I bring external hard drives everywhere, I haven’t had a non-SSD since 2012. I usually have an external HD with me at all times, you can get 1TB the size of a credit card these days.
I remember my freshman year of college literally walking 30 min each way with some friends to some guy who I’d never Mets place so I could see a 1TB drive. It was such a big deal, as far as we knew he was the only person on the entire (large) campus to have one.
I had to buy a zip disk (anyone remember those? Iomega made them) for the gis computer lab because some of our data files were bigger than what could be accommodated on a floppy drive (yeah, remember THOSE?) We were still using mostly 3.5" floppies in 1994. Each one held 1.44MB. DVDs didn’t hit the scene until 1996 and blank recordable ones sometime after like 2000? Anyway this would have been between 1994 and 1998. I got one that was 100MB, which I think was their base model. It was SO EXPENSIVE, like $50 or maybe even more in 1994. It was a LOT. I still have it. (But I don’t have a drive!)
My father was a programmer before this time as well. I remember him bring home stacks of punch cards!!! But I was born too late to actually experience that in the wild.
I have some microSD cards still from super old digital cameras that would hold like… 3 photos nowadays.
Yup, my first thought was wondering how much space the meme threads alone take up. Worth it! (Says the person with no actual financial responsibility for forum upkeep)