50 year history of hard drives!

[supernova777]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/127105/article.html

interesting article

1997: IBM introduces the first drive using giant magneto resistive (GMR) heads, the 16.8GB Deskstar 16GP Titan, which stores 16.8GB on five 3.5-inch platters.

IBM MicrodrivePhotograph: Courtesy of Hitachi GST

1998: IBM announces its Microdrive, the smallest hard drive to date. It fits 340MB on a single 1-inch platter.

2000: Maxtor buys competitor Quantum's hard drive business. At the time, Quantum is the number-two drive maker, behind Seagate; this acquisition makes Maxtor the world's largest hard drive manufacturer.

2000: Seagate produces the first 15,000-rpm hard drive, the Cheetah X15.

2002: Seagate scores another first with the Barracuda ATA V Serial ATA hard drive.

2002: A demonstration by Seagate yields a perpendicular magnetic recording areal density of 100 gigabits per square inch.

2002: Among its many 2002 technology accomplishments, Seagate successfully demos Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. HAMR records magnetically using laser-thermal assistance and ultimately aims to increase areal density by more than 100 times over 2002 levels.

2003: IBM sells its Data Storage Division to Hitachi, thus ending its involvement in developing and marketing disk drive technology.

2003: Western Digital introduces the first 10,000-rpm SATA hard drive, the 37GB Raptor, which is designed for the enterprise, but which gamers quickly learn is a hot desktop performer in dual-drive RAID setups.

2004: The first 0.85-inch hard drive, Toshiba's MK2001MTN, debuts. It stores 2GB on a single platter.

funny the article only goes to 2006 as its a 2006 article OOPS!

[SonikArchitects]

The Hard drive I used to write my album Movement in Still Life was a stacked (almost small sever chassis) type raid thing. It was 12G. Cost 3k. Real life.

You can get a 32G key drive for 20$ at Kinkos.
_BT