The History Of Hard Drives

This article is dedicated to normal hard disks, Not solid state drive.

We will upload similar blogs on RAM, Processor’s, Megapixels on phone cameras’, Screen resolution, SSD Hard Drives and SD/Micro SD cards, Wifi and 4g speeds, Battery Life, Connectivity and Old Apple vs New Apple.

When it comes to hard drives, things have moved pretty quick In the last 30 years.

In 1985 the average cost for 1GB of storage was £50,000. If you wanted to burn a blue-ray on to a hard drive in 1985, you’re looking at a million pounds per film. Shocking really.

15 years later it was down to £300 for a blue-ray. Today just 30p. If things keep moving at the same pace, in 15 years you could theoretically have 20 blue-rays worth of data for a penny. That’s 2p a TB.

The first hard disk drive 60 odd years ago made by IBM at the San Jose California laboratory.

The IBM 305 RAMAC was the first commercial computer that used a moving-head hard disk drive.

RAMAC stood for “Random Access Method of Accounting and Control”

It was a vacuum tube computer and weighed over a ton.

In today’s money it leased for around $30,000 a month. Around $1.5million to buy. It holds 3.75MB.

Some old time adverts on what people would pay for storage space. When you factor in inflation, its crazy how quickly technology has developed. These are from the 70’s and 80’s

Here are some graphs on how much a GB cost over the years.

1980– £300,000

1985– £60,000

1990– £6,000

1995– £600

2000– £6

2005– 75p

2010– 6p

2013– 3p

2015– 1p

Old School Hard Drives

Once worth hundreds, now worth pennies.

Timeline of events

1956: IBM ships the first hard drive the RAMAC 305 system. It holds 3.75MB

1963: IBM comes up with the 1311. The first removable HD with a wopping 2.6MB.

1970: Western Digital is founded.

1973: IBM announces the 3340, the first modern “Winchester” HD.

1978: The first Raid technology patent is filled.

1979: Seagate is founded.

1980: IBM reveals the first gigabyte HD. The size of a fridge, weighs 550 pounds and costs $40,000

1980: Seagate releases the first 5.25-inch hard disk.

1983: Rodime releases the first 3.5-inch hard drive, the RO352. 10MB.

1984: WD makes the first Winchester HD controller card for IBM and sets an industry standard.

1985: Control Data, Compaq and Western Digital collaborate to develop 40-pin IDE interface.

1986: The official SCSI spec is released and Apple’s Mac Plus is one of the first computers to use it.

1988: Prairie Tek releases the 220. The first 2.5-inch HD for the growing notebook market. 20MB

1988: Connor introduces the first 1-inch high 3.5-inch hard drive, still a common form factor.

1990: Western Digital introduces its first 3.5-inch Caviar IDE hard drive.

1991: IBM reveals the 0663 Corsair. The first disk drive with think magnetoresistive heads. 1GB

1992: Seagate comes out with the first shock-sensing 2.5-inch hard drive.

1992: Seagate markets the Barracuda. The first 7200-revolutions per min HD. 2.1GB.

1994: WD develops Enhanced IDE

1996: IBM stores 1 billion bits per square inch on a platter.

1996: Seagate introduces the Cheetah family, the first 10,000-RPM hard disks.

1997: IBM introduces giant magneto resistive heads, the Deskstar. 16.8GB

1998: IBM announces the Microdrive, the smallest HD to date. 340MB on a single 1” platter.

2000: Maxtor buys Quantum’s HD business. Maxtor now world’s biggest hard drive manufacturer.

2000: Seagate produces the first 15,000-RPM hard drive. The Cheetah X15.

2002: Seagate releases the Barracuda ATA v Serial ATA hard drive

2003: IBM sells its Data Storage Division to Hitachi, thus ending it’s involvement in the HD industry.

2003: Western Digital introduces the first 10,000-RPM SATA hard drive. The raptor 37GB#

2004: The first 0.85-inch hard drive. Toshiba’s MK2001MTN. On a single platter 2GB

2005: Toshiba reveals the MK4007 GAL. The first HD using perpendicular magnetic recording. 40GB

2006: Seagate completes the accusation of Maxtor.

2006: Seagate Momentus 5400.3 notebook HD is the first 2.5” model to use perpendicular magnetic recording which boosts capacity up to 160GB.

2006: Seagate releases the Barracuda 7200.10. The largest HD to date. 750GB

2006: Cornice and Seagate each announce a 1” hard disks. 12GB

2007: First 1TB hard drive

2008: First 1.5TB hard drive

2009: First 2TB hard drive

2010: First 3TB hard drive

2010: First HD manufactured using the Advanced Format of 4,096 bytes a block instead of 512.

2011: First 4.0 TB hard drive.

2011: Floods hit many HD factories. Predictions of a worldwide shortage cause prices to double.

2012: Western Digital announce the first 2.5”, 5mm thick and the first 2.5” 7mm with 2 platters.

2012: TDK demonstrates 2TB on a single 3.5” platter.

2013: Seagate announces it will ship 5TB HD’s using shingled magnetic recording.

2014: Seagate introduces 6TB hard drives that don’t use helium, bring down costs.

2014: Seagate ships the first 8TB hard drive.

2015: in June HGST ships Ultrastar Archive HA SMR HDD. The world’s first 10TB HDD

We will let you imagine how much space and cost/TB will be available in the next 30 years.