Hard-Disk Drives: Happy Birthday

My how time flies. Although it was before my time, here we are at the 50th anniversary of the hard-disk drive. Yes, it was on September 4, 1956 that IBM released the first commercial hard disk--the IBM 350 RAMAC disk drive.

The 350 RAMAC (short for "Random Access Method of Accounting and Control") had about 5 MBs of storage on its 50 24-inch diameter disks with 100 recording surfaces. Each surface had 100 tracks and the disks spun at 1200 RPM with a data transfer rate of about 8800 characters per second. The system was housed in a cabinet that was 60x68x29 inches and was leased for about $36,000+/year (or $7000 per megabyte per year).

In constrast, today's typical hard-disk drives will fit in your fob (okay, that's the official name for the little watch pocket in my Levi's), provide 300 GB+ of storage, and spin at 7200 RPM or more. Oh yes, and today's hard-disk drives sell for under $100.

The nice thing about anniversaries is that you get to reminisce and prattle on about your own experiences. So bear with me.

My first hard disk was a Winchester Radio Shack TRS-80 drive that was about 24x24x6 inches in size. It housed about four or five 8-inch platters that provided 8 MBs of storage. The master drive sold for $3500, but you could daisy-chain slave drives ($2500 each) for additional capabilities. To tell the truth, I could barely pick up the behemoth. However, I had to at times, since there was a little hole on the undercarriage of the case that gave you access to a locking mechanism. You see, the hard-disk platters had to be locked down prior to moving the drive, or you risked damaging the unit.

Of course, I couldn't afford the monster even if I had wanted it. The reason I even had it was that I was writing the service manuals for technicians who had to install and repair it, and another for users who were suckered into buying it. Then there was the software manual--the drive would only work with TRS-80 Model II computers running TRS-DOS with a modified operating system. And as you might expect, the disk drive didn't outsell remote control cars in Radio Shack stores that holiday season.

So the next time you pop a 4-GB iPod into your pocket, just be glad it doesn't use a 350 RAMAC.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:44 AM  Permalink