this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Mildly Interesting

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week 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.

[–] [email protected] 104 points 1 week ago (5 children)

And Apple be like. 128gb HDD or upgrade to a 512gb SSD for $600 extra or a 1tb nvme for $1000 extra

[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Their customers buy it, so they arent changing that

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Apples and oranges, though. The left two are hard drives, the right two are solid state drives (ie flash memory). They kind of serve the same purpose, but there is quite a big step in between 2 and 3. 2.5" HDDs also exist, though. Then again, so do 1TB MicroSD cards. And 2280 M.2 SSDs. But also huge tapes that are still in use for backup purposes.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wait, 1tb?

You're leaving impact on the table, I have plenty of 1tb micro SD cards.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 week ago (9 children)

Those drives typically have some pretty dreadful read/write speeds (for a computer). Maybe once SD Express is figured out we'll get fast and good Micro SD cards at a high capacity.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

I mean, those work fine and are fast. You mean we'll get those for cheap.

In any case, the image is about physical dimensions, and SD cards are tiny! Considering we're comparing to a 40 MB mechanical drive, I'm gonna say the comparison is valid and they aren't even near the bottom of the specs table.

Of course people like it when ALL the specs get better in these things, but that's because people like simple things more than true things.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

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

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