title: Waffen-SS

text: The SS Division Langemarck was formed next in October 1944, from Flemish volunteers added to the 6th SS Volunteer Sturmbrigade Langemarck, but again it was nothing more than a large brigade. The 5th SS Volunteer Sturmbrigade Wallonien was also upgraded to the SS Division Wallonien, but it too was never more than a large brigade. Plans to convert the Kaminski Brigade into the 29th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS RONA (1st Russian) were dropped after the execution of their commander, Bronislav Kaminski; instead the Waffen Grenadier Brigade of SS (Italian no. 1) became the 29th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Italian). The 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Russian) was formed from the Schutzmannschaft-Brigade Siegling. The final new division of late 1944 was the 31st SS Volunteer Grenadier Division, formed from Hungarians and conscripted "Volksdeutsche".


title: Waffen-SS

text: In November 1944 the 1st Cossack Division, originally mustered by the German Army in 1943, was taken over by the Waffen-SS. The "SS Führungshauptamt" reorganised the division and used further Cossack combat units from the army and the "Ordnungspolizei" to form a 2nd Cossack Division. Both divisions were placed under the command of the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps on 1 February 1945. With the transfer of the Volunteer Cossack-Stamm-Regiment 5 from the Freiwilligen-Stamm-Division on the same day the takeover of the Cossack units by the Waffen-SS was complete.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket was formed in January 1944 when units of the 8th Army withdrew to the Panther-Wotan Line, a defensive position along the Dnieper River in Ukraine. Two army corps were left holding a salient into the Soviet lines extending some . The Red Army's 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts encircled the pocket. Trapped in the pocket were a total of six German divisions, including the 5 SS "Wiking", with the attached 5th SS Volunteer Sturmbrigade Wallonien, and the Estonian SS Battalion "Narwa". The Germans broke out in co-ordination with other German forces from the outside, including the 1 SS . Roughly two out of every three encircled men successfully escaped the pocket.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The Raid on Drvar, codenamed "Operation Rösselsprung", was an attack by the Waffen-SS and Luftwaffe on the command structure of the Yugoslav partisans. Their objective was the elimination of the partisan-controlled Supreme Headquarters and the capture of Tito. The offensive took place in April and May 1944. The Waffen-SS units involved were the 500th SS Parachute Battalion and the 7 SS "Prinz Eugen".


title: Waffen-SS

text: The assault started when a small group parachuted into Drvar to secure landing grounds for the following glider force. The 500th SS Parachute Battalion fought their way to Tito's cave headquarters and exchanged heavy gunfire resulting in numerous casualties on both sides. By the time German forces had penetrated into the cave, Tito had already escaped. At the end of the battle, only 200 men of the 500th SS Parachute Battalion remained unwounded.


title: Waffen-SS

text: In Estonia, the Battle of Narva started in February. The battle can be divided into two phases: the Battle for Narva Bridgehead from February to July and the Battle of Tannenberg Line from July to September. A number of volunteer and conscript Waffen-SS units from Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Estonia fought in Narva. The units were all part of the III SS (Germanic) Panzer Corps in Army Group North, which consisted of the 11th SS Panzergrenadier Division "Nordland", the 4th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Brigade "Nederland", the 5th SS Volunteer Sturmbrigade "Wallonien", the 6th SS Volunteer Sturmbrigade "Langemarck", and the conscript 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian), under the command of "Obergruppenführer" Felix Steiner.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Also in Army Group North was the VI SS Corps, which consisted of the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Latvian) and the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Latvian). Latvian Waffen SS and German army units held out in the Courland Pocket until the end of the war.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Operation Overlord, the Allied "D-Day" landings in Normandy, took place on 6 June 1944. In preparation for the expected landings, the I SS Panzer Corps "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" was moved to Septeuil to the west of Paris in April 1944. The Corps had the 1 SS "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler", 12 SS "Hitlerjugend", the 17 SS "Götz von Berlichingen" and the army's Panzer-Lehr-Division divisions assigned to it. The Corps was to form a part of General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg's Panzer Group West, the Western theatre's armoured reserve. The Corps was restructured on 4 July 1944 and only the 1 SS and the 12 SS "Hitlerjugend" remained on strength.


title: Waffen-SS

text: After the landings, the first Waffen-SS unit in action was the 12 SS "Hitlerjugend", which arrived at the invasion front on 7 June, in the Caen area. The same day they committed the Ardenne Abbey massacre against Canadian army prisoners of war. The next unit to arrive was the 17 SS "Götz von Berlichingen" on 11 June, which came into contact with the 101st Airborne Division. The SS Heavy Panzer Battalion 101 arrived next to protect the left wing of the I SS Panzer Corps. The 1 SS arrived towards the end of the month with lead elements becoming embroiled in the British offensive Operation Epsom.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The only other Waffen-SS unit in France at this time was the 2 SS "Das Reich", in Montauban, north of Toulouse. They were ordered north to the landing beaches and on 9 June were responsible for the Tulle massacre, where 99 men were murdered. The next day, they reached Oradour-sur-Glane where they massacred 642 French civilians.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The II SS Panzer Corps, consisting of the 9th SS "Hohenstaufen" and 10th SS "Frundsberg" divisions and the SS Heavy Panzer Battalion 102, was transferred from the Eastern Front to spearhead an offensive to destroy the Allied beachhead. However, the British launched Operation Epsom and the two divisions were fed piecemeal into the battle, and launched several counterattacks over the following days.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Without any further reinforcements in men or materiel, the Waffen-SS divisions could not stop the Allied advance. 1 SS "Leibstandarte " and 2 SS "Das Reich" took part in the failed Operation Lüttich in early August. The end came in mid August when the German Army was encircled and trapped in the Falaise pocket, including the 1 SS , 10 SS "Frundsberg" and 12 SS "Hitlerjugend" and the 17 SS "Götz von Berlichingen", while the 2 SS "Das Reich" and the 9 SS "Hohenstaufen" were ordered to attack Hill 262 from the outside in order to keep the gap open. By 22 August, the Falaise pocket had been closed, and all German forces west of the Allied lines were dead or in captivity. In the fighting around Hill 262 alone, casualties totalled 2,000 killed and 5,000 taken prisoner. The 12 SS "Hitlerjugend" had lost 94 per cent of its armour, nearly all of its artillery, and 70 per cent of its vehicles. The division had close to 20,000 men and 150 tanks before the campaign started, and was now reduced to 300 men and 10 tanks.


title: Waffen-SS

text: With the German Army in full retreat, two further Waffen-SS formations entered the battle in France, the SS Panzergrenadier Brigade 49 and the SS Panzergrenadier Brigade 51. Both had been formed in June 1944 from staff and students at the "SS-Junkerschule". They were stationed in Denmark to allow the garrison there to move into France, but were brought forward at the beginning of August to the area south and east of Paris. Both Brigades were tasked to hold crossings over the Seine River allowing the army to retreat. Eventually, they were forced back and then withdrew, the surviving troops being incorporated into the 17 SS "Götz von Berlichingen".


title: Waffen-SS

text: While the bulk of the Waffen-SS was now on the Eastern Front or in Normandy, the 4th SS "Polizei" Panzergrenadier Division was stationed in Greece on internal security duties and anti-partisan operations. On 10 June, they committed the Distomo massacre, when over a period of two hours they went door to door and massacred Greek civilians, reportedly in revenge for a Greek Resistance attack. In total, 218 men, women and children were killed. According to survivors, the SS forces "bayoneted babies in their cribs, stabbed pregnant women, and beheaded the village priest."


title: Waffen-SS

text: On the Italian Front, the 16 SS "Reichsführer-SS", conducting anti-partisan operations, is remembered more for the atrocities it perpetrated than its fighting ability: it committed the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre in August 1944 and the Marzabotto massacre between September and October 1944.


title: Waffen-SS

text: In Finland, the 6 SS "Nord" had held its lines during the Soviet summer offensive until it was ordered to withdraw from Finland upon the conclusion of an armistice between Finland and the Soviet Union in September 1944. It then formed the rear guard for the three German corps withdrawing from Finland in Operation Birch, and from September to November 1944 marched 1,600 kilometres to Mo i Rana, Norway, where it entrained for the southern end of the country, crossing the Skagerrak to Denmark.


title: Waffen-SS

text: In early September 1944, the II SS Panzer Corps (9 SS "Hohenstaufen" and 10 SS "Frundberg") were pulled out of the line and sent to the Arnhem area in the Netherlands. Upon arrival, they began the task of refitting, and the majority of the remaining armoured vehicles were loaded onto trains in preparation for transport to repair depots in Germany. On Sunday 17 September 1944, the Allies launched Operation Market Garden, and the British 1st Airborne Division was dropped in Oosterbeek, to the west of Arnhem. Realizing the threat, Wilhelm Bittrich, commander of II SS Panzer Corps, ordered "Hohenstaufen" and "Frundsberg" to ready themselves for combat. Also in the area was the Training and Reserve Battalion, 16th SS Division "Reichsführer-SS". The Allied airborne operation was a failure, and Arnhem was not liberated until 14 April 1945.


title: Waffen-SS

text: At the other end of Europe, the Waffen-SS was dealing with the Warsaw Uprising. Between August and October 1944, the Dirlewanger Brigade (recruited from criminals and the mentally ill throughout Germany), which included Aserbaidschanische Legion (part of the Ostlegionen), and the S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A. "Russkaya Osvoboditelnaya Narodnaya Armiya (Russian National Liberation Army)", which was made up of anti-Soviet Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian collaborators, were both sent to Warsaw to put down the uprising. During the battle, the "Dirlewanger" behaved atrociously, raping, looting, and killing citizens of Warsaw regardless of whether they belonged to the Polish resistance or not; the unit commander SS-"Oberführer" Oskar Dirlewanger encouraged their excesses. The unit's behaviour was reportedly so bestial and indiscriminate that Himmler was forced to send a battalion of SS military police to ensure the Dirlewanger convicts did not turn their aggressions against the leadership of the brigade or other nearby German units. At the same time, they were encouraged by Himmler to terrorise freely, take no prisoners, and generally indulge their perverse tendencies. Favoured tactics of the Dirlewanger men during the siege reportedly included the ubiquitous gang rape of female Poles, both women and children; playing "bayonet catch" with live babies; and torturing captives to death by hacking off their arms, dousing them with gasoline, and setting them alight to run armless and flaming down the street. The Dirlewanger brigade committed almost non-stop atrocities during this period, in particular the four-day Wola massacre.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The other unit, "Waffen-Sturm-Brigade R.O.N.A.", was tasked with clearing the Ochota district in Warsaw that was defended by members of the Polish Home Army. Their attack was planned for the morning of 5 August, but when the time came, the RONA unit could not be found; after some searching by the SS military police, members of the unit were found looting abandoned houses in the rear of the German column. Later, thousands of Polish civilians were killed by the RONA SS men during the events known as the Ochota massacre; many victims were also raped. In the following weeks, the RONA unit was moved south to the Wola district, but it fared no better in combat there than it did in Ochota; in one incident, a sub-unit of the RONA brigade advanced to loot a captured building on the front line, but was subsequently cut off from the rest of the SS formation and wiped out by the Poles. Following the fiasco, SS-"Brigadeführer" Bronislav Vladislavovich Kaminski, the unit's commander, was called to Łódź to attend a SS leadership conference. He never arrived; official Nazi sources blamed Polish partisans for an alleged ambush that killed the RONA commander. But, according to various other sources, he was arrested and tried by the SS, or simply shot on the spot by the Gestapo. The behaviour of the "RONA" during the battle was an embarrassment even to the SS, and the alleged rape and murder of two German Strength Through Joy girls may have played a part in the eventual execution of the brigade's commander.


title: Waffen-SS

text: In late August 1944, 5 SS "Wiking" was ordered back to Modlin on the Vistula River line near Warsaw, where it was to join the newly formed Army Group Vistula. Fighting alongside the Luftwaffe's Fallschirm-Panzer Division 1 "Hermann Göring", they were faced against the Soviet 3rd Tank Corps. The advent of the Warsaw Uprising brought the Soviet offensive to a halt, and relative peace fell on the front line. The division remained in the Modlin area, grouped with the 3 SS "Totenkopf" in the IV SS Panzer Corps. Heavy defensive battles around Modlin followed for the rest of the year.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The Ardennes Offensive (popularly known as the "Battle of the Bulge"), between 16 December 1944 and 25 January 1945, was a major German offensive through the forested Ardennes mountains region of Belgium. The Waffen-SS units included the 6th Panzer Army under Sepp Dietrich. Created on 26 October 1944, it incorporated the I SS Panzer Corps (1 SS , the 12 SS "Hitlerjugend" and the SS Heavy Panzer Battalion 101). It also had the II SS Panzer Corps (2 SS "Das Reich" and the 9 SS "Hohenstaufen"). Another unit involved was Otto Skorzeny's SS Panzer Brigade 150.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The purpose of the attack was to split the British and American line in half, capture Antwerp, and encircle and destroy four Allied armies, forcing the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty on terms favourable to the Axis Powers. However, advancing through the forests and wooded hills of the Ardennes proved difficult in the winter weather. Initially, the Germans made good progress in the northern end of its advance. However, they ran into unexpectedly strong resistance by the U.S. 2nd and 99th Infantry Divisions. By 23 December, weather conditions started improving, allowing the Allied air forces, which had been grounded, to attack. In increasingly difficult conditions, the German advance slowed. The attack was ultimately a failure. Despite the efforts of the Waffen-SS and the German Army, the fuel shortages, stiff American resistance, including in and around the town of Bastogne and Allied air-assaults on German supply columns proved too much, costing the Germans 700 tanks and most of their remaining mobile forces in the west. Hitler's failed counteroffensive had used most of Germany's remaining reserves of manpower and materiel, which could not be replaced.


title: Waffen-SS

text: During the battle, "Kampfgruppe" Peiper, part of the 1 SS , left a path of destruction, which included Waffen-SS men murdering American POWs and unarmed Belgian civilians. It is infamous for the Malmedy massacre, in which approximately 90 unarmed American prisoners of war were murdered on 17 December 1944. Also during this battle, 3./SS-PzAA1 LSSAH captured and shot eleven African-American soldiers from the American 333rd Artillery Battalion in the hamlet of Wereth. Their remains were found by Allied troops two months later. The soldiers had their fingers cut off and legs broken, and one was shot while trying to bandage a comrade's wounds.


title: Waffen-SS

text: In late December 1944, the Axis forces, including IX Waffen Mountain Corps of the SS (Croatian), defending Budapest, were encircled in the Siege of Budapest. The IV SS Panzer Corps (3 SS "Totenkopf" and 5 SS "Wiking") was ordered south to join Hermann Balck's 6th Army (Army Group "Balck"), which was mustering for a relief effort code named Operation Konrad.


title: Waffen-SS

text: As a part of Operation Konrad I, the IV SS Panzer Corps was committed to action on 1 January 1945, near Tata, with the advance columns of "Wiking" slamming into the Soviet 4th Guards Army. A heavy battle ensued, with the 5 SS "Wiking" and 3 SS "Totenkopf" destroying many of the Soviet tanks. In three days their panzer spearheads had driven 45 kilometres, over half the distance from the start point to Budapest. The Red Army manoeuvred forces to block the advance, halting them at Bicske, from Budapest. Two further attacks, Operations Konrad II and III, also failed.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The Hungarian Third Army was besieged in Budapest along with the IX Waffen Mountain Corps of the SS (Croatian) (8 SS "Florian Geyer" and 22 SS " Maria Theresia"). The siege lasted from 29 December 1944 until the city surrendered unconditionally on 13 February 1945. Only 170 men of the 22 SS " Maria Theresia" made it back to the German lines.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The Waffen-SS continued to expand in 1945. January saw the 32nd SS Volunteer Grenadier Division "30 Januar" formed from the remnants of other units and staff from the SS-Junkerschules. In February, the Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS "Charlemagne" was upgraded to a division and became known as the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS "Charlemagne" (1st French). At this time, it had a strength of 7,340 men. The SS Volunteer Grenadier-Brigade Landstorm Nederland was upgraded to the 34th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division "Landstorm Nederland". The second SS Police division followed when the 35th SS and Police Grenadier Division was formed from SS Police units that had been transferred to the Waffen-SS. The Dirlewanger Brigade was reformed as the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS. As there was now a real shortage of Waffen-SS volunteers and conscripts, units from the army were attached to bring it up to strength. The third SS Cavalry division 37th SS Volunteer Cavalry Division "Lützow" was formed from the remnants of the 8 SS "Florian Geyer" and 22 SS "Maria Theresia", which had both been virtually destroyed. The last Waffen-SS division was the 38th SS Division "Nibelungen", which was formed from students and staff from the "SS-Junkerschule", but consisted of only around 6,000 men, the strength of a normal brigade.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Operation Nordwind was the last major German offensive on the Western Front. It began on 1 January 1945 in Alsace and Lorraine in north-eastern France, and it ended on 25 January. The initial attack was conducted by three Corps of the 1st Army. By 15 January, at least 17 German divisions (including units in the Colmar Pocket) were engaged, including the XIII SS Army Corps (17 SS "Götz von Berlichingen" and 38 SS "Nibelungen") and the 6 SS "Nord" and 10 SS "Frundsberg". At the same time, the Luftwaffe mounted a large offensive over the skies of France. Some 240 fighters were lost and just as many pilots. It was the 'last gasp' attempt for the Luftwaffe to take back air supremacy from the western allies.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Operation Solstice, or the "Stargard Tank Battle" (February 1945) was one of the last armoured offensive operations on the Eastern Front. It was a limited counter-attack by the three Corps of the Eleventh SS Panzer Army, which was being assembled in Pomerania, against the spearheads of the 1st Belorussian Front. Originally planned as a major offensive, it was executed as a more limited attack. It was repulsed by the Red Army, but helped to convince the Soviet High Command to postpone the planned attack on Berlin.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Initially, the attack achieved a total surprise, reaching the banks of the Ina River and, on 17 January, Arnswalde. Strong Soviet counter-attacks halted the advance, and the operation was called off. The III (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps, was pulled back to the Stargard and Stettin on the northern Oder River.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The East Pomeranian Offensive lasted from 24 February to 4 April, in Pomerania and West Prussia. The Waffen-SS units involved were the 11 SS "Nordland", 20 SS "Estonian", 23 SS "Nederland", 27 SS "Langemark", 28 SS "Wallonien", all in the III (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps, and the X SS Corps, which did not command any SS units.


title: Waffen-SS

text: In March 1945, the X SS Corps was encircled by the 1st Guards Tank Army, 3rd Shock Army, and the Polish 1st Army in the area of Dramburg. This pocket was destroyed by the Red Army on 7 March 1945. On 8 March 1945, the Soviet forces announced the capture of General Krappe and 8,000 men of the X SS Corps.


title: Waffen-SS

text: After the Ardennes offensive failed, in Hitler's estimation, the Nagykanizsa oilfields southwest of Lake Balaton were the most strategically valuable reserves on the Eastern Front. The SS Divisions were pulled out and refitted in Germany in preparation for Operation Spring Awakening ("Frühlingserwachsen"). Hitler ordered Dietrich's 6th SS Panzer Army to take the lead and move to Hungary in order to protect the oilfields and refineries there. The 6th SS Panzer Army was made up of the I SS Panzer Corps (1 SS and 12 SS "Hitlerjugend") and the II SS Panzer Corps (2 SS "Das Reich" and the 10 SS "Frundsberg"). Also present but not part of the 6th SS Panzer Army was the IV SS Panzer Corps (3 SS "Totenkopf" and 5 SS "Wiking").


title: Waffen-SS

text: This final German offensive in the east began on 6 March. The German forces attacked near Lake Balaton with the Sixth SS Panzer Army advancing northwards towards Budapest and the 2nd Panzer Army moving eastwards and south. Dietrich's army made "good progress" at first, but as they drew near the Danube, the combination of the muddy terrain and strong resistance of the Soviet forces ground them to a halt. The overwhelming numerical superiority of the Red Army made any defence impossible, yet Hitler somehow had believed victory was attainable.


title: Waffen-SS

text: After Operation Spring Awakening, the 6th SS Panzer Army withdrew towards Vienna and was involved what became known as the Vienna Offensive. The only major force to face the attacking Red Army was the II SS Panzer Corps (2 SS "Das Reich" and 3 SS "Totenkopf"), under the command of Wilhelm Bittrich, along with "ad hoc" forces made up of garrison and anti-aircraft units. Vienna fell to the Soviet forces on 13 April. Bittrich's II SS Panzer Corps had pulled out to the west that evening to avoid encirclement. The LSSAH retreated westward with less than 1,600 men and 16 tanks remaining.


title: Waffen-SS

text: This failure is famous for the "armband order" that followed. The order was issued to the Sixth SS Panzer Army commander Sepp Dietrich by Adolf Hitler, who claimed that the troops, and more importantly, the 1 SS , "did not fight as the situation demanded". As a mark of disgrace, the Waffen-SS units involved in the battle were ordered to remove their distinctive cuff titles. Dietrich did not relay the order to his troops.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The Army Group Vistula was formed in 1945 to protect Berlin from the advancing Red Army. It fought in the Battle of the Seelow Heights (16–19 April) and the Battle of Halbe (21 April – 1 May), both part of the Battle of Berlin. The Waffen-SS was represented by the III (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps.


title: Waffen-SS

text: On 23 April, "Brigadeführer" Wilhelm Mohnke was appointed by Hitler as Battle Commander for the centre government district (Zitadelle sector), which included the Reich Chancellery and "Führerbunker". Mohnke's command post was in the bunkers under the Reich Chancellery. He formed "Kampfgruppe Mohnke" (Battle Group Mohnke), divided into two weak regiments. It was made up of the LSSAH Flak Company, replacements from LSSAH Training and Reserve Battalion from Spreenhagan (under "Standartenfuhrer" Anhalt), 600 men from the "Begleit-Bataillon Reichsführer-SS", the Führer-Begleit-Company, and the core group—800 men of the LSSAH Guard Battalion assigned to guard the Führer.


title: Waffen-SS

text: On 23 April, the Reich Chancellery ordered "Brigadeführer" Gustav Krukenberg to proceed to Berlin with his men, who were reorganised as "Sturmbataillon" ("assault battalion") "Charlemagne". Between 320 and 330 French troops arrived in Berlin on 24 April after a long detour to avoid Soviet advance columns. Krukenberg was also appointed the commander of (Berlin) Defence Sector C. This included the "Nordland" Division, whose previous commander, Joachim Ziegler, was relieved of command the same day. On 27 April, after a futile defence, the remnants of "Nordland" were pushed back into the centre government district (Zitadelle sector) in Defence sector Z. There Krukenberg's "Nordland" headquarters was a carriage in the Stadtmitte U-Bahn station. The men of "Nordland" were now under Mohnke's overall command. Among the men were French, Latvian, and Scandinavian Waffen-SS troops.


title: Waffen-SS

text: A heavy artillery bombardment of the centre government district had begun on 20 April 1945 and lasted until the end of hostilities. Under the intense shelling, the SS troops put up stiff resistance which led to bitter and bloody street fighting with the Soviet Red Army forces. By 26 April, the "Nordland" defenders were pushed back into the Reichstag and Reich Chancellery. There, over the next few days, the survivors (mainly French SS troops from the former 33 SS "Charlemagne") fought in vain against the Soviet army forces.


title: Waffen-SS

text: On 30 April, after receiving news of Hitler's suicide, orders were issued that those who could do so were to break out. Prior to the break-out, Mohnke briefed all commanders that could be reached within the Zitadelle sector about Hitler's death and the planned break-out. The break out started at 2300 hours on 1 May. There were ten main groups that attempted to head northwest towards Mecklenburg. Fierce fighting continued all around, especially in the Weidendammer Bridge area. What was left of the 11 SS "Nordland" under "Brigadeführer" Krukenberg fought hard in that area, but the Soviet artillery, anti-tank guns and tanks destroyed the groups. Several very small groups managed to reach the Americans at the Elbe's west bank, but most, including Mohnke's group, could not make it through the Soviet rings.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Himmler fled and attempted to go into hiding. Using a forged paybook under the name of Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger, he fled south on 11 May to Friedrichskoog. On 21 May, Himmler and two aides were detained at a checkpoint set up by former Soviet POWs and then handed over to the British Army. On 23 May, after Himmler had admitted his real identity, a doctor attempted to examine him. However, Himmler bit into a hidden cyanide pill and collapsed onto the floor. He was dead within 15 minutes.


title: Waffen-SS

text: All divisions in the Waffen-SS were ordered in a single series of numbers as formed, regardless of type. A total of 39 were formed, beginning with the initial three in 1933 and ramping up to nine alone in 1945. Those tagged with nationalities were at least nominally recruited from those nationalities. Many of the late-formed higher-numbered units were in fact small battlegroups ("Kampfgruppen"), and divisions in name only.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Military historian Rüdiger Overmans estimates that the Waffen-SS suffered 314,000 dead. Casualty rates were not significantly higher than in the Wehrmacht overall and were comparable to those among the armoured divisions of the army and the Luftwaffe paratroop formations.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The "Allgemeine SS" was responsible for the administration of both the concentration and extermination camps. Many members of it and the "SS-Totenkopfverbände" subsequently became members of the Waffen-SS, forming the initial core of the 3rd SS "Totenkopf" Division. A number of SS medical personnel who were members of the Waffen-SS were convicted of crimes during the "Doctors' trials" in Nuremberg, held between 1946 and 1947 for the Nazi human experimentation they performed at the camps.


title: Waffen-SS

text: According to the "Modern Genocide: The Definitive Resource and Document Collection", the Waffen-SS had played a "paramount role" in the ideological war of extermination ("Vernichtungskrieg"), and not just as frontline or rear area security formations: a third of the "Einsatzgruppen" (mobile killing squads) members which were responsible for mass murder, especially of Jews, Slavs and communists, had been recruited from Waffen-SS personnel prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Waffen-SS construction office built the gas chambers at Auschwitz, and, according to Rudolf Höss, about 7,000 served as guards at that camp.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Many Waffen-SS members and units were responsible for war crimes against civilians and allied servicemen. After the war the SS organisation as a whole was held to be a criminal organisation by the post-war German government. Formations such as the "Dirlewanger" and Kaminski Brigades were singled out, and many others participated in large-scale massacres or smaller-scale killings such as murder of 34 captured allied servicemen ordered by Josef Kieffer during Operation Bulbasket in 1944, the Houtman affair, or murders perpetrated by Heinrich Boere. The listed Waffen-SS units were responsible for the following massacres:


title: Waffen-SS

text: The linking of the SS-VT with the "SS-Totenkopfverbände" (SS-TV) in 1938 raised important questions about Waffen-SS criminality, since the SS-TV were already responsible for the imprisonment, torture, and murder of Jews and other political opponents through providing the personnel for manning the concentration camps. Their leader, Theodor Eicke, who was the commandant of Dachau, inspector of the camps, and murderer of Ernst Röhm, later became the commander of the 3rd SS "Totenkopf" Division. With the invasion of Poland, the "Totenkopfverbände" troops were called on to carry out so-called "police and security measures" in rear areas. What these measures entailed is demonstrated by the record of "SS Totenkopf Standarte Brandenburg". It arrived in Włocławek on 22 September 1939 and embarked on a four-day "Jewish action" that included the burning of synagogues and the execution en masse of the leaders of the Jewish community. On 29 September the Standarte travelled to Bydgoszcz to conduct an "intelligentsia action". Approximately 800 Polish civilians and what the "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD) termed "potential resistance leaders" were killed. Later the formation became the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf", but from the start they were among the first executors of a policy of systematic extermination.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Waffen-SS formations were found guilty of war crimes, especially in the opening and closing phases of the war. In addition to documented atrocities, Waffen-SS units assisted in rounding up Eastern European Jews for deportation and utilised scorched earth tactics during rear security operations. Some Waffen-SS personnel convalesced at concentration camps, from which they were drawn, by serving guard duties. Other members of the Waffen-SS were more directly involved in genocide.


title: Waffen-SS

text: The end of the war saw a number of war crime trials, including the Malmedy massacre trial. The counts of indictment related to the massacre of more than 300 American prisoners in the vicinity of Malmedy, between 16 December 1944 and 13 January 1945, and the massacre of 100 Belgian civilians mainly in the vicinity of Stavelot.


title: Waffen-SS

text: During the Nuremberg Trials, the Waffen-SS was declared a criminal organisation for its major involvement in war crimes and for being an "integral part" of the SS. An exception was made for conscripts who were not given a choice in joining the ranks, and had not committed "such crimes". They were determined to be exempt.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Waffen-SS veterans in post-war Germany played a large role, through publications and political pressure, in the efforts to rehabilitate the reputation of the Waffen-SS, which had committed many war crimes during World War II. High ranking German politicians such as Konrad Adenauer, Franz Josef Strauss and Kurt Schumacher courted former Waffen-SS members and their veteran organisation, HIAG, in an effort to tap into the voter potential, and helped deflect blame for war crimes onto other branches of the SS. A small number of veterans served in the new German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, something that raised national and international unease in regards to how it would affect the democratic nature of the new army.


title: Waffen-SS

text: SS Major General Heinz Lammerding, who commanded the SS Division Das Reich that perpetrated the Tulle and the Oradour-sur-Glane massacres in occupied France, died in 1971, following a successful business career in West Germany. The West German government refused to extradite him to France.


title: Waffen-SS

text: A historical review in Germany of the impact of Waffen-SS veterans in post-war German society continues, and a number of books on the subject have been published in recent years.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Waffen-SS veterans have received pensions (West Germany's "War Victims' Assistance Act", or the "Bundesversorgungsgesetz") from the German government. According to "The Times of Israel", "The benefits come through the Federal Pension Act, which was passed in 1950 to support war victims, whether civilians or veterans of the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS."


title: Waffen-SS

text: On 22 June 2005, the Italian military court in La Spezia found ten former Waffen-SS officers and NCOs living in Germany guilty of participation in the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre and sentenced them "in absentia" to life imprisonment. However, extradition requests from Italy were rejected by Germany.


title: Waffen-SS

text: In 1990, Latvian Legion veterans started commemorating "Legionnaire Day" (Leģionāru diena) in Latvia. On 21 February 2012, The Council of Europe's Commission against Racism and Intolerance published its report on Latvia (fourth monitoring cycle), in which it condemned commemorations of persons who fought in the Waffen-SS.


title: Waffen-SS

text: Estonian Waffen SS Grenadier Division veterans are among the participants of yearly commemoration of the Battle of Tannenberg Line at Sinimäed Hills in Estonia.


title: Waffen-SS

text: HIAG (, literally "Mutual aid association of former Waffen-SS members") was a lobby group and a revisionist veterans' organisation founded by former high-ranking Waffen-SS personnel in West Germany in 1951. It campaigned for the legal, economic and historical rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS, using contacts with political parties to manipulate them for its purposes. Kurt Meyer, "Brigadeführer" of the 12th SS Division, a convicted war criminal, was HIAG's most effective spokesperson.


title: Waffen-SS

text: HIAG's historical revisionism encompassed multi-prong propaganda efforts, including periodicals, books and public speeches, alongside a publishing house that served as a platform for its publicity aims. This extensive body of work – 57 book titles and more than 50 years of monthly periodicals – have been described by historians as revisionist apologia: [a] "chorus of self-justification"; "crucible of historical revisionism"; "false" and "outrageous" claims; "most important works of [Waffen-SS] apologist literature" (in reference to books by Hausser and Steiner); and "exculpating multi-volume chronicle" (in reference to the history of the SS Division ).


title: Waffen-SS

text: Always in touch with its Nazi past, HIAG was a subject of significant controversy, both in West Germany and abroad, since its founding. The organisation drifted into right-wing extremism in its later history. It was disbanded in 1992 at the federal level, but local groups, along with the organisation's monthly periodical, continued to exist at least into the 2000s.


title: Waffen-SS

text: While the HIAG leadership only partially achieved the goals of legal and economic rehabilitation of Waffen-SS, falling short of their "extravagant fantasies about [Waffen-SS's] past and future", HIAG's propaganda efforts have led to a reshaping of the image of Waffen-SS in popular culture. The results are still felt, with scholarly works being drowned out by a "veritable avalanche of titles", including amateur historical studies, memoirs, picture books, websites, and wargames.


title: Halle Bailey

text: Halle Lynn Bailey (born March 27, 2000) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is best known for being one half of the musical duo Chloe x Halle with her sister Chlöe Bailey, together earning five Grammy Award nominations since 2018. Her role as Skyler Forster in the television sitcom "Grown-ish" has earned her a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series at the 2020 NAACP Image Awards. She will star in the 2023 film adaptation of "The Color Purple", and in the same year will portray Ariel in the 2023 live-action Disney film "The Little Mermaid", which is based on the 1989 animated film of the same name, the latter of which being her most notable role.


title: Halle Bailey

text: Halle Lynn Bailey was born on March 27, 2000, and raised in Mableton, Georgia, with her older sister Chloe Bailey, later moving together to Los Angeles in mid-2012. The sisters started singing since Chloe harmonized to "Mary Had a Little Lamb" while their mother did the housework. They also started writing their own songs, learning to play instruments through watching YouTube tutorials. Their father and co-manager, Doug Bailey, who "taught [them] to do everything on [their] own," began teaching them how to write songs at the ages of 8 and 10.


title: Halle Bailey

text: While in Georgia, Bailey played minor acting roles in films such as "Joyful Noise" (2012), having begun a career in acting at the age of 3, and the Disney television film "Let It Shine" (2012). The duo launched a YouTube channel at the ages of 11 and 13 respectively, with a cover of Beyoncé's "Best Thing I Never Had". Their first video to go "viral" was a cover of another of Beyoncé's tracks, "Pretty Hurts". They first performed as Chloe x Halle when uploading covers of pop songs onto their channel. The duo made their talk show debut when they appeared on "The Ellen Show" in April 2012. In 2013, the Bailey sisters won Season 5 of "Radio Disney's The Next Big Thing", with them making a cameo appearance in the Disney series "Austin & Ally" performing the song "" the following September.


title: Halle Bailey

text: In May 2015, both sisters were in talks to sign on with Parkwood Entertainment, with the contracts submitted to the Manhattan Supreme Court, as both sisters were then minors detailing that they "[would] receive at least $60,000 and advances that could total almost $1 million if they make at least six albums." Parkwood Entertainment, which was founded by Beyoncé, finally signed them in 2016 for a five-year contract, becoming "[her] first true musical successors," per NPR, as well as being considered " Beyoncé's prodigies." The Bailey sisters were featured, along with Beyoncé, twin sisters Lisa-Kainde Diaz and Naomi Diaz, Amandla Stenberg and Zendaya in the clip for "Freedom" in the formermost's eponymous visual album "", which premiered on HBO in April 2016.


title: Halle Bailey

text: Chloe x Halle made their professional debut with the EP, "Sugar Symphony", which was released under Parkwood on April 29, 2016. The duo were also featured as the opening act for the European part of Beyoncé's Formation World Tour, held between late June and early August 2016.


title: Halle Bailey

text: Nearly a year after, the duo released their critically acclaimed mixtape, "The Two of Us", on March 16, 2017. The mixtape was featured on "Rolling Stone" magazine's Best R&B Albums of 2017 list. On December 29, 2017, the duo released the theme song for the TV series "Grown-ish," entitled "Grown". Halle played Skylar "Sky" Forster in a recurring capacity in the first season before being upgraded to series regular starting with the second. She departed the series at the end of the fourth season, when her character graduated from college.


title: Halle Bailey

text: Both "Grown" and "The Kids Are Alright" served as the lead and second singles respectively of Chloe x Halle's debut studio album, "The Kids Are Alright", which they announced in late February 2018. The album was paired with a visual. Chloe x Halle released their debut studio album, "The Kids Are Alright", on March 23, 2018, to critical acclaim. Their single, "Warrior", appeared on both the soundtrack for the film "A Wrinkle in Time" (2018), as well as their debut album.


title: Halle Bailey

text: On May 31, 2018, it was announced that they would be the opening act for the U.S. leg of Beyoncé and Jay-Z's On the Run II Tour, alongside DJ Khaled. The duo were nominated for two Grammy Awards in December 2018, namely Best New Artist and Best Urban Contemporary Album (for "The Kids Are Alright").


title: Halle Bailey

text: On February 3, 2019, Chloe x Halle's performance of "America the Beautiful" at the Super Bowl LIII was praised by their mentor Beyoncé in addition to several news publications. A week later, on February 10, 2019, the duo honored American musician Donny Hathaway by performing his 1972 single "Where Is the Love" at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards.


title: Halle Bailey

text: On June 12, 2020, the duo released their anticipated sophomore album, "Ungodly Hour", to critical acclaim. The album debuted at number 16 on the "Billboard" 200 chart with 24,000 units sold. "Do It" also became their first entry on the "Billboard" Hot 100, debuting at number 83, on the chart dated June 27, 2020.


title: Halle Bailey

text: Chloe x Halle performed the American national anthem at the kickoff game for the 2020 NFL season in September 2020. The duo hosted the "Glamour" Women of the Year Awards in October 2020. In November 2020, they received nominations for Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Video of the Year, Best Dance Performance and The Ashford And Simpson Songwriter's Award at the 2020 Soul Train Music Awards. They also received nominations for Best Progressive R&B Album, Best R&B Song and Best Traditional R&B Performance at the forthcoming 63rd Annual Grammy Awards. They performed "Baby Girl" at the 2020 Billboard Women in Music ceremony, where Beyoncé presented them with the Rising Star Award.


title: Halle Bailey

text: On July 3, 2019, Disney announced that Bailey had been cast as Princess Ariel in the upcoming live-action remake of "The Little Mermaid", set to be directed by Rob Marshall. She will also record and perform the soundtrack for the film. Director Rob Marshall said in a statement "After an extensive search, it was abundantly clear that Halle possesses that rare combination of spirit, heart, youth, innocence, and substance—plus a glorious singing voice—all intrinsic qualities necessary to play this iconic role", Bailey's casting as Ariel caused controversy, with some claiming that casting an African-American in the role of Ariel was unfaithful to the original character. Disney responded to the public with an open letter defending their casting. Jodi Benson, Ariel's original voice actress, also defended the casting of Bailey saying, "the most important thing is to tell the story" and that "the spirit of a character is what really matters".


title: Halle Bailey

text: On October 1, 2021, Bailey made her debut solo performance with a rendition of the Disney song "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", in the televised event, "The Most Magical Story on Earth: 50 Years of Walt Disney World", which celebrated Disney World's 50th Anniversary.


title: Halle Bailey

text: Bailey's musical influences came from jazz and listening to Billie Holiday from a young age. She has cited the singer as one of the major influences on her vocals. In addition to her singing, she plays the guitar.


title: Halle Bailey

text: Bailey's pastimes include swimming, running and biking as well as making beaded earrings and necklaces, which she started selling on Etsy in April 2021, and the following May, she adopted a cat named Poseidon. Bailey resides in North Hollywood, Los Angeles with her sister. In late 2021, she began dating rapper and YouTuber DDG.


title: Hard disk drive

text: A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored and retrieved in any order. HDDs are a type of non-volatile storage, retaining stored data when powered off. Modern HDDs are typically in the form of a small rectangular box.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Introduced by IBM in 1956, HDDs were the dominant secondary storage device for general-purpose computers beginning in the early 1960s. HDDs maintained this position into the modern era of servers and personal computers, though personal computing devices produced in large volume, like cell phones and tablets, rely on flash memory storage devices. More than 224 companies have produced HDDs historically, though after extensive industry consolidation most units are manufactured by Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. HDDs dominate the volume of storage produced (exabytes per year) for servers. Though production is growing slowly (by exabytes shipped), sales revenues and unit shipments are declining because solid-state drives (SSDs) have higher data-transfer rates, higher areal storage density, somewhat better reliability, and much lower latency and access times.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The revenues for SSDs, most of which use NAND flash memory, slightly exceeded those for HDDs in 2018. Flash storage products had more than twice the revenue of hard disk drives . Though SSDs have four to nine times higher cost per bit, they are replacing HDDs in applications where speed, power consumption, small size, high capacity and durability are important. , the cost per bit of SSDs is falling, and the price premium over HDDs has narrowed.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The primary characteristics of an HDD are its capacity and performance. Capacity is specified in unit prefixes corresponding to powers of : a 1-terabyte (TB) drive has a capacity of gigabytes (GB; where 1 gigabyte = (10) bytes). Typically, some of an HDD's capacity is unavailable to the user because it is used by the file system and the computer operating system, and possibly inbuilt redundancy for error correction and recovery. There can be confusion regarding storage capacity, since capacities are stated in decimal gigabytes (powers of 1000) by HDD manufacturers, whereas the most commonly used operating systems report capacities in powers of 1024, which results in a smaller number than advertised. Performance is specified as the time required to move the heads to a track or cylinder (average access time), the time it takes for the desired sector to move under the head (average latency, which is a function of the physical rotational speed in revolutions per minute), and finally the speed at which the data is transmitted (data rate).


title: Hard disk drive

text: The two most common form factors for modern HDDs are 3.5-inch, for desktop computers, and 2.5-inch, primarily for laptops. HDDs are connected to systems by standard interface cables such as PATA (Parallel ATA), SATA (Serial ATA), USB or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) cables.


title: Hard disk drive

text: 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 52 disks (100 surfaces used). The 350 had a single arm with two read/write heads, one facing up and the other down, that moved both horizontally between a pair of adjacent platters and vertically from one pair of platters to a second set. Variants of the IBM 350 were the IBM 355, IBM 7300 and IBM 1405.


title: Hard disk drive

text: the IBM 350 and similar drives. The 1301 consisted of one (for Model 1) or two (for model 2) modules, each containing 25 platters, each platter about thick and in diameter. While the earlier IBM disk drives used only two read/write heads per arm, the 1301 used an array of 48 heads (comb), each array moving horizontally as a single unit, one head per surface used. Cylinder-mode read/write operations were supported, and the heads flew about 250 micro-inches (about 6 µm) above the platter surface. Motion of the head array depended upon a binary adder system of hydraulic actuators which assured repeatable positioning. The 1301 cabinet was about the size of three home refrigerators placed side by side, storing the equivalent of about 21 million eight-bit bytes per module. Access time was about a quarter of a second.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Also in 1962, IBM introduced the model 1311 disk drive, which was about the size of a washing machine and stored two million characters on a removable disk pack. Users could buy additional packs and interchange them as needed, much like reels of magnetic tape. Later models of removable pack drives, from IBM and others, became the norm in most computer installations and reached capacities of 300 megabytes by the early 1980s. Non-removable HDDs were called "fixed disk" drives.


title: Hard disk drive

text: In 1963 IBM introduced the 1302, with twice the track capacity and twice as many tracks per cylinder as the 1301. The 1302 had one (for Model 1) or two (for Model 2) modules, each containing a separate comb for the first 250 tracks and the last 250 tracks.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Some high-performance HDDs were manufactured with one head per track, "e.g.", Burroughs B-475 in 1964, IBM 2305 in 1970, so that no time was lost physically moving the heads to a track and the only latency was the time for the desired block of data to rotate into position under the head. Known as fixed-head or head-per-track disk drives, they were very expensive and are no longer in production.


title: Hard disk drive

text: 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.


title: Hard disk drive

text: In 1974 IBM introduced the swinging arm actuator, made feasible because the Winchester recording heads function well when skewed to the recorded tracks. The simple design of the IBM GV (Gulliver) drive, invented at IBM's UK Hursley Labs, became IBM's most licensed electro-mechanical invention of all time, the actuator and filtration system being adopted in the 1980s eventually for all HDDs, and still universal nearly 40 years and 10 Billion arms later.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Like the first removable pack drive, the first "Winchester" drives used platters in diameter. In 1978 IBM introduced a swing arm drive, the IBM 0680 (Piccolo), with eight inch platters, exploring the possibility that smaller platters might offer advantages. Other eight inch drives followed, then drives, sized to replace the contemporary floppy disk drives. The latter were primarily intended for the then fledgling personal computer (PC) market.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Over time, as recording densities were greatly increased, further reductions in disk diameter to 3.5" and 2.5" were found to be optimum. Powerful rare earth magnet materials became affordable during this period, and were complementary to the swing arm actuator design to make possible the compact form factors of modern HDDs.


title: Hard disk drive

text: As the 1980s began, HDDs were a rare and very expensive additional feature in PCs, but by the late 1980s their cost had been reduced to the point where they were standard on all but the cheapest computers.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Most HDDs in the early 1980s were sold to PC end users as an external, add-on subsystem. The subsystem was not sold under the drive manufacturer's name but under the subsystem manufacturer's name such as Corvus Systems and Tallgrass Technologies, or under the PC system manufacturer's name such as the Apple ProFile. The IBM PC/XT in 1983 included an internal 10 MB HDD, and soon thereafter internal HDDs proliferated on personal computers.


title: Hard disk drive

text: External HDDs remained popular for much longer on the Apple Macintosh. Many Macintosh computers made between 1986 and 1998 featured a SCSI port on the back, making external expansion simple. Older compact Macintosh computers did not have user-accessible hard drive bays (indeed, the Macintosh 128K, Macintosh 512K, and Macintosh Plus did not feature a hard drive bay at all), so on those models external SCSI disks were the only reasonable option for expanding upon any internal storage.


title: Hard disk drive

text: HDD improvements have been driven by increasing areal density, listed in the table above. Applications expanded through the 2000s, from the mainframe computers of the late 1950s to most mass storage applications including computers and consumer applications such as storage of entertainment content.


title: Hard disk drive

text: In the 2000s and 2010s, NAND began supplanting HDDs in applications requiring portability or high performance. NAND performance is improving faster than HDDs, and applications for HDDs are eroding. In 2018, the largest hard drive had a capacity of 15 TB, while the largest capacity SSD had a capacity of 100 TB. , HDDs were forecast to reach 100 TB capacities around 2025, but the expected pace of improvement was pared back to 50 TB by 2026. Smaller form factors, 1.8-inches and below, were discontinued around 2010. The cost of solid-state storage (NAND), represented by Moore's law, is improving faster than HDDs. NAND has a higher price elasticity of demand than HDDs, and this drives market growth. During the late 2000s and 2010s, the product life cycle of HDDs entered a mature phase, and slowing sales may indicate the onset of the declining phase.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The 2011 Thailand floods damaged the manufacturing plants and impacted hard disk drive cost adversely between 2011 and 2013.


title: Hard disk drive

text: In 2019, Western Digital closed its last Malaysian HDD factory due to decreasing demand, to focus on SSD production. All three remaining HDD manufacturers have had decreasing demand for their HDDs since 2014.


title: Hard disk drive

text: A modern HDD records data by magnetizing a thin film of ferromagnetic material on both sides of a disk. Sequential changes in the direction of magnetization represent binary data bits. The data is read from the disk by detecting the transitions in magnetization. User data is encoded using an encoding scheme, such as run-length limited encoding, which determines how the data is represented by the magnetic transitions.


title: Hard disk drive

text: A typical HDD design consists of a "" that holds flat circular disks, called platters, which hold the recorded data. The platters are made from a non-magnetic material, usually aluminum alloy, glass, or ceramic. They are coated with a shallow layer of magnetic material typically 10–20 nm in depth, with an outer layer of carbon for protection. For reference, a standard piece of copy paper is thick.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The platters in contemporary HDDs are spun at speeds varying from 4,200 RPM in energy-efficient portable devices, to 15,000 rpm for high-performance servers. The first HDDs spun at 1,200 rpm and, for many years, 3,600 rpm was the norm. , the platters in most consumer-grade HDDs spin at 5,400 or 7,200 RPM.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Information is written to and read from a platter as it rotates past devices called read-and-write heads that are positioned to operate very close to the magnetic surface, with their flying height often in the range of tens of nanometers. The read-and-write head is used to detect and modify the magnetization of the material passing immediately under it.


title: Hard disk drive

text: In modern drives, there is one head for each magnetic platter surface on the spindle, mounted on a common arm. An actuator arm (or access arm) moves the heads on an arc (roughly radially) across the platters as they spin, allowing each head to access almost the entire surface of the platter as it spins. The arm is moved using a voice coil actuator or in some older designs a stepper motor. Early hard disk drives wrote data at some constant bits per second, resulting in all tracks having the same amount of data per track but modern drives (since the 1990s) use zone bit recording – increasing the write speed from inner to outer zone and thereby storing more data per track in the outer zones.


title: Hard disk drive

text: In modern drives, the small size of the magnetic regions creates the danger that their magnetic state might be lost because of thermal effects — thermally induced magnetic instability which is commonly known as the "superparamagnetic limit". To counter this, the platters are coated with two parallel magnetic layers, separated by a three-atom layer of the non-magnetic element ruthenium, and the two layers are magnetized in opposite orientation, thus reinforcing each other. Another technology used to overcome thermal effects to allow greater recording densities is perpendicular recording, first shipped in 2005, and used in certain HDDs.


title: Hard disk drive

text: In 2004, a higher-density recording media was introduced, consisting of coupled soft and hard magnetic layers. So-called "exchange spring media" magnetic storage technology, also known as "exchange coupled composite media", allows good writability due to the write-assist nature of the soft layer. However, the thermal stability is determined only by the hardest layer and not influenced by the soft layer.


title: Hard disk drive

text: A typical HDD has two electric motors: a spindle motor that spins the disks and an actuator (motor) that positions the read/write head assembly across the spinning disks. The disk motor has an external rotor attached to the disks; the stator windings are fixed in place. Opposite the actuator at the end of the head support arm is the read-write head; thin printed-circuit cables connect the read-write heads to amplifier electronics mounted at the pivot of the actuator. The head support arm is very light, but also stiff; in modern drives, acceleration at the head reaches 550 "g".


title: Hard disk drive

text: The "" is a permanent magnet and moving coil motor that swings the heads to the desired position. A metal plate supports a squat neodymium-iron-boron (NIB) high-flux magnet. Beneath this plate is the moving coil, often referred to as the "voice coil" by analogy to the coil in loudspeakers, which is attached to the actuator hub, and beneath that is a second NIB magnet, mounted on the bottom plate of the motor (some drives have only one magnet).


title: Hard disk drive

text: The voice coil itself is shaped rather like an arrowhead and is made of doubly coated copper magnet wire. The inner layer is insulation, and the outer is thermoplastic, which bonds the coil together after it is wound on a form, making it self-supporting. The portions of the coil along the two sides of the arrowhead (which point to the center of the actuator bearing) then interact with the magnetic field of the fixed magnet. Current flowing radially outward along one side of the arrowhead and radially inward on the other produces the tangential force. If the magnetic field were uniform, each side would generate opposing forces that would cancel each other out. Therefore, the surface of the magnet is half north pole and half south pole, with the radial dividing line in the middle, causing the two sides of the coil to see opposite magnetic fields and produce forces that add instead of canceling. Currents along the top and bottom of the coil produce radial forces that do not rotate the head.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The HDD's electronics control the movement of the actuator and the rotation of the disk and perform reads and writes on demand from the disk controller. Feedback of the drive electronics is accomplished by means of special segments of the disk dedicated to servo feedback. These are either complete concentric circles (in the case of dedicated servo technology) or segments interspersed with real data (in the case of embedded servo, otherwise known as sector servo technology). The servo feedback optimizes the signal-to-noise ratio of the GMR sensors by adjusting the voice coil motor to rotate the arm. A more modern servo system also employs milli and/or micro actuators to more accurately position the read/write heads. The spinning of the disks uses fluid-bearing spindle motors. Modern disk firmware is capable of scheduling reads and writes efficiently on the platter surfaces and remapping sectors of the media that have failed.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Modern drives make extensive use of error correction codes (ECCs), particularly Reed–Solomon error correction. These techniques store extra bits, determined by mathematical formulas, for each block of data; the extra bits allow many errors to be corrected invisibly. The extra bits themselves take up space on the HDD, but allow higher recording densities to be employed without causing uncorrectable errors, resulting in much larger storage capacity. For example, a typical 1 TB hard disk with 512-byte sectors provides additional capacity of about 93 GB for the ECC data.


title: Hard disk drive

text: In the newest drives, , low-density parity-check codes (LDPC) were supplanting Reed–Solomon; LDPC codes enable performance close to the Shannon Limit and thus provide the highest storage density available.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Typical hard disk drives attempt to "remap" the data in a physical sector that is failing to a spare physical sector provided by the drive's "spare sector pool" (also called "reserve pool"), while relying on the ECC to recover stored data while the number of errors in a bad sector is still low enough. The S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) feature counts the total number of errors in the entire HDD fixed by ECC (although not on all hard drives as the related S.M.A.R.T attributes "Hardware ECC Recovered" and "Soft ECC Correction" are not consistently supported), and the total number of performed sector remappings, as the occurrence of many such errors may predict an HDD failure.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The "No-ID Format", developed by IBM in the mid-1990s, contains information about which sectors are bad and where remapped sectors have been located.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Only a tiny fraction of the detected errors end up as not correctable. Examples of specified uncorrected bit read error rates include:


title: Hard disk drive

text: Within a given manufacturers model the uncorrected bit error rate is typically the same regardless of capacity of the drive.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The worst type of errors are silent data corruptions which are errors undetected by the disk firmware or the host operating system; some of these errors may be caused by hard disk drive malfunctions while others originate elsewhere in the connection between the drive and the host.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The rate of areal density advancement was similar to Moore's law (doubling every two years) through 2010: 60% per year during 1988–1996, 100% during 1996–2003 and 30% during 2003–2010. Speaking in 1997, Gordon Moore called the increase "flabbergasting", while observing later that growth cannot continue forever. Price improvement decelerated to −12% per year during 2010–2017, as the growth of areal density slowed. The rate of advancement for areal density slowed to 10% per year during 2010–2016, and there was difficulty in migrating from perpendicular recording to newer technologies.


title: Hard disk drive

text: As bit cell size decreases, more data can be put onto a single drive platter. In 2013, a production desktop 3 TB HDD (with four platters) would have had an areal density of about 500 Gbit/in which would have amounted to a bit cell comprising about 18 magnetic grains (11 by 1.6 grains). Since the mid-2000s areal density progress has been challenged by a superparamagnetic trilemma involving grain size, grain magnetic strength and ability of the head to write. In order to maintain acceptable signal to noise smaller grains are required; smaller grains may self-reverse (electrothermal instability) unless their magnetic strength is increased, but known write head materials are unable to generate a strong enough magnetic field sufficient to write the medium in the increasingly smaller space taken by grains.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Magnetic storage technologies are being developed to address this trilemma, and compete with flash memory–based solid-state drives (SSDs). In 2013, Seagate introduced shingled magnetic recording (SMR), intended as something of a "stopgap" technology between PMR and Seagate's intended successor heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), SMR utilises overlapping tracks for increased data density, at the cost of design complexity and lower data access speeds (particularly write speeds and random access 4k speeds).


title: Hard disk drive

text: By contrast, HGST (now part of Western Digital) focused on developing ways to seal helium-filled drives instead of the usual filtered air. Since turbulence and friction are reduced, higher areal densities can be achieved due to using a smaller track width, and the energy dissipated due to friction is lower as well, resulting in a lower power draw. Furthermore, more platters can be fit into the same enclosure space, although helium gas is notoriously difficult to prevent escaping. Thus, helium drives are completely sealed and do not have a breather port, unlike their air-filled counterparts.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Other recording technologies are either under research or have been commercially implemented to increase areal density, including Seagate's heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). HAMR requires a different architecture with redesigned media and read/write heads, new lasers, and new near-field optical transducers. HAMR is expected to ship commercially in late 2020 or 2021. Technical issues delayed the introduction of HAMR by a decade, from earlier projections of 2009, 2015, 2016, and the first half of 2019. Some drives have adopted dual independent actuator arms to increase read/write speeds and compete with SSDs. HAMR's planned successor, bit-patterned recording (BPR), has been removed from the roadmaps of Western Digital and Seagate. Western Digital's microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR), also referred to as energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR), was sampled in 2020, with the first EAMR drive, the Ultrastar HC550, shipping in late 2020. Two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) and "current perpendicular to plane" giant magnetoresistance (CPP/GMR) heads have appeared in research papers. A 3D-actuated vacuum drive (3DHD) concept has been proposed.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Depending upon assumptions on feasibility and timing of these technologies, Seagate forecasts that areal density will grow 20% per year during 2020–2034.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The capacity of a hard disk drive, as reported by an operating system to the end user, is smaller than the amount stated by the manufacturer for several reasons, e.g., the operating system using some space, use of some space for data redundancy, space use for file system structures. Confusion of decimal prefixes and binary prefixes can also lead to errors.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Modern hard disk drives appear to their host controller as a contiguous set of logical blocks, and the gross drive capacity is calculated by multiplying the number of blocks by the block size. This information is available from the manufacturer's product specification, and from the drive itself through use of operating system functions that invoke low-level drive commands.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Older IBM and compatible drives, e.g., IBM 3390, using the CKD record format have variable length records; such drive capacity calculations must take into account the characteristics of the records. Some newer DASD simulate CKD, and the same capacity formulae apply.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The gross capacity of older sector-oriented HDDs is calculated as the product of the number of cylinders per recording zone, the number of bytes per sector (most commonly 512), and the count of zones of the drive. Some modern SATA drives also report cylinder-head-sector (CHS) capacities, but these are not physical parameters because the reported values are constrained by historic operating system interfaces. The C/H/S scheme has been replaced by logical block addressing (LBA), a simple linear addressing scheme that locates blocks by an integer index, which starts at LBA 0 for the first block and increments thereafter. When using the C/H/S method to describe modern large drives, the number of heads is often set to 64, although a typical modern hard disk drive has between one and four platters.


title: Hard disk drive

text: In modern HDDs, spare capacity for defect management is not included in the published capacity; however, in many early HDDs a certain number of sectors were reserved as spares, thereby reducing the capacity available to the operating system. Furthermore, many HDDs store their firmware in a reserved service zone, which is typically not accessible by the user, and is not included in the capacity calculation.


title: Hard disk drive

text: For RAID subsystems, data integrity and fault-tolerance requirements also reduce the realized capacity. For example, a RAID 1 array has about half the total capacity as a result of data mirroring, while a RAID 5 array with drives loses of capacity (which equals to the capacity of a single drive) due to storing parity information. RAID subsystems are multiple drives that appear to be one drive or more drives to the user, but provide fault tolerance. Most RAID vendors use checksums to improve data integrity at the block level. Some vendors design systems using HDDs with sectors of 520 bytes to contain 512 bytes of user data and eight checksum bytes, or by using separate 512-byte sectors for the checksum data.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Some systems may use hidden partitions for system recovery, reducing the capacity available to the end user without knowledge of special disk partitioning utilities like diskpart in Windows.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Data is stored on a hard drive in a series of logical blocks. Each block is delimited by markers identifying its start and end, error detecting and correcting information, and space between blocks to allow for minor timing variations. These blocks often contained 512 bytes of usable data, but other sizes have been used. As drive density increased, an initiative known as Advanced Format extended the block size to 4096 bytes of usable data, with a resulting significant reduction in the amount of disk space used for block headers, error checking data, and spacing.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The process of initializing these logical blocks on the physical disk platters is called "low-level formatting", which is usually performed at the factory and is not normally changed in the field. "High-level formatting" writes data structures used by the operating system to organize data files on the disk. This includes writing partition and file system structures into selected logical blocks. For example, some of the disk space will be used to hold a directory of disk file names and a list of logical blocks associated with a particular file.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Examples of partition mapping scheme include Master boot record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT). Examples of data structures stored on disk to retrieve files include the File Allocation Table (FAT) in the DOS file system and inodes in many UNIX file systems, as well as other operating system data structures (also known as metadata). As a consequence, not all the space on an HDD is available for user files, but this system overhead is usually small compared with user data.


title: Hard disk drive

text: In the early days of computing the total capacity of HDDs was specified in 7 to 9 decimal digits frequently truncated with the idiom "millions".


title: Hard disk drive

text: By the 1970s, the total capacity of HDDs was given by manufacturers using SI decimal prefixes such as megabytes (1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes), gigabytes (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes) and terabytes (1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes). However, capacities of memory are usually quoted using a binary interpretation of the prefixes, i.e. using powers of 1024 instead of 1000.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Software reports hard disk drive or memory capacity in different forms using either decimal or binary prefixes. The Microsoft Windows family of operating systems uses the binary convention when reporting storage capacity, so an HDD offered by its manufacturer as a 1 TB drive is reported by these operating systems as a 931 GB HDD. Mac OS X 10.6 ("Snow Leopard") uses decimal convention when reporting HDD capacity. The default behavior of the command-line utility on Linux is to report the HDD capacity as a number of 1024-byte units.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The difference between the decimal and binary prefix interpretation caused some consumer confusion and led to class action suits against HDD manufacturers. The plaintiffs argued that the use of decimal prefixes effectively misled consumers while the defendants denied any wrongdoing or liability, asserting that their marketing and advertising complied in all respects with the law and that no class member sustained any damages or injuries. In 2020, a California court ruled that use of the decimal prefixes with a decimal meaning was not misleading.


title: Hard disk drive

text: IBM's first hard disk drive, the IBM 350, used a stack of fifty 24-inch platters, stored 3.75 MB of data (approximately the size of one modern digital picture), and was of a size comparable to two large refrigerators. In 1962, IBM introduced its model 1311 disk, which used six 14-inch (nominal size) platters in a removable pack and was roughly the size of a washing machine. This became a standard platter size for many years, used also by other manufacturers. The IBM 2314 used platters of the same size in an eleven-high pack and introduced the "drive in a drawer" layout. sometimes called the"pizza oven", although the "drawer" was not the complete drive. Into the 1970s HDDs were offered in standalone cabinets of varying dimensions containing from one to four HDDs.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Beginning in the late 1960s drives were offered that fit entirely into a chassis that would mount in a 19-inch rack. Digital's RK05 and RL01 were early examples using single 14-inch platters in removable packs, the entire drive fitting in a 10.5-inch-high rack space (six rack units). In the mid-to-late 1980s the similarly sized Fujitsu Eagle, which used (coincidentally) 10.5-inch platters, was a popular product.


title: Hard disk drive

text: With increasing sales of microcomputers having built in floppy-disk drives (FDDs), HDDs that would fit to the FDD mountings became desirable. Starting with the Shugart Associates SA1000, HDD "form factors" initially followed those of 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disk drives. Although referred to by these nominal sizes, the actual sizes for those three drives respectively are 9.5", 5.75" and 4" wide. Because there were no smaller floppy disk drives, smaller HDD form factors such as 2½-inch drives (actually 2.75" wide) developed from product offerings or industry standards.


title: Hard disk drive

text: , 2½-inch and 3½-inch hard disks are the most popular sizes. By 2009, all manufacturers had discontinued the development of new products for the 1.3-inch, 1-inch and 0.85-inch form factors due to falling prices of flash memory, which has no moving parts. While nominal sizes are in inches, actual dimensions are specified in millimeters.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The factors that limit the time to access the data on an HDD are mostly related to the mechanical nature of the rotating disks and moving heads, including:


title: Hard disk drive

text: Defragmentation is a procedure used to minimize delay in retrieving data by moving related items to physically proximate areas on the disk. Some computer operating systems perform defragmentation automatically. Although automatic defragmentation is intended to reduce access delays, performance will be temporarily reduced while the procedure is in progress.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Time to access data can be improved by increasing rotational speed (thus reducing latency) or by reducing the time spent seeking. Increasing areal density increases throughput by increasing data rate and by increasing the amount of data under a set of heads, thereby potentially reducing seek activity for a given amount of data. The time to access data has not kept up with throughput increases, which themselves have not kept up with growth in bit density and storage capacity.


title: Hard disk drive

text: , a typical 7,200-rpm desktop HDD has a sustained "disk-to-buffer" data transfer rate up to 1,030 Mbit/s. This rate depends on the track location; the rate is higher for data on the outer tracks (where there are more data sectors per rotation) and lower toward the inner tracks (where there are fewer data sectors per rotation); and is generally somewhat higher for 10,000-rpm drives. A current widely used standard for the "buffer-to-computer" interface is 3.0 Gbit/s SATA, which can send about 300 megabyte/s (10-bit encoding) from the buffer to the computer, and thus is still comfortably ahead of today's disk-to-buffer transfer rates. Data transfer rate (read/write) can be measured by writing a large file to disk using special file generator tools, then reading back the file. Transfer rate can be influenced by file system fragmentation and the layout of the files.


title: Hard disk drive

text: HDD data transfer rate depends upon the rotational speed of the platters and the data recording density. Because heat and vibration limit rotational speed, advancing density becomes the main method to improve sequential transfer rates. Higher speeds require a more powerful spindle motor, which creates more heat. While areal density advances by increasing both the number of tracks across the disk and the number of sectors per track, only the latter increases the data transfer rate for a given rpm. Since data transfer rate performance tracks only one of the two components of areal density, its performance improves at a lower rate.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Other performance considerations include quality-adjusted price, power consumption, audible noise, and both operating and non-operating shock resistance.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Current hard drives connect to a computer over one of several bus types, including parallel ATA, Serial ATA, SCSI, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), and Fibre Channel. Some drives, especially external portable drives, use IEEE 1394, or USB. All of these interfaces are digital; electronics on the drive process the analog signals from the read/write heads. Current drives present a consistent interface to the rest of the computer, independent of the data encoding scheme used internally, and independent of the physical number of disks and heads within the drive.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Typically a DSP in the electronics inside the drive takes the raw analog voltages from the read head and uses PRML and Reed–Solomon error correction to decode the data, then sends that data out the standard interface. That DSP also watches the error rate detected by error detection and correction, and performs bad sector remapping, data collection for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, and other internal tasks.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Modern interfaces connect the drive to the host interface with a single data/control cable. Each drive also has an additional power cable, usually direct to the power supply unit. Older interfaces had separate cables for data signals and for drive control signals.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Due to the extremely close spacing between the heads and the disk surface, HDDs are vulnerable to being damaged by a head crash – a failure of the disk in which the head scrapes across the platter surface, often grinding away the thin magnetic film and causing data loss. Head crashes can be caused by electronic failure, a sudden power failure, physical shock, contamination of the drive's internal enclosure, wear and tear, corrosion, or poorly manufactured platters and heads.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The HDD's spindle system relies on air density inside the disk enclosure to support the heads at their proper flying height while the disk rotates. HDDs require a certain range of air densities to operate properly. The connection to the external environment and density occurs through a small hole in the enclosure (about 0.5 mm in breadth), usually with a filter on the inside (the "breather filter"). If the air density is too low, then there is not enough lift for the flying head, so the head gets too close to the disk, and there is a risk of head crashes and data loss. Specially manufactured sealed and pressurized disks are needed for reliable high-altitude operation, above about . Modern disks include temperature sensors and adjust their operation to the operating environment. Breather holes can be seen on all disk drives – they usually have a sticker next to them, warning the user not to cover the holes. The air inside the operating drive is constantly moving too, being swept in motion by friction with the spinning platters. This air passes through an internal recirculation (or "recirc") filter to remove any leftover contaminants from manufacture, any particles or chemicals that may have somehow entered the enclosure, and any particles or outgassing generated internally in normal operation. Very high humidity present for extended periods of time can corrode the heads and platters. An exception to this are hermetically sealed, helium filled HDDs that largely eliminate environmental issues that can arise due to humidity or atmospheric pressure changes. Such HDDs were introduced by HGST in their first successful high volume implementation in 2013.


title: Hard disk drive

text: For giant magnetoresistive (GMR) heads in particular, a minor head crash from contamination (that does not remove the magnetic surface of the disk) still results in the head temporarily overheating, due to friction with the disk surface, and can render the data unreadable for a short period until the head temperature stabilizes (so called "thermal asperity", a problem which can partially be dealt with by proper electronic filtering of the read signal).


title: Hard disk drive

text: When the logic board of a hard disk fails, the drive can often be restored to functioning order and the data recovered by replacing the circuit board with one of an identical hard disk. In the case of read-write head faults, they can be replaced using specialized tools in a dust-free environment. If the disk platters are undamaged, they can be transferred into an identical enclosure and the data can be copied or cloned onto a new drive. In the event of disk-platter failures, disassembly and imaging of the disk platters may be required. For logical damage to file systems, a variety of tools, including fsck on UNIX-like systems and CHKDSK on Windows, can be used for data recovery. Recovery from logical damage can require file carving.


title: Hard disk drive

text: A common expectation is that hard disk drives designed and marketed for server use will fail less frequently than consumer-grade drives usually used in desktop computers. However, two independent studies by Carnegie Mellon University and Google found that the "grade" of a drive does not relate to the drive's failure rate.


title: Hard disk drive

text: A 2011 summary of research, into SSD and magnetic disk failure patterns by Tom's Hardware summarized research findings as follows:


title: Hard disk drive

text: , Backblaze, a storage provider reported an annualized failure rate of two percent per year for a storage farm with 110,000 off-the-shelf HDDs with the reliability varying widely between models and manufacturers. Backblaze subsequently reported that the failure rate for HDDs and SSD of equivalent age was similar.


title: Hard disk drive

text: To minimize cost and overcome failures of individual HDDs, storage systems providers rely on redundant HDD arrays. HDDs that fail are replaced on an ongoing basis.


title: Hard disk drive

text: HDD price per byte decreased at the rate of 40% per year during 1988–1996, 51% per year during 1996–2003 and 34% per year during 2003–2010. The price decrease slowed down to 13% per year during 2011–2014, as areal density increase slowed and the 2011 Thailand floods damaged manufacturing facilities and have held at 11% per year during 2010–2017.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The Federal Reserve Board has published a quality-adjusted price index for large-scale enterprise storage systems including three or more enterprise HDDs and associated controllers, racks and cables. Prices for these large-scale storage systems decreased at the rate of 30% per year during 2004–2009 and 22% per year during 2009–2014.


title: Hard disk drive

text: More than 200 companies have manufactured HDDs over time, but consolidations have concentrated production to just three manufacturers today: Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba. Production is mainly in the Pacific rim.


title: Hard disk drive

text: Worldwide revenue for disk storage declined eight percent per year, from a peak of $38 billion in 2012 to $22 billion (estimated) in 2019. Production of HDD storage grew 15% per year during 2011–2017, from 335 to 780 exabytes per year. HDD shipments declined seven percent per year during this time period, from 620 to 406 million units. HDD shipments were projected to drop by 18% during 2018–2019, from 375 million to 309 million units. In 2018, Seagate has 40% of unit shipments, Western Digital has 37% of unit shipments, while Toshiba has 23% of unit shipments. The average sales price for the two largest manufacturers was $60 per unit in 2015.


title: Hard disk drive

text: HDDs are being superseded by solid-state drives (SSDs) in markets where their higher speed (up to 4950 megabytes) (4.95 gigabytes) per second for M.2 (NGFF) NVMe SSDs, or 2500 megabytes (2.5 gigabytes) per second for PCIe expansion card drives), ruggedness, and lower power are more important than price, since the bit cost of SSDs is four to nine times higher than HDDs. , HDDs are reported to have a failure rate of 2–9% per year, while SSDs have fewer failures: 1–3% per year. However, SSDs have more un-correctable data errors than HDDs.


title: Hard disk drive

text: SSDs offer larger capacities (up to 100 TB) than the largest HDD and/or higher storage densities (100 TB and 30 TB SSDs are housed in 2.5 inch HDD cases but with the same height as a 3.5-inch HDD), although their cost remains prohibitive.


title: Hard disk drive

text: A laboratory demonstration of a 1.33-Tb 3D NAND chip with 96 layers (NAND commonly used in solid state drives (SSDs)) had 5.5 Tbit/in , while the maximum areal density for HDDs is 1.5 Tbit/in. The areal density of flash memory is doubling every two years, similar to Moore's law (40% per year) and faster than the 10–20% per year for HDDs. , the maximum capacity was 16 terabytes for an HDD, and 100 terabytes for an SSD. HDDs were used in 70% of the desktop and notebook computers produced in 2016, and SSDs were used in 30%. The usage share of HDDs is declining and could drop below 50% in 2018–2019 according to one forecast, because SSDs are replacing smaller-capacity (less than one-terabyte) HDDs in desktop and notebook computers and MP3 players.


title: Hard disk drive

text: The market for silicon-based flash memory (NAND) chips, used in SSDs and other applications, is growing faster than for HDDs. Worldwide NAND revenue grew 16% per year from $22 billion to $57 billion during 2011–2017, while production grew 45% per year from 19 exabytes to 175 exabytes.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Margaret Julia "Marlo" Thomas (born November 21, 1937) is an American actress, producer, author, and social activist. She is best known for starring on the sitcom "That Girl" (1966–1971) and her children's franchise "Free to Be... You and Me". She has received three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Peabody Award for her work in television, has been inducted into the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: She has also received a Grammy Award for her children's album "". In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Thomas serves as National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which was founded by her father Danny Thomas in 1962. She created the Thanks & Giving campaign in 2004 to support the hospital.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Thomas was born in Detroit and raised in Beverly Hills, California, the eldest child of Rose Marie Cassaniti and comedian Danny Thomas. She has a sister, Terre, and a brother, producer Tony Thomas. Her father was a Roman Catholic Lebanese American and her mother was Sicilian American. Her godmother was Loretta Young. The name "Marlo" came from her childhood mispronunciation of the name Margo, as Thomas was called by her family.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Thomas attended Marymount High School and graduated from the University of Southern California with a teaching degree: "I wanted a piece of paper that said I was qualified to do something in the world". She was a member of the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Thomas appeared in many television programs including "Bonanza", "McHale's Navy", "Ben Casey", "Arrest and Trial", "The Joey Bishop Show", "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis", "My Favorite Martian", "77 Sunset Strip", and "The Donna Reed Show". Her big break came in 1965 when she was cast by Mike Nichols in the London production of Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park," co-starring Daniel Massey, Kurt Kasznar, and Mildred Natwick. (In 1986, she was once again cast by Nichols on Broadway in Andrew Bergman's "Social Security," co-starring Ron Silver and Olympia Dukakis.)


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Thomas and her father, Danny, were cast as Laurie and Ed Dubro in a 1961 episode, "Honor Bright", of CBS' "Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre".


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Thomas starred in an ABC pilot called "Two's Company" in 1965. Although it did not sell, it caught the attention of a network programming executive. He met with Thomas, and expressed interest in casting her in her own series. With their encouragement, Thomas came up with her own idea for a show about a young woman who leaves home, moves to New York City, and struggles to become an actress. The network was initially hesitant, fearing audiences would find a series centering on a single female uninteresting or unrealistic.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: The concept eventually evolved into the sitcom entitled "That Girl", in which Thomas played Ann Marie, a beautiful, up-and-coming actress with a writer boyfriend, played by Ted Bessell. The series told the daily struggles of Ann holding different temporary jobs while pursuing her dream of a career on Broadway. "That Girl" was one of the first television shows to focus on a working, single woman who did not live with her parents, and it paved the way for many shows to come. Thomas was only the fourth woman to produce her own series, following Gertrude Berg, Lucille Ball, and Betty White. "That Girl" aired from 1966 to 1971, producing 136 episodes, and was a solid performer in the Nielsen ratings.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: In 1971, Thomas chose to end the series after five years. Both ABC and the show's sponsor, Clairol, wanted the series finale to be a wedding between the two central characters, but Thomas rebuffed them, saying that she felt it was the wrong message to send to her female audience, because it would give the impression that the only happy ending is marriage. "That Girl" has since become popular in syndication.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Clairol was our sponsor and they wanted to end the show with a wedding. I said, "I just can't do that to these women and girls who followed Ann Marie's adventure. I can't now say that the only happy ending is a wedding, because I don't believe it." There was a big ruckus about it, but I wouldn't do it. The last show, Ann Marie took Donald to a women's lib meeting, which made nobody happy but me. I loved it.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: After "That Girl", eager to expand her horizons, Thomas attended the Actors Studio, where she studied with Lee Strasberg until his death in 1982, and subsequently with Strasberg's disciple Sandra Seacat. When she won her Best Dramatic Actress Emmy in 1986 for the TV movie "Nobody’s Child", she thanked both individuals.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: In 1972, she released a children's book, "Free to Be... You and Me", which was inspired by her young niece Dionne Gordon. She went on to create multiple recordings and television specials of and related to that title: "Free to Be... You and Me" (1972, 1974) and "Free to Be... A Family" (1987), with Christopher Cerf. Also in 1972, she served as a California delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. She helped the George McGovern presidential campaign in October 1972 at Star-Spangled Women for McGovern–Shriver, reciting a parody of Erich Segal's "Love Story" for 19,000 people at Madison Square Garden.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: In 1973, Thomas joined Gloria Steinem, Patricia Carbine, and Letty Cottin Pogrebin as the founders of the Ms. Foundation for Women, the first women's fund in the US. The organization was created to deliver funding and other resources to organizations that were presenting liberal women's voices in communities nationwide.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: In 1976, Thomas made a guest appearance on the NBC situation comedy "The Practice" as a stubborn patient of her father Danny Thomas' character Dr. Jules Bedford, and the chemistry of father and daughter acting together made for touching hospital-room scenes.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: She has made guest appearances on several television series, including "" (as Judge Mary Conway Clark, a mentor of ADA Casey Novak), "Ballers", "The New Normal", "". She also narrated the series "Happily Never After" on Investigation Discovery. From 1996 to 2002, Thomas played Rachel Green's mother, Sandra Green, on the TV show "Friends".


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Thomas appeared in films such as "Jenny" (1970), "Thieves" (1977), "In The Spirit" (1990), "The Real Blonde" (1997), "Starstruck" (1998), "" (1999), "Playing Mona Lisa" (2000), "LOL" (2012) with Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus, and "Cardboard Boxer" (2014). She also starred in television movies including "It Happened One Christmas" (1977; also produced) (a remake of "It's a Wonderful Life"), "The Lost Honor of Kathryn Beck" (1984; also produced), "Consenting Adult" (1985), "Nobody's Child" (1986; Best Dramatic Actress Emmy), "Held Hostage: The Sis and Jerry Levin Story" (1991; also produced), "Reunion" (1994; also produced), "Deceit" (2004; also produced), and "Ultimate Betrayal" (1994).


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Thomas' Broadway theatre credits include "Thieves" (1974), "Social Security" (1986), and "The Shadow Box" (1994), and in 2011, she starred as Doreen in Elaine May's comedy "George Is Dead" in "Relatively Speaking" during a set of three one-act plays ("The New York Times" called Thomas' performance "sublime"). The other two plays were written by Woody Allen and Ethan Coen.


title: Marlo Thomas

text: Off-Broadway, Thomas has appeared in "The Guys", "The Exonerated" (in which she also appeared in Chicago and Boston, co-starring with Brian Dennehy), "The Vagina Monologues" and "Love, Loss, and What I Wore". Also off-Broadway, she appeared opposite Greg Mullavey in the 2015 New York debut of Joe DiPietro's play "Clever Little Lies" at the Westside Theatre. Regional theatre productions include: "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at the Hartford Stage; "Woman In Mind" at the Berkshire Theatre Festival; "Paper Doll," with F. Murray Abraham at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre; and "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" at the Cleveland Playhouse. In 1993, she toured in the national company of "Six Degrees of Separation." In the spring of 2008, she starred in Arthur Laurents' last play, "New Year's Eve" with Keith Carradine, at the George Street Playhouse.