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.
I remember all the formats shown.
My first machine was an AST Research 286 16Mhz (in "turbo" mode) with two 5-1/4" floppy drives, and a 40 MB 5-1/4" hard drive. I paid ~$2000 for it in the late 80s. That was a good move, I knew more about computers than most people applying for jobs at the time, and that allowed me to make a decent living without a college degree.
How to say you are over 50 without saying you are over 50. I'm a A little younger, so in the 90s 20MB drive wasn't $2000. First time I had Ms dos boot from a hdd instead of floppy. The first time I ever 'installed' was f16 fighting falcon. The loading speed was phenomenal for the time.