Spotlight on Storage: Big News!

DF Studio has some big news to share! This August, we surpassed 1 Petabyte (that’s 1,000 Terabytes or 1,000,000 Gigabytes) of stored files. That’s a lot of data. To celebrate this milestone, we’ll be publishing a series of blog posts about storing files: stay tuned for posts about data security, Cold Storage, and a mystery storage bug resolved by our engineering team. For now, we’ll keep it light with a few fun facts about how storing data has evolved over the years.

• IBM is credited with developing the first hard drive for commercial sale in 1956. Called the IBM 350 Disk File, its capacity was 3.75 MB – less than the size of 1 hi-res JPEG today.
• The first iPod released by Apple in 2001 contained 5 GB of storage, roughly enough to play 1,000 songs. By 2009, iPods came with up to 160 GB of storage — that’s 32 times the original amount — built into the device.
• A single TIFF image file can take up 50 MB or more. Large Projects containing RAW files or TIFFS often use the better part of 1 TB.
• The next unit after a Petabyte is an Exabyte (1,000 PB). An Exabyte of storage would require enough cabinet space to fill up a 4 story, city block sized datacenter. Challenge accepted!

It’s clear that storage has come a very long way in a short amount of time, and that finding secure, cost-effective, and mobile solutions is becoming increasingly more important. That’s why we at DF Studio are dedicated to innovating digital asset management and augmenting what file storage can do for our clients. Stay tuned for more information about managing your digital assets — and keeping them in your daily workflow — so they’re with you for the long haul.