The Hard Drive Turns 50
Today, the hard drive is found everywhere--from the PCs we use daily to MP3 players and memory keys so small you can toss them in your pocket and forget you're carrying around a hard drive. But when the hard drive was first introduced on September 13, 1956, it required a humongous housing and 50 24-inch platters to store 1/2400 as much data as can be fit on today's largest capacity 1-inch hard drives.
Back then, the small team at IBM's San Jose-based lab was seeking a way to replace tape with a storage mechanism that allowed for more-efficient random access to data. The question was, how to bring random-access storage to business computing?
Enter the RAMAC, 1956
IBM's answer to this quandary was the Random Access Method of Accounting and Control, dubbed the RAMAC for expediency. The device's name is a direct reflection of the need for such capabilities in the enterprise. Led by project leader Rey Johnson, IBM's San Jose lab brought the RAMAC 305 to market
......
Fast Forward: 50 Years Later
The disk drive has come amazingly far since its introduction: "Today, on 2.5-inch platters we have 15,000 times the capacity of the original IBM RAMAC," says Seagate Technology Chief Operating Officer Dave Wickersham.
Wickersham notes that the advancement is startling when compared to the pace of other industries: "In the auto industry, to keep that same pace, they'd have gone from fitting five people in the car in 1956, to fitting 160,000 people in that car; or, from getting 25 miles per gallon to 62,500 miles per gallon."
Today we have drives that cover a range of sizes (the smallest is Toshiba's 0.85-inch drive, initially introduced in 2GB and 4GB capacities) and specialties. Vendors offer drives optimized for uses in servers, desktops, notebooks, digital video recorders, music players, and more; and you'll find hard drives in cars, planes, and a wealth of other commercial and military applications.
Prices have dropped dramatically. The RAMAC 305's cost per megabyte was approximately $10,000--that's about $70,000 in today's value. Today, a typical desktop hard drive can deliver that same megabyte for 3/100 of a cent.
Hard Drives: Future Watch
Hard drives have been indispensable to our computer use for about the last 20 years. Today, hard drives are increasingly indispensable in other ways. "The whole lifestyle has changed--content is king, and we're carrying data wherever we go. The hard disk drive is the enabler of this," says Seagate's Wickersham. "We have 20 disk drives in our home--and there are four of us," he continues.
Hard drives are in everything from cell phones and digital audio players to set-top box video recorders. That trend will grow, according to industry experts--and provide a fertile new opportunity for the proliferation of high-capacity, hard drive-based storage.
The Hard Drive Turns 50 - Yahoo! News
Just snippets.. its better for you to head over to the site and have a read
Today, the hard drive is found everywhere--from the PCs we use daily to MP3 players and memory keys so small you can toss them in your pocket and forget you're carrying around a hard drive. But when the hard drive was first introduced on September 13, 1956, it required a humongous housing and 50 24-inch platters to store 1/2400 as much data as can be fit on today's largest capacity 1-inch hard drives.
Back then, the small team at IBM's San Jose-based lab was seeking a way to replace tape with a storage mechanism that allowed for more-efficient random access to data. The question was, how to bring random-access storage to business computing?
Enter the RAMAC, 1956
IBM's answer to this quandary was the Random Access Method of Accounting and Control, dubbed the RAMAC for expediency. The device's name is a direct reflection of the need for such capabilities in the enterprise. Led by project leader Rey Johnson, IBM's San Jose lab brought the RAMAC 305 to market
......
Fast Forward: 50 Years Later
The disk drive has come amazingly far since its introduction: "Today, on 2.5-inch platters we have 15,000 times the capacity of the original IBM RAMAC," says Seagate Technology Chief Operating Officer Dave Wickersham.
Wickersham notes that the advancement is startling when compared to the pace of other industries: "In the auto industry, to keep that same pace, they'd have gone from fitting five people in the car in 1956, to fitting 160,000 people in that car; or, from getting 25 miles per gallon to 62,500 miles per gallon."
Today we have drives that cover a range of sizes (the smallest is Toshiba's 0.85-inch drive, initially introduced in 2GB and 4GB capacities) and specialties. Vendors offer drives optimized for uses in servers, desktops, notebooks, digital video recorders, music players, and more; and you'll find hard drives in cars, planes, and a wealth of other commercial and military applications.
Prices have dropped dramatically. The RAMAC 305's cost per megabyte was approximately $10,000--that's about $70,000 in today's value. Today, a typical desktop hard drive can deliver that same megabyte for 3/100 of a cent.
Hard Drives: Future Watch
Hard drives have been indispensable to our computer use for about the last 20 years. Today, hard drives are increasingly indispensable in other ways. "The whole lifestyle has changed--content is king, and we're carrying data wherever we go. The hard disk drive is the enabler of this," says Seagate's Wickersham. "We have 20 disk drives in our home--and there are four of us," he continues.
Hard drives are in everything from cell phones and digital audio players to set-top box video recorders. That trend will grow, according to industry experts--and provide a fertile new opportunity for the proliferation of high-capacity, hard drive-based storage.
The Hard Drive Turns 50 - Yahoo! News
Just snippets.. its better for you to head over to the site and have a read
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