The Hard Drive Is Now Over 50 Years Old! and it used to be the size of a refrigerator................

[eDeals.ws 0]

On Sept. 13th 1956 IBM made history with the invention of the first Hard Drive. It weighed about a ton, and with 50-24" disks it could store a mind-blowing 5MB. Not to mention that it cost $250,000 (in todays dollars) per year to LEASE.

Pretty soon it will probably hear from you neighboor "Yeah, I just bought a five-petabyte hard disk for my company, it only cost me $50,000." Possibly in the very near future, drives with "mere" hundreds of gigabytes will be small enough to wear as jewelry.

"You'll have with you every album and tune you've ever bought, every picture you've ever taken, every tax record,"

says Bill Healy, an executive at Hitachi, which acquired IBM's storage business in 2003.

[Plenoptic 0]

Well it isn't 50 years old quite yet but it is just about. I think it's amazing how small the computers are getting these days yet somehow bigger in memory and more advanced. It's funny to think that 50 years ago almost it would cost them that much money when hamburgers were 20 cents. It's really something to think of what it was like back then compared to what we have now.

[husker 0]

Technology is growing rapidly. I look back just as little as five years from now at my computer and think, "How could I of used this? It's so slow and can't run my new games." In another five years I'll be saying that about my computer I have right now. It's scary to think about it. What I have now I think is fast and I don't have a problem with, but soon enough, I'll be able to turn on my computer and check my email in 20 seconds! I would hate to see what that hard drive looked like. You wouldn't happen to have a picture off it, would you?

[lemonwonder 0]

Thats amazing, and yeh a picture would be neat!My grandparents are absolutely hillgazzelled (whtvr that means) at my psp, and things like the first edition of pong where about the size of a printer, no a small printer, but not a large big bussiness 1, and now tith the psp, I have hundreds of flash games on it, I can do internet etc, they are just astonished, so yeh technology is changing.

[cangor 0]

yep... technology is constantly getting smaller and better... I wasn't around back then but my parents tell me about how pathetic technology used to be... and I try to relate... Something that I find particularly amazing is those spiffy graphing calculators you use in school... those have more processing power than any home computer had even 20 years ago... makes you wonder what will happen next... will everything have a computer in it someday???

[lemonwonder 0]

well doors are even starting to detect a person and auto open, you have a lil thing clipped into hair or pocket or whateva, door detects it and slides open, some are also finger print ones, but theyr old news

[fffanatics 0]

Its pretty wierd to think that 5 meg used to be a lot of memory and that a normal size harddrive only would have been a few bytes back then. The other wierd thing is to imagine what another 50 years is going to do and how small everything will be then. Who knows, holographic storage? 3d monitors, etc.

[TypoMage 0]

Well actually my brothers computer was exposed to dampness. Me and him used to live downstairs.The screen used to turn all white and to fix it you hit it Everytime it happened when he was doing something he would get all mad But that sounds very interesting I have heard of figer print passwords.(When there was a place where you put your thumb and it is like a password. I think the knocking thing would be very cool. So do they have a card that you slide threw to log on?

[Kubi 0]

Possibly the first ever hard drive:

http://bp.cocolog-nifty.com/bp/images/the_first_harddisk.jpg

Enjoy.

[brandon10092 0]

Possibly the first ever hard drive:
http://bp.cocolog-nifty.com/bp/images/the_first_harddisk.jpg

Enjoy.

That thing is so big it's not funny. Today, there are harddrives small enough to fit in your palm. That harddrive was 5MB, and the iPod is 60GB: 12,000 times more capacity and probably at least 20 times smaller. In the next decade, 2GB of RAM will be considered crappy, which is pretty scary. I remember when 256MB RAM was considered good.

[uiop 0]

Amazing how far we've come.Happy 50th hard disk anniversary!

Edited August 1, 2006 by uiop (see edit history)

[premracer 0]

Yes this is a very interesting topic. The hard drive that we know today went from being the size of a refrigator, to now being portable being able to slip it into your pocket. Technology now is amazing these days. Computers just keep getting bigger and bigger in memory and smaller and smaller in size.

[ghostrider 0]

Its amazing how far technology has progressed. I remember when I was about 3 years old when my Dad got a new computer. State-of-the-art, it ran at about 66 MhZ, and had Windows 95 on it. It had an 80846 for the processor and a 200 megabyte hard drive. I find it funny that my whole music collection takes 10 of those old hard drives.

[MaineFishing45 0]

Well I see we have come a long ways. I have a old IBM Windows 3.1 and its still working. Was my dads business computer when he worked for American Express way back when.I have to see if I can sell it as a collectors item or donate it to a museum. Anyways wonder what the ones of the future will be. Hopefully tech and computer gear will decrease in price, making it better to purchase.

[Sharn 0]

Lmfao, that hard drive's crazy. 24" discs, whereas a normal one now is like 5" And small one's like 3". Even my 5-6 year old one stores 1800x that one. =OIt really is amazing how fast and far technology is advancing... You can buy a top of the line all-around crazy computer now - next week it'll be out of date. Which is just... scary. There's even a 1 terrabyte HD out now, I think. =O