evolution of the HDD.
1950s - the beginnings
The world's first HDD was invented in 1953 in IBM’s laboratory in San Jose, California and then patented in 1956.
The IBM 305 RAMAC was the first commercial computer that stored data on a moving-head hard disk drive.
It consisted of two independent access arms that moved up and down to select a disk, and in and out to select a recording track, all under servo control. RAMAC 305 came equipped with fifty 24-inch platters and had a total capacity of 5MB. IBM touted the system as being able to store the equivalent of 64,000 punched cards. It was the size of two large refrigerators, weighed over a ton and cost $10,000 per megabyte.
IBM continued to lead the development of hard disk technology over the next couple of decades.
1960s
In 1961, the IBM 1301 Disk Storage Unit was released, which featured a separate arm and head for each recording surface, significantly reducing maximum access times. The IBM 1301 was also the first hard drive which utilized heads that floated on a thin layer of air, which allowed the heads to be kept closer to the platters, improving efficiency. The drive’s capacity was drastically increased, offering up to 205 MB, depending on the number of platters installed. However, the 1301, like all of the early hard drives, was incredibly expensive. It could be leased for $2,100 a month, or purchased for $115,500.
In 1963 the IBM 1311, the world's first removable HDD was introduced. It contained 6 removable disks and could hold 2.6MB of data. It was about the size and shape of a top-loading washing machine.
In 1964, the IBM 2311 was the first standardized disk drive which could be used across multiple versions of the IBM System/360 mainframe computer system.
In 1967, both Hitachi and Toshiba entered the HDD industry.
In 1968, Memorex came onto the scene with Memorex 360, a hard drive compatible with IBM systems. This was the first company separate from IBM to produce an IBM-compatible disk drive and the first time there was real competition within IBM’s relative dominance of the industry.
1970s
In 1970, Western Digital was founded in California.
With IBM 3330 in 1970, IBM managed to combine all the components of a hard drive into a much smaller casing. It was also the first model with error correction built into the hard drive to tolerate smaller imperfections of the disk surface.
In 1973, the IBM Winchester Drive was introduced. Winchester drives came standard with lubricated platters, low-mass heads, all housed within a sealed assembly. The fundamentals of this design were standard until 2011. It was originally named after the Winchester 30-30 rifle because it was supposed to come with two 30MB spindles.
In 1977, the first RAID assembly patent was filed.
The Seagate company was founded in 1979. The same year IBM introduced "Piccolo", the world's first 8-inch HDD.
1980s - introduction of PC
The 1980s saw the introduction of the PC, with manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard, manufacturing hard drives compatible with minicomputers. Microcomputer was formerly a commonly used term for personal computers. But hard disk drives for use in PCs were initially quite rare, due the still incredibly high cost. Hewlett-Packard’s 7935 HDD cost around $27,000. PCs typically utilized floppy disks or cassette tape drives, both as secondary storage and as transport media. By the late 1980s, hard disk drives had decreased in cost and were standard on most PCs. They continued to get smaller.
In 1980, IBM released the 3380, the world’s first gigabyte capacity HDD with 2.5GB of storage. However, the cost was still incredibly high at $40,000 and it also weighed more than 500 pounds.
That same year, Seagate introduced ST-506, the world's first 5.25-inch HDD for use in microcomputers. It could store 5MB of data and was priced at $1,500.
In 1983, the world's first 3.5 inch HDD was produced by the Scottish company, Rodime. The drive had two platters and could store 10 MB of data.
In 1985, Control Data, Compaq, and Western Digital came together to create the first 40-pin IDE interface.
1986 saw the introduction of the SCSI interface standard, which was used by Apple’s Mac Plus computer.
In 1988, PrairieTek introduced the world's first 2.5-inch hard drive, designed for use in notebook computers. It had a 20MB capacity on two disk platters.
1990s - portable computers
Throughout the 1990s, hard disks continued to sell more units, and decrease in size.
In 1990, Western Digital launched their first 3.5-inch IDE drive.
In 1991, the Integral Peripherals Mustang 1820 was introduced, the world's first 1.8-inch HDD.
In 1992, Seagate produced the first shock-sensing hard drive. Due to the fragility of hard drives, this was a very useful invention. The same year, Seagate also delivered the first 7200 rpm hard drive, a 2.1GB Barracuda.
In 1997, IBM produced 16.8GB “Deskstar 16GP Titan, the first hard drive to use giant magnetoresistance (GMR) heads that are typically used in modern disk drives.
In 1998, IBM released the Microdrive with 340GB of data stored on a single 1-inch platter.
turn of the millennium.
In 2000, Maxtor acquired Quantum, making them the largest hard drive manufacturer in the world. Although, in just six years, Maxtor would be completely bought out by Seagate.
In 2003, Seagate released the first serial ATA or SATA drive.
The same year, IBM sold its data storage division to Hitachi and exited the HDD development industry.
In 2005, Hitachi developed the first 500GB drive.
In 2006, Seagate acquired Maxtor and produced the first 750GB HDD.
In 2007, Hitachi developed the world's first 1TB HDD.
That same year, Seagate and Samsung introduced the first hybrid drives that promised some of the performance of a solid-state drive with the capacity of a mechanical drive. They were bigger than an SSD and faster than a plain-old mechanical drive.
In 2008, the first 1.5TB hard drive was unveiled by Seagate, once again taking the lead.
In 2009, the first 2TB hard drive was introduced by Western Digital.
Capacity of hard drives really started to take off and continued to increase towards the end of the decade.
2010s
Over the years, technology has evolved, our lifestyle has changed, and we needed more and more data storage capacity.
In 2010, the first 3TB hard drives were released in a collaboration between Seagate and Western Digital.
In 2011, the first 4TB hard drive was introduced by Seagate.
In 2012, HGST, after being acquired by Western Digital, announced the first helium-filled HDD.
In 2013, Seagate introduced the first 5TB HDD.
The same year, HGST announced a 6TB helium drive for enterprise applications.
In 2014, Seagate released the first 6TB and 8TB non-helium drives.
In 2015, HGST officially shipped the world’s first 10TB HDD.
2016 marks the 60th anniversary of the hard disk drive.
In 2019, Seagate ships the world's first 16TB HDD for data centers and raises the bar for NAS drives.
The decade saw the decline of hard disk drive sales and gradual increase of solid-state drives which offer higher speeds and increased durability due to their lack of moving parts. Hard drive shipments peaked in 2015, and fewer were sold every year after.
2020s
In 2020, Seagate shipped the first 18TB.
In 2021, the first Seagate 20 TB HAMR drives were released.
Also, Western Digital introduced 20TB HDD with OptiNAND Technology, the new storage architecture that optimizes and integrates HDDs with iNAND® embedded flash drives.
In 2022, Seagate and WDC are expected to provide general availability of dual actuator HDDs that double the data rate out of the HDD.
Seagate has projected 30TB HDDs by 2023, with 50TB HDDs possible by 2026.
Historically, more than 224 companies have produced HDDs. Today, most hard drives are produced by only three manufacturers: Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba.
There have been huge changes in physical size, storage space and price of hard drives over time.
65 years on, hard drives are virtually unrecognizable from their very first models. The hard drive has transformed from an excessively expensive room-sized appliance capable of storing just a few megabytes of data, to an affordable pocket-sized device that can stash terabytes.
the future of HDD.
HDDs unit shipments and sales revenues continue to decline due to SSDs. SSDs are replacing HDDs in applications where speed, power consumption, small size and durability are important. Along with these, the cost per bit for SSDs is falling, and the price premium over HDDs has narrowed.
However, SSDs can’t yet compete with the capacity and performance of HDDs. It is worth mentioning that, for the first time in recent years, unit shipments of hard disk drives demonstrated a positive dynamic in 2021 which saw an all-time record of these shipped due to demand from operators, exascale data centers and cryptocurrency miners.
In the future, hard disks are set to expand the storage capacity with the help of new techniques (microwave and heat-assisted magnetic recording, or MAMR and HAMR), collectively called energy assisted magnetic recording or EAMR.
Hard disk’s high density storage provides high performance and record capacity for hyperscale, cloud, data centers to efficiently and cost-effectively manage ever-increasing amounts of data. They are needed to support AI, big data, heavy data analytics, data modeling, deep learning and countless emerging applications that are consuming, managing and analyzing a lot of data in real-time.
Hard drives will continue to be important to store the world's data in the future.
As the prices of hard drives have dropped, the value of data stored on them rises. Hard drives are the keeper of our memories, work files, studies, research papers, favorite music tracks, personal videos and photos. They are the digital archives of our lives.
Unfortunately, life is unpredictable and things can happen unexpectedly. If an accident happens, the hard disk is damaged and you risk losing all of your digital content, the good news is that, in most cases, there is a good chance that it can be recovered.
Kotar Data Recovery is equipped with the technology, expertise and unique solutions needed to access and successfully recover data from any data storage device in a safe, professional and affordable way.
250GB hard drive from 1979