Amazing Facts and Figures About the Evolution of Hard Disk Drives
It took 51 years before hard disk drives reached the size of 1TB (terabyte, i.e., 1,000GB). This happened in 2007, and in 2009, the first hard drive with 2 TB of storage arrived. So while it took 51 years to reach the first terabyte, it took just two years to get the second.
Fast forward ten years, and in 2019 the largest commercially available HDDs can store at least 15TB of data. The world of SSDs offers even more space of at least 100TB.
This article looks back at how hard disk drives have evolved since they first burst onto the scene in 1956. We’ll examine the radical changes over time for three different aspects of HDDs: size, storage space, and price.
Changes in Physical Size Over Time
Like so many innovations in computing, the first hard disk drive came from IBM. It was called the IBM Model 350 Disk File and was a massive device. It had 50 24-inch disks inside a cabinet as large as a cupboard and was anything but lightweight. This hulk of a storage unit could store a whopping 5MB of data.
Although hard disk drives kept improving, state-of-the-art disks were built according to the concept “bigger is better” well into the ‘80s. Hard disk drives were typically used with big mainframe computers, so this wasn’t a big deal. Entire rooms were already set aside for the computers.
A case in point here below is a 250MB hard disk drive from 1979.
IBM introduced the first hard disk drive to break the 1GB barrier in 1980. It was called the IBM 3380 and could store 2.52GB (“2.52 billion characters of information,” according to IBM). Its cabinet was about the size of a refrigerator, and the whole thing weighed in at 550 pounds (250 kg). It gave users rapid access to an enormous amount of data (at that time), thanks to transferring information at three million characters per second.
Early in the ‘80s, after the first microcomputer Altair 8800, smaller “consumer” hard disk drives designed to be used with the increasingly popular personal computers (now known as PCs) started to appear. The earliest drives installed in these machines, available since 1980, were 5MB in size and had a form factor of 5.25 inches (Seagate ST506).
To visualize how hard disk drive sizes have changed from the ‘80s until today, look at the below image with an old 8-inch drive down to today’s 3.5-inch, 2.5-inch, and 1.8-inch drives.
Changes in Storage Space Over Time
The first hard disk drive (RAMAC 305 produced by IBM) back in 1956 could store 5MB of data, which was a considerable amount at the time. This is coincidentally also the size of the first “small” 5.25-inch hard disk drive that arrived in 1980. We went from needing a particular room for the hard disk drive and its computer to having one we could fit inside a desktop computer.
Ten years later, in 1990, a “normal” hard drive (like the ones produced by Maxtor) held about 40MB, with more expensive options able to store more than 100MB.
Fast forward to the present day, and you can buy a 3.5-inch STATA hard disk drive with 18TB of storage space. The link is a “short link,” as it includes my Amazon Associates code if you choose to buy this one, and I am not trying to “dupe” you.
To illustrate the tremendous increase in storage space we have seen in the last 38 years (essentially since the birth of personal computing), we’ve made a 1980 vs. 2010 and 2019 side-by-side comparison chart.
Note that we have used a logarithmic scale in this chart. Each step on the Y-axis is ten times larger than the one below. If we had used a regular, linear scale, the columns for 1980 would have been less than a pixel high.
Note: To estimate the average size HDD on the chart, we used the data regarding the average capacity of Seagate hard disk drives.
As you can see, the gap between a normal versus a top-of-the-line hard disk drive in terms of storage space has become much, much smaller than in the past. Interestingly, today both maximum and “normal” storage may have the same physical size, which wasn’t the case in 1980. No one’s making those fridge-sized hard disk drives anymore.
Of course, nowadays, we have special storage devices with a gazillion regular hard disk drives crammed inside that have taken over the “costly” crown.
And speaking of price:
Changes in Price Over Time
Early hard drives were extremely expensive and used with equally vast and costly mainframe computers as with any rare commodity.
The first hard disk drive, the IBM Model 350 Disk File we mentioned above, wasn’t something you got as a stand-alone unit, and it wasn’t even something you bought. Instead, you could lease the IBM 305 RAMAC computer with the 350 Disk File for $3,200 per month. Back in the ‘50s, this was a lot more money than now.
The biggest and best hard disk drives kept being an expensive proposition. When it finally started selling in 1981, after some initial delivery hiccups, the price for the 2.52GB refrigerator-sized IBM 3380 started at $81,000. And then you, of course, needed a computer to use it in conjunction with the storage device.
The first 5.25-inch 5MB, hard disk drives (i.e., the consumer option) in the ‘80s, cost well over $3,000, and similar prices remained for the 10MB drives that soon replaced them. This probably explains why most PCs were initially sold without a hard disk drive instead of relying on floppy disk drives.
As storage space has increased, it has also become infinitely more affordable. The average cost per gigabyte has, over the last 30 years, gone from way over $100,000 to just a few cents. Now that’s inflation!
Factoid: A 5MB hard disk drive from Apple cost $3,500 in 1981, $700,000 per gigabyte.
Nowadays, we will pay around $18 for 1TB of hard disk space.
And of course, 38 years ago, TB of storage was unheard of.
A Promotion Video of the First Hard Drive
To round off this retrospective, here’s some vintage promotion material about the 1956 IBM 305 RAMAC computer and its fantastic innovation, the IBM 350 Disk File. This is tech geek gold. If you can watch this without getting a smile, please get some help.
Another 30 Years Into the Future
Considering we now have tiny, cheap USB sticks that can easily hold 256GB of data (and expensive ones—1TB or more), which is about 6,500 times more than a typical hard disk drive in 1990 (40MB), we can say that things have certainly moved forward.
And just like we are now looking back and shaking our heads at the remarkable difference between now and a few decades ago, we may look back at 2019 and shake our heads with similar amazement. “Was storage that primitive back then?”
Some other random photos of storage over time:
