Feb 11
How much data are we storing as a planet? According to a recent study by Science, the number was 295 exabytes–that’s roughly the equivalent of 295 “average” hard drives. To break it down further, an exabyte is one million gigabytes, or one billion terrabytes.
Need it broken down further? How about this quote from University of Southern California professor, Dr. Marting Hilbert, “If we were to take all that information and store it in books, we could cover the entire area of the US or China in 3 layers of books.” A stack of CDs with all of that info would reach the moon.
The data was culled together by estimating the number of PCs and DVDs and more analog technologies, like books. Twenty-five technologies were factored into the list. In 2007, however, 94 percent of the information stored, at present, is in a digital format. In 2000, 75 percent was stored on analog formats like video.
And, of course, it’s important to point out that the estimation is three years old. It’s likely increased a good deal, with the rapidly dropping price of digital storage.
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