As the world moved towards the digital age, so did the ways we captured and saved those precious moments. The humble 3.5" floppy disk forged the path for putting digital file storage in the hands of the everyday consumer.
Invented and released in the 1980s, the slimmed down 3.5" floppy disk had a ground-breaking capacity of 1.4MB! This may not sound like a lot of space, until we remember that the first computer with magnetic storage was released in the late 1950s with a storage capacity of 5MB - and weighing over 2000 pounds!
In the 1980s, we saw the rise of the compact disc, or CD, reaching consumers from Sony and Phillips. Dedicated to storing audio and data files, the CD held a whopping 800MB!
The CD quickly evolved to meet the fast-growing data storage needs of the world, and soon we saw write-once audio and data storage (CD-R), rewritable media (CD-RW), Video CD (VCD), Super Video CD (SVCD), Photo CD, Picture CD, Compact Disc-Interactive (CD-i) and even Enhanced Music CD!
Within 15 years, the next generation of disc data storage was developed - the DVD. Invented and developed in 1995, the DVD was first released on November 1, 1996 in Japan.
It quickly grew to become the video content storage of choice, with mass produced films and shows being offered on DVD format in addition to VHS. The DVD offered significantly more storage capacity, with the average being 4.7GB, compared to the CD, and soon individuals and families began recording their lives on DVD.
Once digital cameras entered the market, people had a growing need for storing their digital photographs. No longer were people limited by the frames on a roll of film. With the digital camera, life's moments were a click away - and we did a lot of clicking!
Enter the Secure Digital card, better known as the SD card! Invented in 1999 as a joint collaboration by SanDisk, Panasonic (formerly Matsushita) and Toshiba as an improvement over MultiMediaCards (MMCs) and the Memory Stick for both storage and security, SD cards held up to 2GB and quickly became the industry standard over MMCs (only invented two years prior!).
The SD card lets photographers and hobbyists keep up to 2000 images on one device! Iterations of the SD card released over time, each offering greater storage limits than the prior generation.
At ScanCafe, our passion has been to help people recover and rediscover their memories, as well as the memories of their loved ones. We've dedicated ourselves to building a world-class process to digitize the various analog media types we have used over the decades to capture those moments.
As computers continue to evolve and optimize for a cloud-based society, we are seeing less compatibility with those floppy disks, CDs, DVDs and SD discs which means you lose more and more access to those memories. Unwilling to sit idly by while those memories collect digital dust, we are excited to offer extraction services for these storage devices. We understand how cumbersome it can be to find and set up special equipment just to be able to get photos off a floppy disk, CD, DVD or SD card.
Send your old data storage devices to us, and let us put those memories back in your hands on a flash drive, or as a convenient digital download from your account - or both!
