root@hobbes.UUCP (John Plocher) (04/27/87)
+---- In article <109@hobbes.UUCP>, I wrote: ---- | ( Paraphrased from an article in the Capital Times, March 1987) | more than 1,000 optical disks ... to give 2 Tera Bytes of storage. | (For comparison shopping, note that this is equivalent to | 40,000,000 9-Track tapes, 4,000,000,000 Floppy Disks, a stack of paper .... +---- +---- Philip Kos responded in <1067@osiris.UUCP> ---- | I can't speak for the stack of paper, but according to my calculations, | 2T/40,000,000 is about 54976 and 2T/4,000,000,000 is about 550. Now, if | they're talking *paper* tape, then maybe I can figure the 54976, but hell, | even an RX01 holds more than 550 bytes!! Either I'm off by an order of | magnitude (or three) or somebody else is. | | John, did you seriously mistype these numbers or is this really what was | in the article? I could say something here about using marketing numbers | without independent verification, but I had probably better shut up... :-) +---- +---- David desJardins also responded in <3220@jade.BERKELEY.EDU> ---- | Come on now. Please at least think about what you are saying before | you post it to the whole world. If 2 x 10^12 bytes were the equal of 4 x 10^9 | floppy disks, then that would mean 500 bytes on each disk. Somehow I think | our technology has advanced slightly beyond that. +---- OK, so I didn't verify the numbers printed in the newspaper (I assumed... :-) The exact quote: "The system will eventually store as much as two terabytes on more than 1,000 optical disks, the equivalent of six copies of the 1980 U.S. Census or a stack of paper three times the size of Mount Everest, Thompson said. Each disk stores the amount of data that would be held on 40,000 reel-to-reel magnetic tapes or 4 million floppy disks." The first paragraph was comparing to the complete 1000 disk system, the second was comparing to ONE DISK, so 4,000,000 Floppies * 1,000 Optical disks = 4,000,000,000 Floppy disks 40,000 Tapes * 1,000 Optical disks = 40,000,000 Tapes Some simple stuff I *should* have done before posting: media per optical disk bytes per media bytes per optical disk ---------------------- --------------- ---------------------- 4,000,000 floppy disks * 360 Kbytes per floppy = 1,440,000 Mbytes 40,000 Tapes * 40 Mbytes per tape = 1,600,000 Mbytes Compare with: 2 Tbytes / 1,000 Optical disks = 2,000 Mbytes The second paragraph SHOULD be refering to the *complete* system. The 'correct' numbers would be: 2T / 360K = 5,425,347 Floppy Disks ("4 million floppy disks") 2T / 40M = 48,828 Tapes ("40,000 reel-to-reel...") Mea Culpa... (That's why the paper is known locally as the "Crap Times") -- John Plocher UUCP: <backbone>!uwvax!uwmacc!hobbes!plocher ============== Internet: plocher%hobbes.UUCP@uwvax.WISC.EDU FidoNet: 121/0 BITNET: uwvax!uwmacc!hobbes!plocher@psuvax1