I have too much hard drive space!

Originally posted 2008-01-15 05:16:38

By the time people who knew nothing about soldering guns started buying home computers, memory was measured in kilobytes. My first computer, an Atari 400, had 16 kilobytes of RAM, and my second, and Atari 800, tripled that. Even the lowly Timex Sinclair had a full kilobyte, which could light up the screen and not much more. People running IBM machines and clones soon had 640 kilobytes of RAM, and and about this time Bill Gates never said 640 kilobytes would be plenty.

In those days, people didn’t generally know what type of processor was in their computers, or which chips handled the video signal, but they knew how much RAM their computers had. After repeating the word \”kilobytes\” a few times at the software store counter when determining which software would run on their computers, folks began shortening the units to \”KB\” (pronounced \”kaybee\”) and then, even more economically, \”K.\” For example, my Atari 800 had 48K, not kilobytes, of RAM. Monosyllables trump trisyllables in speech.

About the time computers started boasting hard drives, memory–both RAM and hard drive space–began to be measured in megabytes. Most people, of course, don’t understand the difference between system memory and hard drive space, anymore than they can fathom why a hard plastic square that neither flops nor approximates anything round is called a \”floppy disk,\” so they became a bit less assertive about declaring how much memory or storage capacity their computers had, mumbling something about 1 megabyte or 5 megabytes. \”Megabyte,\” like \”kilobyte,\” proved too long to say or write, so people shortened it to \”MB\” when written, never really making the leap to the solitary \”M.\” People tried saying \”embee\” for a time, but settled on \”meg\” as the generally accepted pronunciation for \”megabyte.\” \”Meg,\” of course, is quicker to say than \”embee,\” but is no quicker than \”em.\” I suppose we’d rather think of Meg Ryan than Auntie Em.

Interestingly, when people announce their hard drive capacity, they generally use the adjectival form of the units. \”I have a 200 meg hard drive\” rather than \”I have 200 megs of hard drive space.\” RAM discussions generally use the units as nouns: \”I have 4 megs of RAM.\” Perhaps the rhyme with \”legs of lamb\” proves irresistible. And did you have fun trying to run Windows 95 on those 4 megs of RAM?

I fear at this point that some pedant is starting to mutter about mebibytes and their ilk. People who know the difference between megabytes and mebibytes without looking it up spent their youths receiving wedgies and noogies, and even now never receive invitations to parties. Not even LAN parties.

Hard drive space and RAM capacity inevitably grew beyond the megabyte range into the gigabyte realm. People didn’t immediately know how to abbreviate \”gigabyte,\” and besides loved to savor the entire word slipping off the tongue when bragging about their new system specs. Once everyone had gigabytes, however, bragging rights ceased and people tired of saying the whole word. Isaac Newton had already appropriated \”G,\” and \”Gee Bee\” hearkened the Bee Gees, so the \”meg\” pattern triumphed and people adopted \”gig.\” Suddenly, everyone’s a rock star, with plenty of gigs without any musical skills (which, sadly describes most of the acts that currently dominate MTV).

When I built my desktop computer last year, I put in two 250 gig SATA II hard drives and 2 gigs of RAM (rhymes with sprigs of ham). I’m nowhere close to filling the hard drives. Last September, however, I couldn’t walk away from an external 500 gig hard drive at steep discount at Fry’s, so I bought it, hooked it up to that computer, and use it for backup purposes. Suddenly, I had left the gigabyte threshold behind and had entered terabyte land. Telling people I have a terabyte of hard drive space will be fun for a little while longer, just because the novelty of matching data warehouses in magnitude hasn’t yet worn off, but when I’m ready to abbreviate I don’t know what to say. Geekdom, to my knowledge, hasn’t yet come to the rescue. If I follow the pattern, I’ll either say \”tare,\” which is a weed, or \”tear,\” which is a rip. Never mind how I’ll vocally distinguish between \”tare\” and \”tear.\” The mebibyte crowd will delight in saying they rip their CDs and DVDs to their tear hard drive, but the rest of us won’t think that’s funny by the time we’ve finished ripping the first season of The Office. We have a dilemma, and no spelling of \”tear\” will do. We can’t do the \”teebee\” thing either, because that’s a disease, and a simple \”T\” is worn when painting or doing yardwork. I fear we’re stuck with the full \”terabyte,\” which has a dinosaurian feel to it.

The next threshold exacerbates the problem, as 5 \”pets\” of hard drive space sounds ridiculous, even to the cat-loving Scott Adams. A sandwich spread irretrievably owns the \”PB\” abbreviation, and no one will be comfortable talking about hard drive space in terms of a bodily excretion. Using the full word doesn’t really work, however, since \”petabyte\” sounds uncomfortably close to \”pedophile,\” and the news already gives us too many reminders of them.

The next generation regains the coolness factor, however, as exabytes can so obviously and fashionably be reduced to \”X.\” We’ll have to take care to avoid pluralizing it, though, or we’ll hear exchanges like the following:

\”My hard drive? I have three exes.\”
\”Wow, you sure have been married a lot!\”

We’ll of course blame the mebibyte crowd for hammering that pun to death.

Beyond exabytes, the zettabyte generation will be a little tricky, as by the time we get there we may have forgotten about Catherine Zeta-Jones. Zets? Zits? We could go with \”zees,\” but that will put people to sleep. We’ll probably stick with \”zee,\” hoping that Nissan won’t charge royalties.

I dread, however, reaching the yottabyte stage, as the mebibyte crowd, by this time a yobibyte crowd, will merrily pun their way through CompUSA:

\”You oughta get a lotta yotta.\”
\”I foughta lotta people to get this yotta\”
\”I gotta yotta–is it true you also boughta yotta?\”
\”In last week’s sale I caughta yotta while drinking a pina colada.\”
\”That’s a yobi–notta yotta.\”

And so on, ad nauseum

So here I sit with my tare of hard drive space, unsure how to discuss until we reach exabyte land.

If you’ll excuse me, I hear loud music coming from the neighbor’s, so they’re obviously having a party. I’m sure I have an invitation somewhere . . . .