Johannesburg, 03 Mar 2022
It’s difficult to imagine a world without powerful storage options like HUAWEI Mobile Cloud. After all, you get 5GB of space for free every month (that’s the equivalent of roughly 2 500 high-resolution photos), backups are performed automatically and you can access your files from any device with an internet connection. Not too long ago, we were stuck with paper files and photo albums to keep track of all that’s important to us. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and check out the evolution of storage to better appreciate what we’ve got today.
The age of floppies
It all started in 1976 with the invention of the humble 5.25-inch floppy disk. At the time, there was a need to produce a disk drive small enough to use with a desktop computer. And just how much could these floppies store? It all started with a whopping 100KB. Think of your word document that’s a few pages long. Yeah, that’s all it could store.
Practically, this meant desktop computers needed to have hard drives to keep information on. So, in the 1980s, the first consumer hard drive was released. The 5MB model became an instant hit to serve the booming personal computer market. Putting this into perspective, by today’s standards a 5MB video is roughly one minute long at a standard HD resolution of 720p. At the time this was a critically important invention, as it cemented the foundation for the hard drives we have today.
Having so much storage at your beck and call meant that the floppy disk was no longer adequate. Instead, in 1981 the 3.5-inch stiffy drive was released. These almost doubled the capacity of the floppy disk to reach around 162KB. Although this was still nowhere near our demands of today’s connected world, it really was revolutionary in the early 80s.
The CD cometh
Not long after that, CD-ROMs were introduced to the computer market in 1984. These could store up to 550MB of data. The first consumer product released on CD-ROM was an encyclopaedia that only took up 12% of the available space. Considering that CD drives have only recently been eliminated from most computers, it’s incredible to think that the technology lasted as long as it did.
In 1984, we also saw the introduction of the USB flash drives we use today. Flash memory in the 80s and 90s was predominantly used in computers and not for consumer storage. It was only in 2000 when the first USB product was sold. Called a thumb drive, it supported up to 128MB of storage. Considering that the highest capacity flash drive available today is 1TB, it is evident how far we’ve come in a short space of time.
Making way for the cloud
Today, we have mobile cloud storage – Huawei’s Mobile Cloud – which easily takes care of your storage requirements. You can save your documents, photos, videos and every other important file or application to the cloud. With your HUAWEI ID, you can log in and access your documents easily and safely from any device, anywhere in the world. Storage space is no longer a problem. Whether you need 5GB or 2TB, the choice is yours.
For a limited time only, HUAWEI Mobile Cloud is offering device users the option to claim 50% off the 200GB package. That's 200GB of space to do with as you please; to get the offer, click here.
Storage has come a long way in the past 50 years, and our lives have definitely been made easier now that you can take your important documents and memories wherever you go. All you need is your device. To learn more about Huawei Mobile Cloud, click here.
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