Technology
Storage Media Through History
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Updated:4/9/2026
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Media↕ | Year Introduced↕ | Typical Capacity↕ | Peak Era↕ | Inventor/Company↕ | Known For↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Punched Card | 1890 | 80 characters/card | 1950s-1970s | Herman Hollerith / IBM | Early computing data entry, 'do not fold spindle or mutilate' cards |
Magnetic Tape | 1951 | 1-10 MB (early) | 1960s-1980s | UNIVAC / IBM | Mainframe backups, spinning reels in every movie computer scene |
8-inch Floppy Disk | 1971 | 80 KB - 1.2 MB | 1970s | IBM | The original floppy, actually floppy |
Cassette Tape (data) | 1975 | 660 KB | Late 1970s-mid 1980s | Philips (tape) / hobbyists (data) | Loading Commodore 64 games for 20 minutes hoping for no errors |
5.25-inch Floppy | 1976 | 360 KB - 1.2 MB | 1980s | Shugart Associates | Apple II, early PC era, actually bendable |
Hard Disk Drive | 1956 | 5 MB - 20 TB | 1990s-2010s | IBM (RAMAC 305) | Spinning platters, the workhorse of personal computing |
3.5-inch Floppy | 1981 | 1.44 MB | 1990s | Sony | The save icon forever, hard plastic shell, 'insert disk 23 of 47' |
CD-ROM | 1985 | 650-700 MB | 1990s | Sony / Philips | Encarta, Myst, game installs, AOL free trial discs everywhere |
MiniDisc | 1992 | 140-1000 MB | Mid 1990s-early 2000s | Sony | Cult favorite portable audio, huge in Japan, killed by MP3 players |
Iomega Zip Disk | 1994 | 100-750 MB | Late 1990s | Iomega | Click of death, floppy successor that lost to CD-R |
DVD-ROM | 1995 | 4.7 GB (single layer) | 2000s | Sony / Toshiba / Panasonic / Philips | Movies, game installs, killed VHS, killed by streaming |
CompactFlash | 1994 | 2 MB - 512 GB | 2000s | SanDisk | Pro camera storage, bulky but bulletproof |
USB Flash Drive | 2000 | 8 MB - 2 TB | 2000s-2010s | IBM / Trek Technology / M-Systems | Thumb drives, the gadget bag staple, conference swag forever |
SD Card | 1999 | 8 MB - 2 TB | 2000s-present | SanDisk / Toshiba / Panasonic | Cameras, phones, Nintendo Switch, the last standing memory card |
Blu-ray Disc | 2003 | 25-100 GB | 2010s | Sony / Blu-ray Disc Association | HD movies, PS3, won the format war against HD DVD |
SATA SSD | 2006 | 32 GB - 8 TB | 2010s | Samsung (first mass market) | Instant boot times, the upgrade that saved old laptops |
NVMe SSD | 2013 | 128 GB - 16 TB | 2020s | NVM Express consortium | PCIe speeds, PS5 expansion, gigabytes per second |
Cloud Storage | 2007 | Effectively unlimited | 2010s-present | Amazon S3 / Dropbox / Google Drive | No physical media, sync everywhere, monthly subscriptions |
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