Flash Memory Turns 25 - SanDisk Drops some Stats

Flash memory is a standard in memory cards, portable electronics and is increasingly common in laptop and desktop hard drives.  It's come a long way in its 25 years, but the spread of flash memory is even more impressive when you attach some numbers to it.

Take, for example, the very first product SanDisk ever made.  It was a 20MB solid state drive that ran just about $1,000.  Now, a drive 100 times larger can be had for around a tenth of the price.  Of course, we're going to need plenty of space considering all the data people are using.

This year, it's estimated that 2.7 zettabytes of data will be created and consumed.  That's right around 2.7 billion terabytes or 2.7 trillion gigabytes.  It's a lot of data.  Within three years, cloud storage is expected to reach 8ZB in size.