Prices of disk drives and other media were dropping slowly and steadily, but it was nothing to write home about. In addition, the technology was traveling along a predictable curve, with volume and storage density also steadily increasing. There was a blip when Windows came out, but again the problem was manageable and, so most people thought, well understood. That's all changed. The use of multimedia on PCs began to increase at a startling rate.
Nothing sucks up disk space faster than video and audio files.
In the MIS shop, the rapid growth of the Internet, especially the World Wide Web, caused existing network servers to become overloaded much faster than anticipated. New applications, such as media and video servers, require huge disk farms and staggering bandwidth. Fortunately, the companies that support the mass storage industry have stepped up to the plate. Prices of SCSI drives have dropped. The interface technology has been evolving.