This morning as I was browsing through some forums, the topic of storage capacity came up. One person that voted, said he had over 8 gigs of storage. The first thing that came to mind was how far we have come in computer technology in the past 15 years.

My families first computer had a 1.2 gig hard drive and came loaded with windows 95. Somewhere around 1997 or 1998 that 1.2 gig unit was upgraded and replace with a 6 gig hard drive that cost $320 dollars. After about 6 months of service it went out and the company replaced it with an 8 gig drive.

That 8 gig drive for several years. But then again, most games were less then 200 – 300 megs. Quake was only about 96 megs with the default install. With all of the modifications of Quake installed, the Quake directory swelled to an amazing 300 – 400 megs. I think the install of Quakeworld Team Fortress alone was almost 75 megs. Doom was less then 30 megs, Diablo was less then 30 megs, Command and Conquer DOS, Gold and Red Alert – all three were less then 30 megs.

Just after the year 2000 is when I bought my first 20 and 40 gig hard drive. Talk about a big step going from 8 gigs to 40 gigs.

And today, we can go down to just about any retail outlet and buy a 1 terabyte drive for about $100. A couple of months ago I saw a 1.5 terabyte drive on sale for less then $100.

When I see those prices, I think about that 6 gig drive for $320.