History of Hard Disk Drives

History of Hard disk Drives

IBM in 1953 recognized the immediate application for what it termed a "Random Access File" having high capacity, rapid random access at a relatively low cost. After considering several alternative technologies such as wire matrices, rod arrays, drums, drum arrays, etc., the engineers at IBM San Jose invented the disk drive. The disk drive created a new level in the computer data hierarchy, then termed Random Access Storage but today known as secondary storage, less expensive and slower than main memory (then typically drums) but faster and more expensive than tape drives.

The commercial usage of hard disk drives began in 1956 with the shipment of an IBM 305 RAMAC system including IBM Model 350 disk storage.

Compared to modern disk drives, early hard disk drives were large, sensitive and cumbersome devices, more suited to use in the protected environment of a data center than in factories, offices or homes where they are found today. Disk media diameter was nominally 14 or 8 inches and were typically mounted in standalone boxes (resembling washing machines or even pizza ovens) or large equipment rack enclosures. Individual drives often required high-current ac power due to the large motors they required to turn the large disks. 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 disk drive.

The capacity of hard drives has grown exponentially over time. With early personal computers, a drive with a 20 megabyte capacity was considered large. During the mid-1990s the typical hard disk drive for a PC had a capacity of about 1 GB. As of July 2010, desktop hard disk drives typically have a capacity of 500 to 1000 gigabytes, while the largest-capacity drives are 3 terabytes.

1950s - 1970s

The IBM 350 Disk File, invented by Reynold Johnson, was introduced in 1956 with the IBM 305 RAMAC computer. This drive had fifty 24 inch platters, with a total capacity of five million characters.A single head assembly having two heads was used for access to all the platters, making the average access time very slow (just under 1 second).

The IBM 1301 Disk Storage Unit, announced in 1961, introduced the usage of a head for each data surface with the heads having self acting air bearings (flying heads).

Also in 1961, Bryant Computer Products introduced its 4000 series disk drives. These massive units stood 52 inches (1.3 m) tall, 70 inches (1.8 m) wide, and had up to 26 platters, each 39 inches (0.99 m) in diameter, rotating at up to 1200 rpm. Access times were from 50 to 205 ms. The drive's total capacity, depending on the number of platters installed, was up to 205,377,600 bytes, or 196 MiB.

The first disk drive to use removable media was the IBM 1311 drive, which used the IBM 1316 disk pack to store two million characters.

In 1973, IBM introduced the IBM 3340 "Winchester" disk drive, the first significant commercial use of low mass and low load heads with lubricated media. All modern disk drives now use this technology and/or derivatives thereof. Project head Kenneth Haughton named it after the Winchester 30-30 rifle because it was planned to have two 30 MB spindles; however, the actual product shipped with two spindles for data modules of either 35 MB or 70 MB.[10]

Also in 1973, Control Data Corporation introduced the first of its series of SMD disk drives using conventional disk pack technology. The SMD family became the predominant disk drive in the minicomputer market into the 1980s.

1980s, the PC era

As the 1980s began, hard disk drives were a rare and very expensive additional feature on personal computers (PCs); however by the late '80s, hard disk drives were standard on all but the cheapest PC.

Most hard disk drives in the early 1980s were sold to PC end users as an add on subsystem, not under the drive manufacturer's name but by Systems Integrators such as the Corvus Disk System or the systems manufacturer such as the Apple ProFile. The IBM PC/XT in 1983 included an internal standard 10MB hard disk drive, and soon thereafter internal hard disk drives proliferated on personal computers.

External hard disk drives remained popular for much longer on the Apple Macintosh. Every Mac made between 1986 and 1998 has a SCSI port on the back, making external expansion easy; also, "toaster" Compact Macs did not have easily accessible hard drive bays (or, in the case of the Mac Plus, any hard drive bay at all), so on those models, external SCSI disks were the only reasonable option.

Timeline

" 1956 - IBM 350, first commercial disk drive, 5 million characters

" 1961 - IBM 1301 Disk Storage Unit introduced with one head per surface and aerodynamic flying heads, 28 million characters per module

" 1962 - IBM 1311 introduced removable disk packs containing 6 disks, storing 2 million characters per pack

" 1964 - IBM 2311 with 7.25 megabytes per disk pack

" 1964 - IBM 2310 removable cartridge disk drive with 1.02 MB on one disk

" 1965 - IBM 2314 with 11 disks and 29 MB per disk pack

" 1968 - Memorex is first to ship an IBM-plug-compatible disk drive

" 1970 - IBM 3330 Merlin, introduced error correction, 100 MB per disk pack

" 1973 - IBM 3340 Winchester introduced removable sealed disk packs that included head and arm assembly, 35 or 70 MB per pack

" 1973 - CDC SMD announced and shipped, 40 MB disk pack

" 1979 - IBM 3370 introduced thin film heads, 571 MB, non-removable

" 1980 - 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, 2.52 GB

" 1980 - ST-506 first 5 1/4 inch drive released with capacity of 5 megabytes, cost $1500

" 1986 - Standardization of SCSI

" 1989 - Jimmy Zhu and H. Neal Bertram from UCSD proposed exchange decoupled granular microstructure for thin film disk storage media, still used today.

" 1991 - 2.5-inch 100 megabyte hard drive