Installing 2 petabytes of storage - GIF

**Altair** · Nov 23, 2022, 08:14 AM

Installing 2 petabytes of storage.

Previously:

Smartphone hard disk drive - GIF
Hard drive crushing machines - GIF
Floppy disk case - GIF
4.5 megabytes of data represented by punch cards - photo
1970s hard disk drive advertisement - photo

**mklotz** · Nov 23, 2022, 09:22 AM

It's stupefying to think that a copy of every book ever written in the history of mankind could probably fit in there.

An average Kindle book needs 4E6 bytes.

2E15/4E6 = half a billion books

The library of Alexandria in a box the size of a refrigerator.

**Inflight** · Nov 23, 2022, 06:01 PM

While working in sports broadcast television 10 years ago, we had a little more than 2 petabytes of storage but the drives filled an entire 42U cabinet (72" tall). We cycled that amount of data about every month. Everything was archived to two sets of tape for offsite storage. When the Fukushima earthquake occurred, some smart people in my company immediately purchased every bit of tape we could get our hands on because all the tape came from Japan and it was essential for our business.