People have access to more and more storage. According to researchers, the world’ storage capacity is estimated at 295 Exabytes.

A study released by the University of Southern California, and published in Science Express has revealed that the amount of storage the world’ population has used between 1986 and 2007 equaled about 1.2 billion hard drives, according to BBC News. An Exabyte is about a billion Gigabytes, and the information collected on CDs stacked up, would be able to reach the moon, according to the researchers.

“If we were to take all that information and store it in books, we could cover the entire area of the US or China in 13 layers of books,” said Dr. Martin Hilbert of the University of Southern California.

Humans are in need of more and more data storage capacity averaging a 23 percent increase per annum according to PCmag. The study looked at 60 digital and analog technologies.

“This is the first study to quantify humankind’s ability to handle information and how it has changed in the last two decades…The world’s technological information-processing capacities are growing at exponential rates,” said the study’s lead author Martin Hilbert, as relayed by Eweek.

The study covered a period known as the ‘digital revolution.’ The study showed that in 1986, vinyl records represented 14 percent of storage, while audio cassettes stored 12 percent of information, according to Eweek. By the year 2000, 74 percent of information stored was in an analog format such as video cassettes. By 2004, 94 percent of information went digital, according to BBC News. Most of the increase in storage has been in the general computing business, and companies have been quick to respond with computing storage rising 58 percent per year, says Cnet’s Stephen Shankland.   Learn more about external storage options for your computers.