Fifty years ago, all of us at Engadget weren't even a glimmer in our mothers' eyes -- in fact, now that we think about it probably most of our parents hadn't even met yet. By that logic, it's hard for us to imagine a world without
hard drives, which were born 50 years ago today, back on September 13, 1956. On that fateful day
IBM created the original -- called the RAMAC 305 -- which held around 5 MB of data at the cost of $10,000 per megabyte, and was the size of two refrigerators. By 1980, Big Blue had one-upped itself with the introduction of the first one gigabyte hard drive, which was half the physical size, weighed 550 pounds, and cost only $40,000. Flash forward to 2006, where the fingernail-size microSD card kicking around in our cell phones and cameras these days (albeit not a hard drive) now costs about $10 per gigabyte -- gotta love the march of technology. By that logic, we should have a new type of
terabyte storage device to carry around by about 2056, probably embedded in our bodies and hard-wired to our brains.
posted Sep 13th 2006 11:59PM
Flash forward to 2006, where the fingernail-size microSD card kicking around in our cell phones and cameras these days (albeit not a hard drive) now costs about $10 per gigabyte
---
They are that cheap now?
In any case, happy birthday HD?
sweet... im 16 right now... i cant wait till im 60, so i can transfer my mind to a Humanoid hard drive...
happy birthday Hard Drive
Happy B-Day Hard drive!
Happy Birthday HD!
Also, Tupac "died" today.
My grandpa worked for IBM 40 or 50 years ago...
I paid $50 a gig for my 2gig micro sd card
Ach-hum,
IBM RAMAC 305, the computer that introduced disk storage technology to the world on September 4, 1956. The IBM 355 was announced on September 14, 1956. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_IBM_disk_storage
u cant really compare hd with flash memory, u can get 80 gig hd for 40-50 bucks, which equates to ~$.50 per gig
Kenno, even Wikipedia doesn't advocate referencing Wikipedia
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1328/wikipedia-founder-discourages-academic-use-of-his-creation
You got that one right. I take it back. This is a better source. So, never mind...
"Invented by IBM researchers in San Jose, Calif., and unveiled to customers on September 13, 1956, the first commercial disk drive, called RAMAC,"
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/photos.wss?topic=5
Around 1979, Radio Shack started selling a hard drive that held 5MB and sold for $5000.
Today, a 300GB hard drive can be had for $80 ($0.27 per GB). That is 60 times more storage space for about 1.6% of the cost. Of course if you need LOTS of storage space, 750GB drives can now be had for about $330.
Great ... when I turn 80 I won't forget to clean my dentures and take out the rubbish, all thanks to my new terrabyte implant that will remeber. Bummer, I'll have to be more creative in coming up with excuses as to why I didn't do something. Oh well ...
I wonder what the size of the HDD that controlled the moon landing was?
Speak for your self, some of us (me for example) remember using 8" floppies, and a hard drive was like a super-model, you saw pictures of them but could only dream of having your own.
Anyone know how fast these drives were? Today we have the 10,000 RPM drives...
Today we have at least 15,000 RPM drives...
An extra tid-bit of Hard Drive History -
These drives were large rotating drums and the frames would have to be bolted to the floor, due to the forces created by such a heavy object spinning so quickly. It was important to remember to install the drives next to a wall and to make sure the drum rotated towards the wall -- that way if the bolts failed the drive would throw itself into the wall and not into the middle of the room.
Addendum - I posted the above to another story and, being the Internet, got a smart ass reply concerning how one "points" a rotating drum towards the wall. A rotating drum has centrifugal force and it was important to make sure that said force would throw the drive into the wall, not the middle of the room (where people sometimes stand).
snesgirl: Here, you can build your own. No hard drive needed. http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/
screw a tb in my body i want a pb storage medium they have holographic media clocking in at 1.6tb add concentric lasers to the mix that increase densities of optical media by 40x, and your already hitting 64tb on one disc, and that can be done by the end of next year ... yea i want a pb and how!!!
I remember my dad working with something like that man hot big and a pain in the ass