this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
428 points (98.4% liked)

Mildly Interesting

21442 readers
715 users here now

This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

(page 2) 14 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 4 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

It really is amazing, and just popping an m.2 into a motherboard directly is just so... easy. And I think Gen5s are what, 2.5x faster than what you're showing here?

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 3 points 12 hours ago

You could go back further to the drives mini computers used to use, which basically for in a file cabinet. Or old mainframes, which were the file cabinet.

[–] magnetosphere@fedia.io 2 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Do manufacturers use the extra space for larger batteries, or just to make the product smaller overall?

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 2 points 12 hours ago

Having grown up along with the computer industry, sometimes I have that surreal sense of awe when I remember where we came from and what I used to consider cutting edge. Just upgraded my computer with a few SSDs, one an M.2, and before I put it in I was looking at it and trying to come to grasp with the scale of things (size and speed) vs. my first C-64 computer and Datasette. I know the numbers...they don't convey the difference in the head.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

And it will continue...

Soon we'll have 100TB "drives" the size of a thumb nail for 50€.

We'll all (we geeks anyways) walk around with the Wikipedia, all Star Trek movies and so on in our pocket :-)

[–] ramenshaman@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

The 1TB and up microSD cards blow my mind.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

And they all last until about the same date

[–] Bonesince1997@lemmy.world 1 points 12 hours ago

The new hard drives are almost the size of old SD cards (not the micro ones).

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›