History of hard disk drives

IBM in 1953 recognized the immediate application for what it termed a "Random Access File" having high capacity, rapid random access at a relatively low cost.[1] After considering several alternative technologies such as wire matrices, rod arrays, drums, drum arrays, etc.,[1] the engineers at IBM San Jose invented the disk drive.[2] The disk drive created a new level in the computer data hierarchy, then termed Random Access Storage but today known as secondary storage, less expensive and slower than main memory (then typically drums) but faster and more expensive than tape drives.[3]

The commercial usage of hard disk drives began in 1956 with the shipment of an IBM 305 RAMAC system including IBM Model 350 disk storage.[4]

Compared to modern disk drives, early hard disk drives were large, sensitive and cumbersome devices, more suited to use in the protected environment of a data center than in an industrial environment, office or home. Disk media was nominally 8-inch or 14-inch platters, which required large equipment rack enclosures. Drives with removable media resembled washing machines in size and often required high-current or a three-phase power supply due to the large motors they used. Hard disk drives were not commonly used with microcomputers until after 1980, when Seagate Technology introduced the ST-506, the first 5.25-inch hard drives, with a formatted capacity of 5 megabytes.

The capacity of hard drives has grown exponentially over time. With early personal computers, a drive with a 20 megabyte capacity was considered large. During the mid-1990s the typical hard disk drive for a PC had a capacity of about 1 GB.[5] As of July 2010, desktop hard disk drives typically have a capacity of 500 to 1000 gigabytes, while the largest-capacity drives are 3 terabytes.

* 1 1950s - 1970s
* 2 1980s, the PC era
* 3 Timeline
* 4 Manufacturing history
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links

1950s - 1970s
Main article: early IBM disk storage
A partially disassembled IBM 350 (RAMAC)
A removable 14 inch disk pack for a disk drive. Protective cover is removed. Read/write heads stayed in the drive, only the media platters were removable.

The IBM 350 Disk File, invented by Reynold Johnson, was introduced in 1956 with the IBM 305 RAMAC computer. This drive had fifty 24 inch platters, with a total capacity of five million characters.[6] A single head assembly having two heads was used for access to all the platters, making the average access time very slow (just under 1 second).

The IBM 1301 Disk Storage Unit,[7] announced in 1961, introduced the usage of a head for each data surface with the heads having self acting air bearings (flying heads).

Also in 1961, Bryant Computer Products introduced its 4000 series disk drives. These massive units stood 52 inches (1.3 m) tall, 70 inches (1.8 m) wide, and had up to 26 platters, each 39 inches (0.99 m) in diameter, rotating at up to 1200 rpm. Access times were from 50 to 205 ms. The drive's total capacity, depending on the number of platters installed, was up to 205,377,600 bytes, or 196 MiB.[8][9]

The first disk drive to use removable media was the IBM 1311 drive, which used the IBM 1316 disk pack to store two million characters.

In 1973, IBM introduced the IBM 3340 "Winchester" disk drive, the first significant commercial use of low mass and low load heads with lubricated media. All modern disk drives now use this technology and/or derivatives thereof. Project head Kenneth Haughton named it after the Winchester 30-30 rifle because it was planned to have two 30 MB spindles; however, the actual product shipped with two spindles for data modules of either 35 MB or 70 MB.[10]

Also in 1973, Control Data Corporation introduced the first of its series of SMD disk drives using conventional disk pack technology. The SMD family became the predominant disk drive in the minicomputer market into the 1980s.


1980s, the PC era
As the 1980s began, hard disk drives were a rare and very expensive additional feature on personal computers (PCs); however by the late '80s, hard disk drives were standard on all but the cheapest PC.

Most hard disk drives in the early 1980s were sold to PC end users as an add on subsystem, not under the drive manufacturer's name but by Systems Integrators such as the Corvus Disk System or the systems manufacturer such as the Apple ProFile. The IBM PC/XT in 1983 included an internal standard 10MB hard disk drive, and soon thereafter internal hard disk drives proliferated on personal computers.

External hard disk drives remained popular for much longer on the Apple Macintosh. Every Mac made between 1986 and 1998 has a SCSI port on the back, making external expansion easy; also, "toaster" Compact Macs did not have easily accessible hard drive bays (or, in the case of the Mac Plus, any hard drive bay at all), so on those models, external SCSI disks were the only reasonable option.

Timeline
Capacity timeline on personal computer (PC)

* 1956 - First commercial disk drive

* 1979 - Thin film heads introduced

* 1980 - The world's first gigabyte-capacity disk drive, the IBM 3380, was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (about 250 kg), and had a price tag of $40,000
* 1980 ST-506 first 5 1/4 inch drive released with capacity of 5 megabytes
* 1986 - Standardization of SCSI
* 1989 - Jimmy Zhu and H. Neal Bertram from UCSD proposed exchange decoupled granular microstructure for thin film disk storage media, still used today.

* 1991 - 2.5-inch 100 megabyte hard drive
* 1991 - PRML Technology (Digital Read Channel with 'Partial Response Maximum Likelihood' algorithm)
* 1992 - first 1.3-inch hard disk drive - HP Kittyhawk
* 1994 - IBM introduces Laser Textured Landing Zones (LZT)
* 1996 - IBM introduces GMR (Giant MR) Technology for read sensors
* 1998 - UltraDMA/33 and ATAPI standardized
* 1999 - IBM releases the Microdrive in 170 MB and 340 MB capacities

* 2002 - 137 GB addressing space barrier broken
* 2003 - Serial ATA introduced
* 2003 - IBM sells disk drive division to Hitachi
* 2005 - First 500 GB hard drive shipping (Hitachi GST)
* 2005 - Serial ATA 3Gbps standardized
* 2005 - Seagate introduces Tunnel MagnetoResistive Read Sensor (TMR) and Thermal Spacing Control
* 2005 - Introduction of faster SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)
* 2005 - First Perpendicular recording HDD shipped: Toshiba 1.8-inch 40/80 GB[11]
* 2006 - First 750 GB hard drive (Seagate)
* 2006 - First 200 GB 2.5" hard drive utilizing Perpendicular recording (Toshiba)
* 2006 - Fujitsu develops heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) that could one day achieve one terabit per square inch densities.[12]
* 2007 - First 1 terabyte hard drive[13] (Hitachi GST)
* 2008 - First 1.5 terabyte hard drive[14] (Seagate)
* 2009 - First 2.0 terabyte hard drive[15] (Western Digital)
* 2010 - First 3.0 terabyte hard drive[16][17] (Seagate, Western Digital)
* 2010 - First Hard Drive Manufactured by using the Advanced Format of 4 KiB a block instead of 512 bytes a block[18]
* 2011 - First 4.0 terabyte hard drive prototype[19] (Samsung)

Manufacturing history

A Western Digital 3.5 inch 250 GB SATA HDD; this specific model features both SATA and Molex power inputs
Seagate hard disk drives being manufactured in a factory in Wuxi, China

See also List of defunct hard disk manufacturers

The technological resources and know-how required for modern drive development and production mean that as of 2011, virtually all of the world's HDDs are manufactured by just three large companies: Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba.

Dozens of former HDD manufacturers have gone out of business, merged, or closed their HDD divisions; as capacities and demand for products increased, profits became hard to find, and the market underwent significant consolidation in the late 1980s and late 1990s. The first notable casualty of the business in the PC era was Computer Memories Inc. or CMI; after an incident with faulty 20MB AT disks in 1985,[20] CMI's reputation never recovered, and they exited the HDD business in 1987. Another notable failure was MiniScribe, which went bankrupt in 1990 after it was found that they had engaged in accounting fraud and inflated sales numbers for several years. Many other smaller companies (like Kalok, Microscience, LaPine, Areal, Priam, and PrairieTek) also did not survive the shakeout, and had disappeared by 1993; Micropolis was able to hold on until 1997, and JTS, a relative latecomer to the scene, lasted only a few years and was gone by 1999, after attempting to manufacture HDDs in India. Their claim to fame was creating a new 3″ form factor drive for use in laptops. Quantum and Integral also invested in the 3″ form factor; but eventually ceased support as this form factor failed to catch on. Rodime was also an important manufacturer during the 1980s, but stopped making disks in the early 1990s amid the shakeout and now concentrates on technology licensing; they hold a number of patents related to 3.5-inch form factor HDDs.