$10 a month for 15 petabytes (15,000,000 Gigs) of storage.
Storage space is getting cheaper. For investing US$10 a month, you'll have accumulated 15 petabytes of storage space by 2020.
Assuming you invest $10 a month in storage and start buying this year, buying additional space every year, you'll accumulate 120 Gigs of storage space this year (2004). Enough for about 10 hours of quality video uncompressed from my camera. Not much, really.
By 2010, you'll have accumulated 15 terabytes (15,000 Gigs) of storage space. Enough for 1250 hours (52 days) of video.
By 2020, you'll have reached 15 petabytes of storage space - 15,000,000 Gigs. Enough for 142 years of 24 hour video.
Historical Notes about the Cost of Hard Drive Storage Space:
Year---price per 1 Gig
1980---500000
1985---80000
1990---9000
1995---1000
2000---15
2001---6
2002---3
2003---2
2004---1
As you can see, the price per Gig about halves every year. LaCie's BigDisk (500 Gigs) currently costs $579.
This means that, if you keep paying $10.00 a month for storage ($120 a year), and only buy storage as you need it, you will get more or less the following storage available to you:
Year - Price per peta - $$ - Storage bought (in gig) - Storage accumulated (in gig)
2004----1000----120--120------120 (120 gig)
2005----500-----120--240------360
2006----250-----120--480------840
2007----125-----120--960------1800 (1.8 tera)
2008----60------120--2000-----3800
2009----30------120--4000-----7800
2010----15------120--8000-----15800 (15 tera)
2011----7-------120--17000----32800
2012----3-------120--40000----72800
2013----2-------120--60000----132800
2014----1-------120--120000---252800
2015----0.5-----120--240000---492800
2016----0.25----120--480000---972800
2017----0.125---120--960000---1932800 (1.9 peta)
2018----0.0625--120--1920000--3852800
2019----0.0312--120--3846153--7698953
2020----0.0156--120--7692307--15391261 (15 peta)