Hard drives turn 50 today!

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.

[tekdroid @ Sep 14th 2006 12:14AM]

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?

[Dario @ Sep 14th 2006 12:45AM]

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

[brink668 @ Sep 14th 2006 12:18AM]

Happy B-Day Hard drive!

[Xaveir @ Sep 14th 2006 12:34AM]

Happy Birthday HD!

Also, Tupac "died" today.

[daniel @ Sep 14th 2006 12:47AM]

My grandpa worked for IBM 40 or 50 years ago...

[oven @ Sep 14th 2006 12:49AM]

I paid $50 a gig for my 2gig micro sd card

[Kenno @ Sep 14th 2006 12:54AM]

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

[sk @ Sep 14th 2006 1:08AM]

u cant really compare hd with flash memory, u can get 80 gig hd for 40-50 bucks, which equates to ~$.50 per gig

[Mark @ Sep 14th 2006 1:05AM]

Kenno, even Wikipedia doesn't advocate referencing Wikipedia

http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/1328/wikipedia-founder-discourages-academic-use-of-his-creation

[Kenno @ Sep 14th 2006 1:07AM]

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

[Dagwood @ Sep 14th 2006 1:55AM]

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.

[Marek @ Sep 14th 2006 4:03AM]

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 ...

[snesgirl @ Sep 14th 2006 5:34AM]

I wonder what the size of the HDD that controlled the moon landing was?

[The Steven @ Sep 14th 2006 2:18PM]

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.

[gmorphis @ Sep 14th 2006 9:10AM]

Anyone know how fast these drives were? Today we have the 10,000 RPM drives...

[stallen @ Sep 14th 2006 11:06AM]

Today we have at least 15,000 RPM drives...

[Evil Closet Monkey @ Sep 14th 2006 11:03AM]

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).

[macona @ Sep 14th 2006 1:21PM]

snesgirl: Here, you can build your own. No hard drive needed. http://klabs.org/history/build_agc/

[Karn Eggie @ Sep 14th 2006 7:09PM]

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!!!

[Kris @ Sep 15th 2006 4:06AM]

I remember my dad working with something like that man hot big and a pain in the ass