The history of hard drives spans nearly six decades and is considered one of the fastest - if not the fastest - growing technologies of all time. From scarcely a few million characters in the early 1950's to several terabytes today, it could be argued that the rapid advancement in hard drive technology has been responsible for the development and growth of practically every other advancing industry - especially medical science. Understanding the history of hard drives is important in this respect because regardless of what you do for work, it's likely that a hard drive is involved somewhere in the process.

IBM

Hard drives were born in the IBM laboratories in California in the early 1950's. From fully formed concept to commercial product took only a few years, and in 1956 the first true hard drives were rolled out with the IBM 305 RAMAC system. This system was designed for data storage and management in industry and enterprise markets and used 50 24-inch platters in order to store information. The RAMAC weighed as much as a small car and required specialized equipment in order to transport it. (Melissa J. Perenson, PCWorld. Sep 13, 2006 The Hard Drive Turns 50)

The Days of the Giants

The decades following the RAMAC saw many advances in hard drive technology, but by 1980 the highest capacity drive - a 1 GB IBM model - was six feet tall and weighed as much as two large men. During this quarter century period of growth, powerful companies like General Digital and Seagate were formed and began competing for market share against IBM; with great success.

The remainder of the 80's saw continued growth in terms of memory capacity, but most of the growth in the industry was focused on hard drive control and integration systems, with significant advancements resulting in the first hard drives that were small enough and offered enough storage capacity to be used in notebooks and laptops by the end of the decade. (Rex Farrance, PCWorld. September 13, 2006 Timeline: 50 Years of Hard Drives)

The 90's

In the 1990's the personal computer market drove the development of hard drives to an intense level, resulting in significant advancements in the field. This included IBM's Partial Response Maximum Likelihood algorithm, the first 1.8" HDD, Laser Textured Landing Zones, Seagate's fluid bearings and the standardization of ATAPI and UltraDMA/33. But while the 90's were a time of growth in memory size and reduction in physical size, the coming decade would improve exponentially in both areas, dwarfing the capabilities of the hard drives of the 1990's. (Wikipedia, History of Hard Disk Drives.)

Rapid Memory Expansion

Starting in 2000, the hard drive industry went through several "change of hands." This included the acquisition of Quantum HDD by Maxtor, then the acquisition of Maxtor by Seagate, and finally the acquisition of IBM by Hitachi. Advancements in hard disk drive technology led the industry from less than 50GB of memory in the early part of the decade to the first drives boasting a terabyte or more of memory.

Recently the industry has gone through more growth and change, with Western Digital buying out Hitachi, and Toshiba making its place as an industry leader. Together with veteran manufacturer Seagate, many in the industry believe that soon terabyte+ capacity hard drives will be considered laughable, antiquated equipment.