For many years, hard disk drives were large, cumbersome devices, more suited to use in the protected environment of a data center or large office than in a harsh industrial environment (due to their delicacy), or small office or home (due to their size, cost, and power consumption). Before the early 1980s, most hard disk drives had 8-inch (actually, 210 – 195 mm) or 14-inch platters, required an equipment rack or a large amount of floor space (especially the large removable-media drives, which were frequently comparable in size to washing machines), and in many cases needed high-current and/or three-phase power hookups due to the large motors they used. Because of this, hard disk drives were not commonly used with microcomputers until after 1980, when Seagate Technology introduced the ST-506, the first 5.25-inch hard drives, with a formatted capacity of 5 megabytes.
1956:
IBM 305 RAMAC
Introduced in 1956, the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Memory Accounting System) was an electronic general purpose data processing machine that maintained business records on a real-time basis. The 305 RAMAC was one of the last vacuum tube systems designed by IBM, and more than 1,000 of them were built before production ended in 1961. more info
1963:
IBM 1311 Disk Storage Drive
The 1311 used the IBM Disk Pack (later designated the IBM 1316 ), an interchangeable package containing six 14-inch-diameter disks in a four-inch stack, weighing 10 pounds (seen above in the man’s left hand). Each disk surface contained 20 pie-shaped regions. Sectors were segments of track lying within a region, and were the smallest addressable unit, with a capacity of 100 characters. Average access time to any sector was 250 milliseconds, which could be reduced to 150 milliseconds with an optional direct-seek feature. The disks were rotated at 1500 rpm, tracks (50 to the inch) were recorded at up to 1025 bits per inch, and the usual head-to-surface spacing was 125 microinches. The ten recording surfaces provided in normal usage a storage capacity of 2 million characters, the equivalent of approximately 25,000 punched cards or a fifth of a reel of magnetic tape. more info
1973:
IBM 3340 Direct Access Storage Facility
Following a development effort that began in the summer of 1969, the IBM 3340 disk unit was introduced in March 1973 with an advanced disk technology known as “Winchester.”* The first 3340 shipments to customers began in November 1973.
The 3340 featured a smaller, lighter read/write head that could ride closer to the disk surface — on an air film 18 millionths of an inch thick — with a load of less than 20 grams. The Winchester disk file’s low-cost head-slider structure made it feasible to use two heads per surface, cutting the stroke length in half. The disks, the disk spindle and bearings, the carriage and the head-arm assemblies were incorporated into a removable sealed cartridge called the IBM 3348 Data Module. A track density of 300 tracks per inch and an access time of 25 milliseconds were achieved. more info
1979:
IBM 3370 Direct Access Storage Device
The IBM 3370 of 1979 introduced thin-film head technology to large disk files. Work on thin-film head structures was started in IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., in the late-1960s.
The 3370 direct access storage device (DASD) was an advanced fixed-media disk unit that initially provided 571.3 megabytes of auxiliary storage for IBM’s 4331 and 4341 processors and the IBM System/38 midrange computer. Up to four 3370 devices could be attached to any System/38 Model 5 for an additional 2,285.5 megabytes of auxiliary storage. more info
1980:
Seagate ST 506
The ST-506 was the first 5.25 inch hard disk drive. Introduced in 1980[1] by Seagate Technology (then Shugart Technology), it stored up to 5 megabytes after formatting. The similar (but more expensive) 10 MB ST-412 was introduced in late 1981. Both used MFM encoding (already widely used in disk drives). A subsequent extension of the ST-412 used RLL for a 50% boost in capacity and bit rate.
The ST-506 was interfaced to a computer system using a disk controller. The ST-506 interface was derived from the Shugart Associates SA1000 interface. which was in turn based upon the floppy disk drive interface thereby making disk controller design relatively easy. more info (photo from maximumpc)
1980:
IBM 3380
The world’s first gigabyte-capacity disk drive, the IBM 3380, was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (about 250 kg), and had a price tag of $40,000. more info
IBM:
When the IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) was rolled out in June 1980, it gave customers the ability to store up to 2.52 billion characters of information, almost four times the amount of previous IBM storage devices. For users that needed rapid access to large amounts of stored information, the 3380 transferred data at three million characters a second, more than twice the rate of the IBM 3350. Design innovations improved the average time to locate information from 25 to 16 thousandths of a second. New film head technology allowed data to be read and written at three million characters a second — two and a half times the previous rate.
1981:
Western Digital WD1010 (ST 506 Hard Disk Controller )
Western Digital announces the first single-chip Winchester hard drive controller (WD1010).
1983:
Rodime RO352 (10MB)
Rodime releases the first 3.5-inch hard drive; the RO352 includes two platters and stores 10MB.
1991:
IBM 0663 Corsair
IBM introduces the 0663 Corsair, the first disk drive with thin film magnetoresistive (MR) heads. It has eight 3.5-inch platters and stores 1GB. (The MR head was first introduced on an IBM tape drive in 1984.)
1992:
Seagate Barracuda
Seagate is first to market with a 7200rpm hard drive, the 2.1GB Barracuda.
1995:
SSD (M-Systems)
In 1995 M-Systems introduced flash-based solid-state drives. (SanDisk acquired M-Systems in November 2006.) Since then, SSDs have been used successfully as hard disk drive replacements by the military and aerospace industries, as well as other mission-critical applications. These applications require the exceptional mean time between failures (MTBF) rates that solid-state drives achieve, by virtue of their ability to withstand extreme shock, vibration and temperature ranges.
In 2008 low end netbooks appeared with SSDs. In 2009 SSDs began to appear in laptops.
1996:
Seagate Cheetah
Seagate introduces its Cheetah family, the first 10,000-rpm hard drives.
I like the ST-506 tshirt
“IBM 305 RAMAC” i want this one :p