Created by IBM in 1956, the first hard
drive- a popular data storage device- was made form 50 24 –inch discs contained
inside a cabinet that was as large as a cupboard! The whole thing had a
whopping capacity of 5 MB and could only be leased at a cost of $3,200 per
month. The first commercially available hard drive called profile was sold by
Apple in 1981 for $3500 –that’s $700 per GB!
While hard drives became popular for widespread use in computers and later as external data storage devices, it may be news to you that even calculators, cash registers and VHS machines utilize hard drives to store varying amounts of data. This device is important because the size and speed of the hard drive in a system is directly proportional to how efficient the system will be.
What makes hard drives revolutionary is
their infinite ability to be rewritten unlike traditional storage devices such
as disks and tapes. Because the information is stored magnetically all the data
can be rear-ranged, changed and moved around without disruption or loss of
data. It actually took 51 years since the hard drive was first invented for
disks to reach a capacity of 1 terabyte. This happened in 2007. Following
shortly was the first 2TB storage hard dive in 2009. One can only wonder what
the next level of storage will be and how soon it will come to the market.
