{"id":333,"date":"2011-06-21T09:30:34","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T16:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=333"},"modified":"2025-12-11T12:18:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:18:04","slug":"94-trillion-petabyte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/94-trillion-petabyte\/","title":{"rendered":"$94 Trillion Petabyte"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog_ibm-first-drive.jpg\" alt=\"IBM first hard drive\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"bzdropcap\">IBM is celebrating the 55<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of the<a href=\"\/blog\/history-hard-drives\/\"> first hard drive.<\/a> At the time, this was a breakthrough that would change the path of technology.<\/p>\n<p>However, to put into perspective how far we&#8217;ve all come:<\/p>\n<p><strong>The<a href=\"\/blog\/life-and-times-of-a-backblaze-hard-drive\/\"> hard drive<\/a> IBM shipped in 1956:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Stored five megabytes<\/li>\n<li>Cost $11,000 per megabyte<\/li>\n<li>Was 60 inches long x 68 inches high x 29 inches deep<\/li>\n<li>Weighed about one ton<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In today&#8217;s dollars that would mean:<\/p>\n<p><strong>A $179 16GB iPod Nano:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Stores 3,200 times more data<\/li>\n<li>Would cost $1,429,176,320<\/li>\n<li>Requires eight semi-truck shipping containers to hold the data<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>A <a href=\"\/blog\/petabytes-on-a-budget-10-years-and-counting\/\">petabyte<\/a> of storage would:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cost $93,662,499,307,520<\/li>\n<li>Require a building the size of 10,814 football fields to hold the drives<\/li>\n<li>Require 472 of the world&#8217;s <a href=\"\/blog\/these-arent-your-ordinary-data-centers\/\">largest data centers <\/a>to hold the drives<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Compare that to being able to get a <a href=\"\/blog\/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">petabyte of storage for $117,000<\/a> and store it in a single rack. Of course, IBM researchers from the &#8217;50s are clearly some of the giants on whose shoulders we stand.<\/p>\n<p><em>Note: $1 in 1956 is $7.93 in 2010 adjusted for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.westegg.com\/inflation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">inflation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IBM is celebrating the 55th anniversary of the first hard drive. At the time, this was a breakthrough that would change the path of technology. However, to put into perspective how far we&#8217;ve all come: The hard drive IBM shipped in 1956: Stored five megabytes Cost $11,000 per megabyte Was 60 inches long x 68&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/94-trillion-petabyte\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">$94 Trillion Petabyte<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[470],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-backblaze-bits","tag-newsletter","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How Much Does 1 Petabyte Cost? A Look at the $94 Trillion Petabyte<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"IBM is celebrating the 55th anniversary of the first hard drive. At the time, this was a breakthrough that would change the path of technology. However,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/94-trillion-petabyte\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Much Does 1 Petabyte Cost? A Look at the $94 Trillion Petabyte\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"IBM is celebrating the 55th anniversary of the first hard drive. At the time, this was a breakthrough that would change the path of technology. However,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/94-trillion-petabyte\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage &amp; Cloud Backup\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/backblaze\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-06-21T16:30:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-11T20:18:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog_ibm-first-drive.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"550\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"270\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gleb Budman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gleb Budman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How Much Does 1 Petabyte Cost? 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Gleb has served as a member of our board of directors since 2009 and as chairperson since January 2021. Prior to Backblaze, Gleb was the senior director of product management at SonicWall and the vice president of products at MailFrontier, which was acquired by SonicWall. Before that, he served in a senior position at Kendara, which was acquired by Excite@Home, and previously founded and successfully exited two other startup companies.","url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/author\/gleb\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog_ibm-first-drive.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}