# How many GB would one file cabinet hold?



## PohTayToez

So, this is an instant message convo me and a friend just had, thought I'd share it with you all:



> [11:12] My Friend: I need to slow down
> [11:12] Me:
> [11:13] My Friend: I've just used 30 gig's of storage space on music
> [11:13] Me: Meh, that's what you have me for.
> [11:14] My Friend: YES!! I can delete my 30 gigs and make you sing me the song I want to hear?
> [11:14] Me: Yes.  Or I can supply you with all of your storage needs.
> [11:14] My Friend: like a filing cabinet?
> [11:15] Me: Yes
> [11:15] Me: You can print off all of your data in binary and save in it a cabinet
> [11:16] My Friend: weak
> [11:16] My Friend: how much does that hold?
> [11:16] Me: Does what?
> [11:16] Me: A cabinet?
> [11:16] My Friend: fo sho
> [11:16] My Friend: is there like 60 gigs?
> [11:16] Me: Lemme calculate
> [11:17] My Friend: are you serious?
> [11:17] Me: Yes
> [11:17] My Friend: do it.
> [11:18] Me: Well, we can say that the average song is 4MB
> [11:18] My Friend: agreed
> [11:18] My Friend: unless it's a Skillet song..cause their like 7, 8MB
> [11:19] Me: 4MB = 33554432 bits
> [11:20] Me: One bit would be a 1 or 0
> [11:20] My Friend: DUDE
> [11:20] My Friend: I just finished my 30.5 GB file of 277 hip hop albums
> [11:20] Me: One printed page hold approx 6460 characters
> [11:22] Me: So one song would take 5194 pages
> [11:22] My Friend: so..for time's sake..we're looking at about a .4 gig file cabinet
> [11:23] Me: Doubtful
> [11:24] Me: Average paper is 24lb/ream or .0048" per sheet
> [11:26] Me: So, we're looking at about 25" of space needed for one song
> [11:27] Me: Looking at my file cabinet of average thickness, I would say that one drawer is about 18" deep
> [11:28] Me: And the average file cabinet has 4 drawers
> [11:28] Me: So we're talking 72" of space
> [11:29] Me: Or 2.89 songs per cabinet
> [11:29] Me: So one cabinet holds about 11.55MB of space
> [11:30] My Friend: lol, holy ****
> [11:30] Me: Or, about .01128GB
> [11:30] Me: Satisfied?
> [11:31] My Friend: what if I wanted 30 seconds of the songs
> [11:32] Me: Well, you'd have to put in some tabs
> [11:32] Me: that way you could just flip to your favorite part of the song
> [11:33] My Friend: good call


Rough and dirty calculations, but I think I got them all right.

By the way, this is supposed to be humorous.  That means no hate'n.


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## refresher

You have too much time on your hands. But interesting nonetheless.


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## Emperor_nero

That is very good.  And very funny! 
Nice work thank you, found it very interesting.


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## Tuffie

Haha I put "So one cabinet holds about 11.55MB of space" into my sig.

Kent.


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## INTELCRAZY

Hmm...Another way to show my clients the efficiency of UPGRADED computers


Nice dude


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## Tuffie

ROFL, is funny.

Kent.


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## Platinum

hahahaha, thats great. but seriously dude, take up another hobby, you have a lot of free time.


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## Impulse666

wow. just wow.


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## Cromewell

What if you used a smaller text size and a condensed font?


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## PohTayToez

Well then it would be hard to read and that wouldn't be any good.  No one wants to squint their eyes while listening to music.


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## monoman

Hehe nice work, I think i'll stick to using hard drives then...

..also ever though about getting a girl?


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## Rambo

Hahaha - that was pretty funny. Thanks for sharing! 

- Rambo.


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## frost02

first of all roflCOPTER... lol u do got to much time... but i appreciate this lesson.. second of all.. rofl at this dude =P



PohTayToez said:


> Well then it would be hard to read and that wouldn't be any good.  No one wants to squint their eyes while listening to music.


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## vonfeldt7

PohTayToez said:


> Well then it would be hard to read and that wouldn't be any good.  No one wants to squint their eyes while listening to music.



technically you're "reading' music..


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## Verve

well that raised my eyebrow


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## 99F

LOL wow


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## Burgerbob

Actually, my friends and I wasted an entire Chemistry period trying to figure out how long it would take to listen to 60GB of audio, say on an iPod Video. I think it calculated one and a half years of constant listening, or like twenty years if only four hours a day.


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## PohTayToez

Burgerbob said:


> Actually, my friends and I wasted an entire Chemistry period trying to figure out how long it would take to listen to 60GB of audio, say on an iPod Video. I think it calculated one and a half years of constant listening, or like twenty years if only four hours a day.



Average audio quality = 128kb/s

128kb/s * 1000b/kb * 1B/8b = 16,000B/s
60GB * 1024MB/GB * 1024KB/MB * 1024B/KB = 64424509440B
64424509440B / 16,000B/s = 4026531.84s
4026531.84s * 1min/60s * 1hr/60min * 1day/24hr = 46.60337 days


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## Burgerbob

PohTayToez said:


> Average audio quality = 128kb/s
> 
> 128kb/s * 1000b/kb * 1B/8b = 16,000B/s
> 60GB * 1024MB/GB * 1024KB/MB * 1024B/KB = 64424509440B
> 64424509440B / 16,000B/s = 4026531.84s
> 4026531.84s * 1min/60s * 1hr/60min * 1day/24hr = 46.60337 days



If you didnt stop listening. We calculated it by four hours a day.


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## PohTayToez

Burgerbob said:


> I think it calculated one and a half years of constant listening, or like twenty years if only four hours a day.





PohTayToez said:


> Average audio quality = 128kb/s
> 
> 128kb/s * 1000b/kb * 1B/8b = 16,000B/s
> 60GB * 1024MB/GB * 1024KB/MB * 1024B/KB = 64424509440B
> 64424509440B / 16,000B/s = 4026531.84s
> 4026531.84s * 1min/60s * 1hr/60min * 1day/24hr = 46.60337 days



46.60337 days = 0.1276 years ¬ 1.5 years

or

46.60337 days = 279.62022 days @ 4 hours/day = 0.766 years ¬ 20 years




Burgerbob said:


> If you didnt stop listening. We calculated it by four hours a day.



I don't see how that changes my answer.


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## CopperKid

the funny thing is , is that i was stumbling and i found this thread


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## PohTayToez

I just stuck this on stumbleupon like 12 hours ago, and we were up to over 400 guests looking at this thread just a few minutes ago.


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## nexolus

hahahaha this made me lol on my desk


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## porterjw

I was thinking WTF until about 3/4 way down, then I realized what it was and now my wife just callled me a dork for laughing


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## PohTayToez

1.) Go here: http://www.computerforum.com/online.php

2.) Go to bottom of page.

3.) Change 'Display' to "Guests".

4.) Change 'Per Page' to 200, the maximum.

5.) Press "Display". 

6.) Stare in awe.


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## porterjw

^ Hahaha!


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## brian

wait. may just be a slow day. but is this right
4MB = 33554432 bits
i thought it is, 4mb=4,000kb=4,000,000bytes=32,000,000?


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## PohTayToez

4MB * (1024kB/MB) * (1024B/kB) * (8B/b) = 33554432 bits

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=4MB+to+bits&btnG=Search


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## brian

o yeah for got that 24.


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## Sacrinyellow5

Side note: I have more hip hop albums than your friend.  I always wondered how much weight can a harddrive hold.  Like if you physically weighed all the content that it was storing. DVDs CDs photos ... Stuff like that.


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## MadViolinist

Ok, let's see if I can figure this out.
One Page = 6460 characters
1 Gigabyte (GB) = 1,073,741,824 Byte
Therefore One Gigabyte = 1,073,741,824/6460 = 166213.90464396284829721362229102 pages.
So therefore, hard drives of the following volumes would require this many pages:

10GB = 1662140 pages
30GB = 4986418 Pages
80GB = 13297113 Pages
120GB = 19945669 Pages
160GB = 26594225 Pages
250GB = 41553477 Pages
1TB = 170203038 Pages

Now, One page = 0.16 ounces [Source]

Therefore:

10GB weighs 265942.4 ounces, or 16621.4 pounds (Ok, now that's just freaky) (7 539kg)
30GB = 49 864.18 pounds (22 618kg)
80GB = 132971.13 pounds (60 314kg)
120GB = 199456.69 pounds (90 472kg)
160GB = 265942.25 pounds (120 629kg)
250GB = 415534.77 Pounds (188 483kg)
1TB = 1702030.38 pounds (772 027kg)

Oh, and the cost of sending 1TB from New York to San Francisco: $111849 (consisting of 24314 letters each weighing 70 pounds) or $4236888.75 if you want it Express Mail overnight.


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## apj101

Cromewell said:


> What if you used a smaller text size and a condensed font?


Exactly, and why are we assuming we have to use binary? if we are talking about text we could convert the binary into any textual represention, we could use tertiary etc.
or why not just use the actual number that the binary represent? so i can squeeze binary 11111111 into 255, increasing capacity by 266%. 
Then if we bring on board alpha numeric letters we can go crazy with the size
so by adding one letter to make an 8 bit block into a 9 bit, so 11111111[x] were [x] can be any letter. I cant even do the math but that gives a massive increase in space alone (like 100x)

Heck why even bother with the first 8 bits in binary, and why bother limiting to 24 alpha chars, there are well over a hundred possible chars in thousands of possible fonts, plus the underline, subscript, strike out, double strick out, italics (and combinations thereof). AND THEN we can start using different colours for each character of which there are thousands of colours. There must be over a 10,000,000 possible district characters that could occupy one character space on a sheet off paper. and then we could start looking a combinations of these!!. In short you could probably compact an entire song into about 1 line (maybe just a few chars) under this system, albeit the system would be complex.

Just because computers can only read in binary doesn't mean the human eye can. You'd just have to run a converter across it (much like we do when we convert a programming language into (ultimately binary)


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## brian

wow what ever happened to losing you imagination when you mature. that is well thought out. i here by vote we make apj do this project and send us a copy of it  o and the converter


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## porterjw

<reads post #32>

...

<head explodes>


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## PohTayToez

apj101 said:


> Exactly, and why are we assuming we have to use binary? if we are talking about text we could convert the binary into any textual represention, we could use tertiary etc.
> or why not just use the actual number that the binary represent? so i can squeeze binary 11111111 into 255, increasing capacity by 266%.
> Then if we bring on board alpha numeric letters we can go crazy with the size
> so by adding one letter to make an 8 bit block into a 9 bit, so 11111111[x] were [x] can be any letter. I cant even do the math but that gives a massive increase in space alone (like 100x)
> 
> Heck why even bother with the first 8 bits in binary, and why bother limiting to 24 alpha chars, there are well over a hundred possible chars in thousands of possible fonts, plus the underline, subscript, strike out, double strick out, italics (and combinations thereof). AND THEN we can start using different colours for each character of which there are thousands of colours. There must be over a 10,000,000 possible district characters that could occupy one character space on a sheet off paper. and then we could start looking a combinations of these!!. In short you could probably compact an entire song into about 1 line (maybe just a few chars) under this system, albeit the system would be complex.
> 
> Just because computers can only read in binary doesn't mean the human eye can. You'd just have to run a converter across it (much like we do when we convert a programming language into (ultimately binary)




Well of course there are infinite ways in which you could store more information... you could use colored microscopic dots, as small as you could possibly make them, with each color representing a different value, and be able to store an astronomical amount of information on each sheet of paper, but that never was the point of the example.  The point was to see how much you could store on printed paper at using average text in the same format as a hard drive... binary data.


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## HerbCSO

PohTayToez said:


> Well of course there are infinite ways in which you could store more information... you could use colored microscopic dots, as small as you could possibly make them, with each color representing a different value, and be able to store an astronomical amount of information on each sheet of paper...



Funny you should mention that - did you ever see this:

http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/index.cfm?newsID=7424

256GB per page! ;] Well, OK, it probably actually works out to something closer to 2.5MB per page, but still a significant improvement.


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## The_Beast

too much time on your hand


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## hibby07

*Dude, your friend seems cool*

Man, your friend sounds really hot..anyway I can get his number?


Lol..T-rain..hit me up tomorrow.


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## hibby07

I killed teh thread


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## PohTayToez

Not to beat a dead horse, but I just StumbledUpon this:
http://www.militantplatypus.com/blog/archives/4101

Kinda freaked me out.


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## cturtle

I've come from the land of Stumble to revive this thread.


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## Stoic Sentinel

cturtle said:


> I've come from the land of Stumble to revive this thread.



Don't do that again... srly.


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## ganzey

lol, the OP is pretty cool though. but seriously, dont bump old threads


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## Gooberman

what??!?!?


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## MacBook

roddicklevit said:


> Hi folks,
> 
> Just like a stress-buster kinda thing.. nice have these .. in the mids of a busy day to refresh ourselves.. May I pose you one thing to have security fro my PC.. in wireless applications..
> 
> Regards,
> Roddick.
> 
> .





Gooberman said:


> what??!?!?


He's a spammer.


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## PohTayToez

ganzey said:


> lol, the OP is pretty cool though. but seriously, dont bump old threads



Except for seriously awesome threads that got about 80K views within a few hours and slowed the forums down to a crawl.


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## ganzey

holy shit!!! why so many veiws?


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## PohTayToez

ganzey said:


> holy shit!!! why so many veiws?



I posted it on StumbleUpon, and I believe it was on their featured page for a bit.


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## ganzey

PohTayToez said:


> I posted it on StumbleUpon, and I believe it was on their featured page for a bit.



ahh


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## Stoic Sentinel

ganzey said:


> holy shit!!! why so many veiws?



I lol'd:



> Views: 101,945


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## CrayonMuncher

it annoys me when spammers bump old threads but i glad i got to read what the op put its funny


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## love.r3r3

*Not by Accident*

I'm in awe..because, I did NOT stumble upon this thread, I actually did a web search because I was tasked to measure the cost effectiveness of an electronic filing system versus a traditional hard copy filing system.

Being the number loving, over-achieving nerd that I am, I decided to find out how many documents/pages can a standard 5 drawer filing cabinet hold and compare that to how much space on our network drives that would occupy.

Needless to say, thanks for jumpstarting for me... but what.. three (3) years in advanced?


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## fastdude

Haha, epic thread bump 
very interesting. Apparently this thread has 110k views!?


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## Kurinto

So would that be about 92.4 Mb in hex?


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## mihir

Print both sides and instead of binary use hex coz u wont be storing charge just printing so convert the binary to hex or use another base like a 1 million base then one page and you are done.


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## Egon

Now what about if we use both back and front of the pages? DOUBLE OUR SPACE!


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