
1990 — $10,000
1994 — $1000
1997 — $100
2000 — $10
2004 — $1
2010 — $0.10

Nowadays, a cheapo flash drive given away for free at expos has more capacity than a $10K computer from 30 years ago. In another decade, you’ll probably be able to consolidate all of the hard drives you have now on a cheapo flash drive of the future (or whatever we’ll be using then)!

Cost of Hard Drive Storage Space (via Boing Boing)

If the entire Calvin and Hobbes collection can be found in a complete set, then why shouldn’t National Geographic? Well now it can!

A couple weeks ago National Geographic began selling its complete collection of magazines on a 160GB hard drive through its store. The hard drive contains a digital copy of every single magazine published over the past 120 years, and includes all of the beautiful, top-notch photographs the magazine is known for.

What’s even better is the fact that the magazines are packaged in an application that allows you to search for particular topics or even photographs. The hard drive has 90GB of free space for your own use, comes with a DVD with photo tips, and costs $199.95.

Complete National Geographic 160-GB Hard Drive (via DivePhotoGuide)