Remember when 20 megabytes was a lot of space?

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I remember spending my entire allowance on floppy disks just so I could download Abandonware on the local internet cafe. Getting home with maybe 10 megabytes worth of junk seemed like the stuff of legends (particularly because nothing ever reached such sizes on the internet at the time).

Then, months later, I heard that free web hosting provider "FortuneCity" had doubled their free plan, taking it from 10 megabytes of space to 20, and there were even talks about them getting it all the way up to an unthinkable three digits (which they did, much later, when it was no longer that impressive). I had my own website hosted on something called "Webcindario" at the time (what a mouthful to add after my URL -- no wonder no-one ever visited XD) and they didn't offer nearly as much space at first, so seeing that was mind-blowing.

But, to me, the biggest "woah" moment came when Gmail launched and offered us ONE GIGABYTE of space (!). I was always having to play "triage" with my inbox on Hotmail because they didn't offer nearly enough space to keep all those awesome little PowerPoints we used to spam each other with, and suddenly someone was offering more than a CD-ROM worth of storage to dickhead kids so long as they managed to get an invitation for the service?! That, my friends, was the most awesomely ridiculous thing I had ever witnessed... and so early into my own internet journey, too.

Funny to think that we can now buy SD Cards with several times that size for basically nothing and that our phones, computers and free plans can easily offer much more storage by default these days.

But back then, when we uploaded Microsoft FrontPage Express pages to a rickety server using a screaming 56K connection, being very careful not to make them too pretty (lest that one super detailed image of MegaMan would come back to haunt us)? Yeah, that was night and day.

Ironically, though, I think that that actually taught us some discipline, too: prioritize uploads, get your files off-site; learn how to compress everything just right. Back-up what you can't directly keep... It was certainly a thought exercise, and one that was set up by an arbitrary number and our need to respect it.

Don't miss it at all, but it added a layer that made the whole thing feel more unique and rewarding when done right.

/Rant over ;D

 

[ciro64]

The first SD card I used to homebrew my Wii had amazing 40 megabytes!

 

[Kamako]

You can track ever-increasing storage expansion throughout the years via the space allocated to game saves.

My PSX memory card holds 16KB of storage and it equated to ~12 game saves. When PS2 memory cards went up to 1MB, I thought that was insane.

Then you had CD's averaging 700MB...woah! I used to spend so much time trying to compress as many TV episodes on to a single disc as I could.

Then you had MP3 players which could store upwards of 1GB of music! That's like 300 songs!

The PS4 comes around, and 500GB storage space became the standard. Outrageous. External hard drives start offering upwards of 1TB of storage for a reasonable cost..mind-blowing.

I think 20MB is still alot of space. But I guess nowadays, it depends a bit more on context :P

 

[Kremiso]

ah ah yes
my father PC was a PS/2 IBM with 20MB hard disk drive

10Kg of metal :)

 

[bjork]

I remember my first C64 game being on two double-sided disks and thinking that this must be the biggest game ever

 

[Cardboardtubeknight Cardboardtubeknight]

637 megabytes in pictures alone right now

 

[χKai]

Man, I remember when 1 MB was considered a huge filesize.

 

[Morgana Veil]

When the internet became a thing for me, I think I was hitting the twelve or thirteen year old mark.
But yes, it was quote unquote 56K, more like 28 and 40 on a good day if the weather was clear and no one in a quarter mile of you flushed a toilet. But I remember being blown away by the five and a half inch floppies and all that amazing storage space. If I recall correctly and I probably don't, the first PC we had at home had a whopping 250 MB hard drive of spinning rust. It might have been less I don't even remember now.

I know we got it for dirt cheap as it was a Walmart display model that was going to be recycled and how my parents got ahold of it and got the manager of Walmart to sell it to us. Fuck if I know.

Fast forward a few years, and we had upgraded to a glorious 80 GB rustbucket drive, and my first SD card. I think it was fifteen or twenty megs. Again, it's been so long I don't even remember.
It's amazing looking back at the leaps and bounds of storage capacity.

Twenty years ago, had you told me I could buy a non-mechanical multi-terabyte drive, I would have called you a bold faced liar. But that's the world we live in. Always leaps and bounds ahead of most of us.

Thank you Waffles, for making me feel old as dirt.

 

[Michael Frank]

Honestly is baffling how a game that needs 5GB or 20GB from what, 2001 or 2008? had every right to ocupy that space on my memory card, and now we are in 2025 were games that feel barebones at best(looking at you AAA industry) or Remakes that barely justify their existence most of the times, take almost half a fucking TERABYTE, and with their godawful optimization, you have to literally PRAY that your RAM doesn't explode...

And then you have indies, in which case they barely need 10 gigabytes of space(and that's rare most of the time) and your RAM can have some nice time sleeping because they barely use any of it.

It's a funny situation honestly.

estly.

 

[Retro Doomer]

Well I remember when mb wher a lot from my ps2 days.

Ps I know its dusty.This was gigantic for me compared to my normal below

Back then it felt hard make the Memory Card full.Atleast for me.I hated it when Data got corrupted but I loved the Icons on the memory Card,we onpy learn what we had when its already gone.

 

[gekiganwing]

I had a secondhand monochrome Mac SE for a few years in the 1990s. I remember that it had a 40 MB hard drive.

The 5 1/4 inch floppy disks which I used in school during the 1980s had less than 1 MB storage space. They weren't even durable. I was often reminded to keep the items in a paper sleeve, and avoid touching anything other than the label.

 

[ThunderBoy]

 

[Morgana Veil]

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

I couldn’t even fill up my 16 MB MMC on my Nokia phone back then I already have dozens of games and music and I barely used 10MB

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

I couldn’t even fill up my 16 MB MMC on my Nokia phone back then I already have dozens of games and music and I barely used 10MB

Those were the days -- I'm currently using a MiniJava emulator to relive those games and my entire collection is about 5 MBs.

 

[fake-kun]

I remember when 30 GB was considered big for a game. We should go back to that time.

 

[Nelson2001 Nelson2001]

Honestly, my first Micro SD card I had was 1024MB (1GB) that my dad gave me in 2009 and I had it on my phone which was of the Coral brand that I don't remember the model exactly. but I know that I took advantage of it to have music and images But transferred on via Bluetooth from my cousins and my uncle as well.

 

[werewolfx]

my friend had a computer growing up, and proudly slapped on it was a sticker stating so happily: Spacious 4 gig hard drive.

I told him to take it and just put it on every pc he makes.

 

[Vardalis]

I remember when 30 GB was considered big for a game. We should go back to that time.

Absolutely. I'm yet to really find a game that felt justified for hogging over 50GB of my hard drive.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Absolutely. I'm yet to really find a game that felt justified for hogging over 50GB of my hard drive.

I remember reading that those were just "anti-torrenting" practices in disguise, like they purposefully bloat the games with useless bullshit so people would be less inclined to seed them.

I wouldn't put that past the industry, even if it's as petty as old-school pirates adding unrelated files to their FreakShare downloads to get paid more money.

 

[Morgana Veil]

Yeah, I recently "got" DOOM: The Dark Ages. 82 GB for that damn game, which I like DOOM, so I'll probably burn through it and uninstall it. But I think DOOM Eternal was around 70 GB, still way too much for what the game is, in my opinion. I think they could have probably reduced it to a 50 GB file, but maybe not. There’s a lot of stuff in the game. Hell, Cyberpunk 2077 is a whopping 102 GB. That’s ludicrous, man, but it is a fairly large open-world game.

It still blows my mind how big games have gotten. I remember when a 1 TB spinning rust drive cost around 200 USD. They had just come down enough for people like myself to buy, and I thought "Nah, a terabyte? I’ll never fill that up"

I have multiple 1 TB SSDs nearly full, and NGL it's alot of Junk.

 

[thecrow2313]

I remember zip drives, and first thought wow, then it failed. Portable external ssd drives, "you're killing me smalls."

Then now, holy shit

Kioxia unveils highest capacity SSD at 245.76 TB – Blocks and Files

Kioxia has announced the largest capacity SSD at 245.76 TB, opening the door to a 200-plus petabyte rack and 5-rack, 1 exabyte configuration.

blocksandfiles.com

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[diet_orange]

Our family XP computer that my mom bought in 2006 had 128gbs of storage. Remember thinking that was insane. These days, that's nothing. They've even got 1tb flash drives now. Just reminds me of this quote from the "Cyberpunk" documentary (which is really good by the way, highly recommended if you like hacker stuff)

about street kids carrying around an entire computer's worth of data no bigger than their fingernail