It took 51 years before hard disk drives arrived at the size of 1TB (terabyte, for example, 1,000GB). It occurred in 2007. In 2009, the main hard drive with 2 TB of capacity showed up. So while it required 51 years to arrive at the primary terabyte, it only needed two years to come at the second.
Quick forward 10 years, and in 2019, the biggest industrially accessible HDDs can store essentially 15TB of information. The universe of SSDs offers significantly more space of essentially 100TB.
This article glances back at how hard disk drives have developed since they initially burst onto the scene in 1956. Over the long run, we will inspect the extreme changes for 3 distinct parts of HDDs: size, extra room, and cost.
Changes in Physical Size Over Time
The principal hard plate drive, as such countless advancements in figuring, came from IBM. It was known as the IBM 450GB Disk File and was an enormous gadget.
It had 50 24-inch plates inside a cupboard that was as extensive as a cabinet and everything except lightweight. This mass of a capacity unit could store an astounding 5MB of information.
IBM 350 Disk File
Over: An IBM Model 350 Disk File being conveyed. Indeed, that is ONE hard circle drive unit.
Albeit hard circle drives continued to improve, cutting edge plates were worked by the idea “greater is better” into the ’80s. Whole rooms were at that point put away for the PCs.
For example, here underneath is a 250MB hard circle drive from 1979.
1970s hard plate drive
Above: State-of-the-craftsmanship hard circle drive from the ’70s.
IBM presented the principal hard circle drive to break the 1GB obstruction in 1980. It was known as the IBM 3380 and could store 2.52GB (“2.52 billion characters of data,” as indicated by IBM).
Its bureau was about the size of a fridge, and the entire thing tipped the scales at 550 pounds (250 kg). It gave clients fast admittance to information because of moving data at 3,000,000 characters each second.
IBM 3380 plate module
Over: The plate drive module of the IBM 3380.
Right off the bat during the ’80s, after the primary microcomputer Altair 8800, more modest “buyer” hard plate drives intended to utilize with the inexorably famous PCs (presently known as PCs) began to show up.
The earliest drives introduced in these machines, accessible beginning around 1980, were 5MB in size and had a structure factor of 5.25 inches (Seagate ST506).
To visualize how hard circle drive sizes have changed since the ’80s until now, view the beneath picture with an old 8-inch drive right down to the present 3.5-inch, 2.5-inch, and 1.8-inch drives.
The primary hard circle drive
(RAMAC 305 created by IBM) back in 1956, it could store 5MB of information, which was a gigantic sum at that point. It is unintentionally the size of the principal “little” 5.25-inch hard plate drive that showed up in 1980. We went from requiring an exceptional space for the hard plate drive and its PC. To having one, we could fit inside a PC.
After ten years, in 1990, a “typical” hard drive (like the ones created by Maxtor) held around 40MB, with more costly choices ready to store more than 100MB.
Quickly introduce day, and you can purchase a 3.5-inch hard plate drive with 15TB of extra room.
To represent the massive expansion of space we have found over the most recent 38 years (since the introduction of individualized computing), we have made a 1980 versus 2010 and 2019 one next to the other correlation graph.
Note that we have utilized a logarithmic scale in this graph. Each progression on the Y pivot is multiple times bigger than the one beneath it. If we had used a standard, linear scale, the sections for 1980 would have been not exactly a pixel high.
Note: To appraise the typical size HDD on the outline, we utilized the standard limit of Seagate hard circle drives.
These days we have unique stockpiling gadgets with a gazillion standard hard circle drives packed inside that have assumed control over the “incredibly costly” crown.
Similarly, early hard drives were incredibly costly and utilized tremendous and expensive centralized server PCs as with any unique ware.
The primary hard plate drive
The IBM Model 350 Disk File we referenced above was not something you got as an independent unit. It was not, in any event, something you purchased.
Instead, you could rent the IBM 305 RAMAC PC that accompanied the 350 Disk File for $3,200 each month. Back in the ’50s, this was much more cash than it is presently.
The most significant and best hard plate drives continued to be a costly recommendation at the point when it, at last, began selling in 1981 after some underlying conveyance hiccups.
The cost for the 2.52GB fridge estimated IBM 3380 started at $81,000. In addition, afterward, you required a PC to utilize it with.
The primary 5.25-inch 5MB hard plate drives (for example, the shopper choice) during the ’80s cost beyond $3,000.
Comparative costs stayed for the 10MB drives that before long supplanted them. It presumably clarifies why most PCs were sold without a hard circle drive rather than floppy plate drives.
As the extra room has expanded, it has likewise become boundlessly more reasonable. In the most recent 30 years, the average expense per gigabyte has gone from very more than $100,000 to only a couple of pennies. Well, that is expansion.