Did you know that – 20 years ago – you needed a refrigerator-sized machine to store 1 GB of data? Today, we can have gigabytes-worth of data in our pockets or mobile devices.

The rapid evolution in size and price of storage in the last decade has transformed consumer technology and changed how businesses manage their data.

In 2006, cloud computing introduces the idea of securely storing unlimited amount of data without physical, onsite hardware. It is believed that cloud computing is the accelerator of data storage technology advancements, significantly reducing the cost of data, while increasing the capacity of a storage device.

Rackspace, one of the leading provider of cloud, managed and hybrid hosting, released this interesting cloud computing infographic to visualize the “journey” of data storage, starting from the release of easy-to-carry 8MB USB drive in 2000 to 2010’s high-capacity portable hard drives, such as Hitachi XL3000 Desk, capable of storing 3TB of data – along with the dropping price of storage from about $19.70/GB in 2001 to $0.06/GB in 2010. Please click on the image for the original size…

Via Rackspace Hosting