Hard Drive History and Advancements

In 1957 Cyril Northcote Parkinson published his famous compilation of essays titled Parkinson's Law , which starts off with the statement, "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." A corollary of Parkinson's most famous "law" can be applied to hard drives : Data expands so as to fill the space available for its storage. This, of course, means that no matter how big a drive you get, you will find a way to fill it. I have lived by that dictum since purchasing my first hard disk drive over 20 years ago.

Although I am well aware of the exponential growth of everything associated with computers, I am still amazed at how large and fast modern drives have become. The first hard drive I purchased in 1983 was a 10MB (that's 10 megabytes, not gigabytes) The Miniscribe model 2012 was a 5.25-inch (platter) drive that was about 8''x5.75''x3.25'' (203mmx146mmx83mm) in overall size and weighed 5.5 lb. (2.5kg). That's heavier than some of today's laptop computers! By comparison, the 300GB Maxtor Maxline II drive uses smaller 3.5-inch platters, is about 5.75''x4''x1'' (146mmx102mmx25mm) in overall size, weighs only 1.34 lb. (0.62kg), and stores a whopping 300GB, which is 30,000 times more storage in a package that is about one sixth the size and one fourth the weight of my old Miniscribe. By another comparison, the 80GB 2.5-inch Hitachi Travelstar drive (which is used in some modern laptops) uses even smaller 2.5-inch platters, is about 3.94''x2.76''x0.37'' (100mmx70mmx9.5mm) in overall size, weighs only 0.22 lb. (99g), and stores 80GB, which is 8,000 times more storage in a package that is about 37 times smaller and 1/25th the weight of my first drive.

These are pretty large steps in just over 20 years time!

Note

The book Parkinson's Law (ISBN 1568490151) is still in print and is considered one of the essential tomes of business or management study today.

To give you an idea of how far hard drives have come in the 20+ years, I've outlined some of the more profound changes in hard disk storage:

• Maximum storage capacities have increased from the 5MB and 10MB 5.25-inch full-height drives available in 1982 to 300GB or more for even smaller 3.5-inch half-height drives (for example, Maxtor Maxline II), and 80GB or more for notebook system 2.5-inch drives (Hitachi Travelstar 80GN). Hard drives smaller than 40GB are rare in desktop systems, and drives smaller than 20GB are rare in laptops.

• Data-transfer rates to and from the media (sustained transfer rates) have increased from between 85KBps to 102KBps for the original IBM XT in 1983 to an average of 60MBps or more for some of the fastest drives today (for example, Seagate Cheetah X15 36LP).

• Average seek times (how long it takes to move the heads to a particular cylinder) have decreased from more than 85ms ( milliseconds ) for the 10MB drives used by IBM in the 1983 vintage PC-XT to 3.6ms or less for some of the fastest drives today (for example, Seagate Cheetah X15).

• In 1982 and 1983, a 10MB drive and controller cost more than $2,000 ($200 per megabyte), which would be more than double that in today's dollars. Today, the cost of hard drives (with integrated controllers) has dropped to one-sixth of a cent per megabyte or less, or about 60GB for $100!