From the world's first five-megabyte
hard drive, to one which can store 400 gigabytes on 3.5
inches, computer storage has come a long way since the
1950s.
The hard disk is the storage bin of our PC - on it we
keep our secrets, accounts, love letters, future plans,
shopping lists and anything else you could imagine.
If there is one thing we do well
it is generating data. Lots of it.
These days disks are everywhere,
although it has taken a while to achieve this ubiquity.
As soon as there were computers
there was a need to keep data in a computer-friendly format.
Names, addresses, dates and times all have to be stored
in a way for the computer to find them.
It started off with punch cards,
which actually predated the computer.
Holes were punched into cards which
could be read by more or less any computer, but before
too long it became apparent that something more was needed.
Evolution
In the mid 1950s IBM developed the
first hard disk, which started us on the track we are on
now.
Despite being the size of several wardrobes and sporting
a storage capacity of five megabytes, it was soon the
must-have peripheral for all computer systems.
Over the years they have grown in capacity and shrunk
in size.
Probably the most important stage in the hard disks development
was the IBM PC.
In 1983 IBM introduced the 10 megabyte hard disk to its
users and we have been generating junk in our PCs ever
since.
Robin Varley, of Samsung, says: "When PCs first
entered the workplace they had a very small hard disk
drive capacity but a very large hard disk drive."
Guy Weavers, of Seagate, adds: "When I joined the
industry in 1984 we were dealing with five or 10 megabyte
drives. They were 5.25 inch form factor, which means the
disks themselves were 5.25 inches in diameter.
That particular size of drive grew over the years - five,
10, 20, 40, 100 and so forth - and that was the first form
factor to exceed the one gigabyte, or 1,000 megabyte, capacity
point."
Robin Varley says: "Over the last few years we've
seen a lot of development with regard to the size, the
capacity, and the requirement to store more information
to our computer."
To give you an idea of how far we have come you can now
get a 400 gigabyte hard drive that is just 3.5 inches
in diameter. That is 400,000 megabytes.
Guy Weavers says: "We have to increase the ability
of the drive to store data, we have to increase the number
of bits we can get on a track, and we have to increase
the number of tracks we can get per inch.
"That involves technology increases in both the
disk itself, the media we record to, and also the heads
that we use to read and write the data."
Size matters
The tracks are like invisible circles on the disk, and
the data is written on them.
The smaller the tracks, the more data can be written.
There are now so many hard disks that there is no longer
room to put them in our computers, so we now put them
in boxes that sit next to our computers.
Now we are looking at drives that are one inch big, or perhaps
even less, at 0.85 of an inch.
In fact it is fair to say that most hard disk manufacturers
are moving development from the traditional desktop 3.5
inch and notebook-sized 2.5 inch disks, to the smaller
drives.
It is in part the iPod's fault, as Nick Spittle, of Toshiba,
explains.
"We had a 1.8 inch drive technologically available
for some time before an application came along to utilise
it. Apple's iPod was obviously a very good application."
Guy Weavers adds: "As well as increased capacity
we continue to reduce the size. I think where we'll go
is higher capacity on the smaller form factors."
And it will not stop there. Tiny hard disk MP3 players
are on their way and there should be mobile phones with
a disk in them before the end of the year.
PDAs will follow after that, then it is anyone's guess.
The bottom line is: if it is big
enough to hold one, then it could well have a hard disk
in it.
