I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by "big data". I'm full of hope that they don't mean "big storage" or "big hard drives filled with big bytes".

The data by it self does not have any value. Maybe some need to store data just for legal purposes. If ever sued they can show the records. The value comes from summarizing the data into something that you can use it for making decisions. So my hope is that media are really saying: "there will be a lot of data to analyze - start practicing now."