When was the hard drive first developed?
1130688#1
Hard disk drives store data in the magnetic polarization of small patches of the surface coating on a disk. The maximum areal density is defined by the size of the magnetic particles in the surface, as well as the size of the "head" used to read and write the data. The areal density of disk storage devices has increased dramatically since IBM introduced the IBM 350 disk storage, the first hard disk drive in 1956 at an areal density of 2,000 bit/in. The growth rate has matched Moore's Law with the density reaching 1 Tbit/in in 2014. In 2015, Seagate introduced a hard drive at a density of 1.34 Tbit/in, about 600 million times that of the first disk drive. It is expected that current recording technology can be "feasibly" expected to scale to at least 5 Tbit/in in the near future. New technologies like Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) and Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) are under development and are expected to continue magnetic areal density progress.
Areal density (computer storage)
13777#9
In 1973, IBM introduced a new type of HDD code-named "Winchester". Its primary distinguishing feature was that the disk heads were not withdrawn completely from the stack of disk platters when the drive was powered down. Instead, the heads were allowed to "land" on a special area of the disk surface upon spin-down, "taking off" again when the disk was later powered on. This greatly reduced the cost of the head actuator mechanism, but precluded removing just the disks from the drive as was done with the disk packs of the day. Instead, the first models of "Winchester technology" drives featured a removable disk module, which included both the disk pack and the head assembly, leaving the actuator motor in the drive upon removal. Later "Winchester" drives abandoned the removable media concept and returned to non-removable platters.
Hard disk drive
7064918#16
The 1980s saw the minicomputer age plateau as PCs were introduced. Manufacturers such as DEC and Hewlett-Packard continued to manufacture minicomputer compatible hard drive systems as industry demanded higher storage. Hewlett-Packard introduced the HP 7935 as one such drive. But it was clear that smaller Winchester storage systems were eclipsing large platter hard drives.
Hard disk drives for personal computers (PCs) were initially a rare and very expensive optional feature; systems typically had only the less expensive floppy disk drives or even cassette tape drives as both secondary storage and transport media. However by the late '80s, hard disk drives were standard on all but the cheapest PC and floppy disks were used almost solely as transport media.
History of hard disk drives
14544999#0
The Macintosh Hard Disk 20 was the first hard drive developed by Apple Computer specifically for use with the Macintosh 512K. Introduced on September 17, 1985, it was part of Apple's long awaited solution toward completing the Macintosh Office (a suite of integrated business hardware & software) announced in January 1985. It would be over a year more before Apple would release the file server software AppleShare that would link all of the hardware together. By that time the SCSI interface introduced on the Macintosh Plus in January 1986, would accommodate far faster and more efficient hard drives, rendering the Hard Disk 20 virtually obsolete.
Hard Disk 20
2004239#0
Conner Peripherals (commonly referred to as Conner) was a company that manufactured hard drives for personal computers. Conner Peripherals was founded in 1985 by Seagate Technology co-founder and San Jose State University alumnus (1943– ). In 1986, they merged with CoData, a Colorado start-up founded by MiniScribe founders Terry Johnson and John Squires. CoData was developing a new type of small hard disk that put the capacity of a 5.25-inch drive into the smaller (and now commonplace) 3.5-inch format. The CoData drive was the first Conner Peripherals product. The company was partially financed by Compaq, who was also a major customer for many years.
Conner Peripherals
23624028#5
By early 1985, it was clear that the Macintosh needed additional storage space, in particular a hard drive. Apple announced their first hard drive for the Mac in March 1985. However, the MFS file system did not support subdirectories, making it unsuitable for a hard disk. Apple quickly began adopting for the Mac the hierarchical based SOS filing system introduced with the Apple III and long since implemented in ProDOS for the Apple II series and the Lisa. This change in the Mac's filing system delayed the introduction of the double sided Sony drives which Apple intended to offer as soon as the technology was available, a concession they made when adopting the Sony drives over their own problematic double-capacity Twiggy drives. However, based on the success of the 3.5" floppy drive for the Mac, there was no such obstacle in immediately implementing an 800K drive for the Apple II, so it was introduced in September 1985, four months before the version for the Mac. While Apple simultaneously introduced their new hard drive after a 6-month delay, they chose not to implement the new floppy drive for the Macintosh at that time.
Macintosh External Disk Drive
14069922#0
Nanoionic hard drives use nanoionic technology allowing for smaller devices while doing away with moving parts and the mechanical failures which are associated with previous HDD drives. Nanoionic hard drives are currently the most state of the art drives on the market and nanoionics was not utilized in hard drives until February 2014. Nanoionic devices were first proposed in 1992: "The results obtained show that it is possible to form arrays of electrochemical devices with single elements ~10 nm in size in the films". The basis of design of nanoionic devices is the creation of nanostructures with nanoionic parameter "λ" / "L" ~ 1, where "L" is the size of device structure, and "λ" is the characteristic size of specific region where the property of fast ionic transport is realized. “Possibilities to influence on these specific regions < λ > in a controllable manner may appear in short sized devices”. Ion - electronic hybrid devices should be considered as a step on a way to the future nanoelectronics-nanoionics (nanoelionics) that was first proposed in 1996.
Nanoionic device
8773349#4
By 1985, Plus Development had engineered their first Hardcard; it had a 10 megabyte (MB) capacity; its suggested retail price was $1,095. In the mid-1980s, hard drives were as small as 1.6 inches tall, but in order to fit into a single ISA PC card expansion slot a custom one-inch thick hard drive had to be designed. Having spent $15 million on the project, Plus Development started shipping Hardcard in October 1985, and trademarked the Hardcard brand in 1988.
Hardcard
13777#5
The first production IBM hard disk drive, the 350 disk storage, shipped in 1957 as a component of the IBM 305 RAMAC system. It was approximately the size of two medium-sized refrigerators and stored five million six-bit characters (3.75 megabytes) on a stack of 50 disks.
Hard disk drive
7265745#2
The possibility of inertialess travel was first suggested in "Theoretical and Physical Chemistry,"
published in 1912
by the Tellurian chemist Samuel Lawrence Bigelow,
an alumnus of Harvard.
The first faster-than-light drive, which achieved only partial neutralization of inertia, was developed on the planet Nevia. Soon thereafter, two Tellurian scientists, Lyman Cleveland and Frederick Rodebush developed the one-hundred-percent inertialess Rodebush-Cleveland drive, which traveled (and decelerated) much faster. (In contrast to accounts in later versions, there were no critical flaws with this drive, and no contribution by any scientist named Bergenholm or by Arisians.)Galactic Civilization developed for a long period using only the semi-inert drive, which was presumably similar to Nevian partially inertialess drive discussed above. The exact duration is not known, but even as late as the Third Galactic Survey it still “took years to cross the galaxy.” Because the key piece of inertialess technology is known as the Bergenholm,
it seems likely that an engineer by that name was responsible for a key advance, but little is known for certain. Dr. Bergenholm is referred to as the “late Dr. Bergenholm himself” in the original, which suggests that he was a more recent figure than in the ret-con version, below.In the revised book versions of "Triplanetary" and the core "Lensman" novels, the partially inertialess drive was given by Arisia to Nevia, and the fully inertialess drive was initially developed by scientists Rodebush and Cleveland, but the early drive was considered to be a "man-killer."
Progress was made when the Triplanetary scientist Nels Bergenholm, activated by the Arisian Drounli, came up with a "hunch" which solved the phasing problems of the original Rodebush-Cleveland drive. This made the drive safe and commercially practical, and in recognition of his achievement, the drive was thereafter called a Bergenholm.
Inertialess drive
7064918#0
In 1953, IBM recognized the immediate application for what it termed a "Random Access File" having high capacity and rapid random access at a relatively low cost. After considering technologies such as wire matrices, rod arrays, drums, drum arrays, etc., the engineers at IBM's San Jose California laboratory invented the hard disk drive. 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.
History of hard disk drives
7064918#8
The RAMAC disk drive created a new level in the computer data hierarchy, today known as secondary storage, less expensive and slower than main memory (then typically core or drum) but faster and more expensive than tape drives. Subsequently there was a period of about 20 years in which other technologies competed with disks in the secondary storage marketplace, for example tape strips, e.g., NCR CRAM, tape cartridges, e.g., IBM 3850, and drums, e.g., Burroughs B430, UNIVAC FASTRAND, but all ultimately were displaced by HDDs. Today SSDs compete with HDDs in the marketplace.
History of hard disk drives