I just got a new laptop today and when I saw the ssd it blew my mind. Most of my old drives are like the second from left and it’s what I think of as a normal drive, buying a standard ssd still feels small to me. But look at that tiny thing to the right! It’s the size of a postage stamp!

Assuming I managed to find the right specs (it is a Microscience hh-1050): The monster on the far left is from 1990, holds 40mb, read/write of 0.625mb/s, and weighs almost exactly 2kg. The baby on the far right I got in the mail today, holds 1tb, read/write of 5150mb/s, and weighs about 2.85 grams.

So we’re looking at 25,000 times more storage, 8,240 times faster, and 1/700th the weight! And the one on the right is just 1tb, they make one that same model but 2tb. I can barely believe it exists even though I’m literally holding it in my hands.

  • Rose@slrpnk.net
    1·
    20 hours ago

    Off the top of my mind, stuff that I’ve used and still have lying around:

    • 5.25" floppies (DSDD, Commodore 64; I think I may have a few HD floppies for PC but I’m not sure if I have a drive for them)
    • 3.5" floppies (HD and some DD, mostly for PC; I have a few PC carcasses that have floppy drives, but I do also have a working USB floppy drive)
    • Cassette tapes (Spectravideo, Commodore VIC-20, Commodore 64)
    • ROM cartridges (same as above, plus game consoles)
    • Iomega Zip (not sure if the Zip floppies I have have anything relevant; the USB Zip drive is in box somewhere)
    • Iomega Jaz (two disks; not sure if the drive I was actually working last time I used it, could be completely hosed by now, Iomega didn’t exactly have a good reputation)
    • A few IDE/PATA hard drives (not sure of the condition)
    • Bunch of CD/DVD/rewritables, I think I have a few unused CD-Rs/DVD-Rs too, never had a Blu-Ray drive for computers
    • USB sticks and hard drives of various descriptions
    • microSD cards used with Raspberry Pi

    Funny thing is, I think I have no extra SATA hard drives and modern SSDs lying around, because most of the computers I have that use them are still in operation.