The image displayed above is the IBM 3380 disk drive module way back in year 1980. This was the latest technology at the time and stored 2.52 GB at the cost of approximately $90,000. This image is taken from the museum of computer history as most of you must have guessed that this is a history indeed. The history of storage is interesting due to the fact that it is developing constantly and there have been major or landmark changes in technology which has provided more and more storage space at lesser price, higher speed access, and smaller form factor. Its worth noting that todays pen-drives store 2GBs at less than $20!
As most of us know that data storage actually started from the punch cards and then changed to magnetic storage. I believe it would be safe to call this the first wave of development in storage technology. Then there were various incremental innovations in magnetic storage, while parallely a new technology was also developing: The Solid State Storage (SSD) tech. SSD is now becoming common and some tout it as the replacement for the slower and bulkier magnetic storage; the second wave in storage technology. As displayed in the table below, the cost and capacity of magnetic storage improved with time. A similar trend can be expected from SSD technology , with an intermediate step being the hybrid storage technology. Hybrid Storage technology uses an SSD drive along with an HDD to improve its performance. A 1TB SSD drive has already been announced in the market.
In the late '80s the storage size barrier of MBs was breached and GBs was the new top standard. The present decade talks about TB. It is believed that the copy of text of the entire Internet is approximately 20TB (though multiplying daily). So, one day we can have all the Internet on our PC and that day is not far off. That is the recent tech in storage, but what would be the third wave in storage technology? Breaching the TB barrier or a new breakthrough storage technology?
I think it would be a new breakthrough in storage technology and not simply an incremental innovation. IBM is already researching on nanomechanical data storage devices that will use some sort of polymer to store data. Experiments have achieved a storage density of 1 terabit per square inch (a size equal to a postage stamp)! Or it can be something that uses atomic particles to store data (buts that is what i suppose:) ).
| Year | Tech | Price | Capacity | Price/mb |
| 1956 | First Hard Drive (US3134097): IBM | $50,000 | 5MB | $10,000 |
| 1962 | First removable hard drive: IBM | | 2.6MB | |
| 1976 | First 8" Floppy Drive: iCom | $1,200 | 0.5MB | $2,400 |
| 1976 | First 5.2" Floppy Drive: Shugart | $390 | 0.5MB | $780 |
| 1980 | First 3.5" Floppy Drive: Sony | | 0.875MB | |
| 1982 | Winchester Drive System: Davong System | $2,000 | 5MB | $400 |
| 1983 | First 3.5" Hard Drive: Rodime | | 10MB | |
| 1991 | Floptical Disks: Insite technology | $1,200 | 21MB | $57 |
| 1996 | Storage of 1 billion bits per square inch on a platter reached: IBM | | | |
| 1997 | Giant Magneto resistive tech: IBM | $42 | 16.8GB | .25 cent |
| 2002 | Perpendicular Magnetic Recording achieves 100 gigabit/square inch (US7095585): Seagate | | | |
| 2003 | First 10,000 rpm SATA drive: Western Digital | | 37GB | |
| 2006 | First 2.5" hard drive with perpendicular recording tech: Seagate | | 160GB | |
| 2007 | First terabyte hard disk: Seagate | $300 | 1 TB | 33MB/cent |
| 2008 | Solid State Drives in Laptop: Toshiba | $450 | 128GB | 3MB/cent |
Source:www.ibm.com
www.wikipedia.com
www.about.com
www.computerhistory.org
