Welcome to the third post of the #Timeline series by @danishmmir. In this post we will be looking at the different inventions and innovations that happened in data storage technology, that make it what it is today.
For those who have missed upon my previous posts, here is a list of all my previous posts in #Timeline series ordered chronologically. Stay tuned to my #Timeline tag and give me a follow up to support this minnow if you like it.

The Timeline Series - #1 - Computers (From Mechanical to Electronic) - Part-I

The Timeline Series - #2 - Computers (From Electronic to Quantum) - Part-II

Without further ado let-us start the #Timeline

||<1940|| :::.Punched Cards.:::

Invented by Basile Bouchon in 1725, punch cards recorded information even before existence of computers. The punch card technology was further improved by Herman Hollerith, so that the data could be read. Punch cards are simply cards of paper with holes at predefined positions. The data is represented by the presence and absence of the holes in the card at the predefined positions.

||1943|| :::.Punched Tape.:::

A predecessor to magnetic tape and similar to punched cards was the punched tape. These were used in the first Colossus computer, which were used by Nazis to decipher secret codes during WWII.

||1951|| :::.Magnetic Tape.:::

Magnetic tape is a long and thin reel of plastic with a coating of magenetic oxide on it. The coating gives the ability of storing data on the plastic reel. It was much more faster and had very large storage space as compared to punched cards. The data could be stored, accessed and created very quickly.

||1956|| :::.Hard Drive.:::

A hard disk is composed of magnetic material coated disks stalked one upon another to store data on them in such a way that it can be retreived in any order (rateher than sequentially). The first hard drive was 5MB from IBM and took a substantial space of a room.

||1971|| :::.Floppy Disks.:::

Born in 1971, first floppies were 8-inch bare disks and got dirty easily. So they were jacketed in slim envelopes with dust-wiping element, making them more easy to handle and store. The disks advanced from 8-inch, 80 Kb to 5.25-inch, 1.2Mb disk to a 3.5-inch, 250Mb disk.

||1985|| :::.CD-ROM.:::

Compact Disc - Read Only Memory is an adaptation of the CD designed to store computer data in the form of text and graphics. Original data format was fromed by Sony and Philips in 1983 Yellow Book. Two new sectors created were for storing computer data (Mode 1) and for audio or video data (Mode 2.)

||1995|| :::.DVD.:::

Invented by Philips, Sony, Toshiba and Panasonic in 1995, a DVD is a digital optical disc. DVD offers higher capacity than CD-ROM while having the same dimensions.

||2000|| :::.USB Drive.:::

A USB Drive is a "Plug and Play" storage device with USB interface. It has Flash Memory and is very much portable. These devices increased in data storage over time and were instantly popular due to their portability.

||2006|| :::.Cloud Storage.:::

Here in, a user uploads his files and data to a remote server on internet, which in turn stores his files for him. Then the user can access the files from anywhere in the world, from any device, be it a mobile or desktop.

||2013|| :::.Cloud Storage.:::

Look for the figures yourself. This is how much data is stored in cloud as of 2013 (More than 1 Exabyte).

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