Posted on 04/27/2008 10:38:31 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Historical note and ping!
Had a hard drive of about 80 megabyte capacity and eight inch disks. Stood in a cabinet by itself. One day a terrible screeching sound came through the office and the computer stopped dead. That was the sound of the read/write head plowing a furrow in the aluminum disk substrate. Never got fixed, it sat around for a few months and was eventually carted off to the dump.
Had a bunch of Seagate stuff back in ye olde cube, back in the day.
The 20 Meg Seagate 225 and the 40 MB Seagate 251 were the “Model t”’s of mid-80’s computing. They were included in almost every white box setup and a lot of the name brand PCs. There used to be over a dozen hard drive players. Now there are four or five (Remember Priam, Rodime, Core, Quantum, Conner, CMI, Micropolis). I do NOT miss MFM drives and DOS debug.
It was not small.
Earlier thread ....:
300TB hard drive to arrive by 2010 ~ Seagate...
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Last weekend Fry's was running a sale on 1 Terabyte Seagate SATA Drives for $199....Had been built apparently for the Canadian market,...
I remember those. I worked at a PC retailer in the early ‘90s and the ST251 was the drive of choice for the PCs we built. I had an ST251-1 in a NEC 386 that I purchased from my employer. The rest of the computer was crap, but the Seagate was bulletproof.
When my stimulus check comes in in the next couple of weeks, I’m ordering parts for two new computers for me and the wife. Both will include Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA drives.
}:-)4
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IBM 1405 Disk Storage
The IBM 1405 Disk Storage of 1960 used improved technology to double the tracks per inch and bits per inch of track -- to achieve a fourfold increase in capacity -- compared to the IBM RAMAC disk file of 1956.
Storage units were available in 25-disk and 50-disk models, for a storage capacity of 10 million and 20 million characters, respectively. Recording density was 220 bits per inch (40 tracks per inch) and the head-to-disk spacing was 650 microinches. The disks rotated at 1800 rpm. Data were read or written at a rate of 17.5K bytes a second.
The 1405 was used in conjunction with the IBM 1410 Data Processing System. Each 1410 was capable of controlling up to five of the 1405s, for a total of 100 million characters. In addition, a single 1405 of either model could be attached to an IBM 1401 Data Processing System. The 1405 was reported to have been used with the "Walnut" information retrieval system of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960s. According to published reports, Walnut was the first mechanized system that could store and search millions of pages of documents.
I believe the 1405 had a single arm that carried a read write head that was used on all platters,....had to move up dand down for each platter as well as in and out....
20th century disk storage chronology
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1956
IBM introduces the 350 RAMAC, the first computer disk storage system. In less than a second, the 350 RAMAC's "random access" arm retrieves data stored on any of 50 spinning disks. Disk technology later becomes the industry's basic storage medium for online transaction processing.
1962
The IBM 1311 is the first storage unit with removable disks. Each "disk pack" holds more than two million characters of information. Users can easily switch files for different applications.
1965
Database and data communications applications requiring access to large amounts of information - such as airline reservations and online banking transactions - become economically feasible with the IBM 2314 Direct Access Storage Facility.
1970
With the IBM 3330, servo feedback technology makes it possible to record data on disks more densely than ever before. Error-correction coding increases the availability of data and the efficiency of the manufacturing process.
1971
IBM introduces the industry's first flexible magnetic disk, or diskette. The "floppy disk" greatly increases the convenience of data handling. It becomes widely used as a basic storage medium for small systems.
1974
The IBM 3340 disk drive introduces an advanced head and disk technology known as "Winchester." The 3340 features a small, lighter read/write head that rides closer to the disk surface - on an air film 18 millionths of an inch thick. The 3340 doubles the information density of IBM disks to nearly 1.7 million bits per square inch.
1980
IBM introduces "thin film" head technology, which enables the 3380 Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) to read and write data at three million characters per second. It is the first commercial unit to achieve such a rate. The thin-film read-write head of the IBM 3380 disk drive "flies" 12 millionths of an inch over the disk surface. This is comparable to a large plane flying 1/20th of an inch over a lake's surface without touching the water.
1981
High-performance "cache" memory is introduced with the 3880 Storage Control. The 3880 moves frequently used data from disk storage into semiconductor storage for high-speed access by the processor. Cache is an advanced, integrated system approach that uses both hardware and software.
1985
The IBM 3380 D/E DASD are introduced. The 3380E offers five gigabytes of storage capacity and is the largest capacity DASD of its time.
1987
Storage subsystem synergy acquires new meaning with the introduction of the triple-capacity 3380 DASD Models J and K and the 3990 Storage Control. The 3380 J/K DASD and the 3990 Models 2 and 3 deliver yet another DASD innovation: four-path data transfer. Extended control unit functions also include DASD fast-write and dual copy.
1989
The IBM 3390 Model 2 increases the capacity of a single DASD box to 22.7 gigabytes (22.7 billion bytes) and the throughput to 40 percent over the IBM 3380K.
1991
The 3390 DASD Model 3 increases the capacity of a single DASD unit to 34 gigabytes and offers up to 180 gigabytes in a 3990/3390 Storage Subsystem.
The new family of rack-mounted, CKD 9340 DASD Subsystems addresses the requirements of intermediate computing environments. The entry-level 9341/9345 connects to a 9221 processor and stores 2-24 gigabytes of information while the 9343/9345 stores 4-48 gigabytes and can take advantage of ESCON.
1992
IBM introduces one of the first 3.5-inch disk drives on the market to offer up to 1.2 billion bytes of storage - enough capacity to store more than a half million pages of typewritten information; the first 2-gigabyte 3.5-inch disk drive and the first 4-gigabyte 5.25-inch disk drive for the original equipment manufacturers market. IBM ships more than 250,000 1-gigabyte 3.5-inch hard drives in 1992.
1993
IBM announces and begins delivering a host of new products, ranging from lower cost storage options to new subsystems capable of storing three times the amount of data as previous models. These product introductions include: new disk storage systems for use with the AS/400; five additions to its line of disk drives and storage subsystems for the original equipment manufacturer marketplace; new 200 Series models of the 9337 Disk Array Subsystem; a selection of disk storage products for users of RISC System/6000 POWERservers and POWERstations; and introduction of the industry's first high-capacity drives for the portable computing market using new magneto-resistive head technology.
In addition, IBM announces that it has increased the throughput of the 3990/3390 Storage Subsystem up to 100 percent in selected environments and tripled the capacity of the 3390 Direct Access Devices by adding a new member to the storage hierarchy.
IBM announces scientific results that may allow a 30-fold increase in the amount of data stored in a given area of magnetic disk surface within the next decade.
I've actually still got a Priam 130MB ESDI drive somewhere in my basement. It used to be in an Everex Step 20-386. When it would power up, it sounded like a jet engine spinning up! I also remember when Seagate bought Conner and CDC, and now that I think about it, I still have a Micropolis 1GB hard drive in a Compaq computer. It was the first generation ATA drive, but no computer BIOS would support it. There was a jumper on it to make the drive "look" like a pair of 500MB drives!
You're right about there being fewer and fewer manufacturers out there...
There's Seagate (which also owns Maxtor now), Hitachi (which bought IBMs drive plants years ago), Samsung, WD, and Toshiba. I think that's about it.
Mark
Of course, the disk drive and interface racks were dwarfed by the computer itself.
Yes, like a giant demonic Seeburg. The actuators were hydraulic, and put considerable dynamic loads on the computer flooring. You could feel the bumps through your feet anywhere nearby.
You may go back further than I do.
I think Fujitsu is still in the game.
:’) Of course, the total storage capacity of the Seagate drives sold in the past year probably exceeds the capacity of the first 500 million drives. :’) Thanks E. One of those “AT ROM” type topics... ;’)
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