Comments on: The hard drive at 50

Hard drives have come a long way since debuting 50 years ago this week. Do they still have room to shrink?

[kaigironsha]

What about speed, silly?

Miniaturization and capacity are very nice, but this article completely missed the biggest for frustration for me and many users: speed. If you look at a graph of the last decade's jumps in processor speed and compare that rate of improvement with HD performance, it's pretty stark. Way too many tasks are disk-bound. Time to remove this bottleneck!

[robertpotter]

Overcoming Disk I/O limitations

Disk drives read very quickly from contiguous files - e.g. windows swap or paging file. That is why the swap file uses reserved space on disk drive usually set equal to 1.5 times the DRAM. Yet they are quite slow for true random access across non-contiguous, particularly highly fragmented files. Disk drives may not disappear if there cost in terms of Gb/$ remains lower than other others. Disks as tapes are considered secondary memory. However, the primary memory - i.e. SRAM and DRAM -are likely to more towards other non-volatile technologies or so-called "universal" memory. See my other post on that subject.

[bumalong]

new technology?

Isn't it past time to put old Tom Edison's phonograph back in the attic, and develop new technology for storage? It wasn't that long ago that SRI's (Static Ram Interfaces ) were eschewed because of their 32K limit. Now we have multi-gig USB flash drives. I say, put Ol' Tom's Graphanola back in the attic where it belongs, and go static. No more mechanical failures, noisy operation, sudden outages. Just think: storage with no moving parts to wear out....

[baechul]

Samsung's Recent Tiny 32 Gb Flash Chip

The memory would replace hard disks sooner than what was expected.

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200609/200609110023.html

[baechul]

Samsung Develops Tiny 32 Gb Flash Chip

The memory would replace hard disks sooner than what was expected.

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200609/200609110023.html

[vanrock70]

Platters of bits...

The first computer I used that had hard disks was the IBM 1130, with its removable single-platter cartridge; by then the 14 inch platters held about ten Mbytes. Another fifteen years, and washing-machine-size boxes with multi-platter packs were the norm. I still have an eight-platter pack in my "archives". I think it held 750 Mbytes. Now..my pocket flash "drive" holds about that much. I expect someday newborns will get a pea-sized thing installed in the Mastoid bone: cell phone/PDA/computer, and who knows what else besides.

[chrisgarty]

Microdrives in the iPod Mini

"Apple also became the first company to adopt 1-inch microdrives on a wide scale with the iPod Nano"

Not so, it was the iPod mini. The Nano uses only flash as the article linked during this paragraph points out.

I'm looking forward to those 100tb per square inch drives... :)

[fjdulles]

iPod Mini not Nano

The iPod Mini, not the nano had a 1 inch hard drive inside.

[KarenSaid]

Thanks for the catch

You're right. We have amended the story to include the iPod Mini. Thank you for alerting us to this.

[fjdulles]

Perpendicular recording doesn't stack bits on to of each other.

As the link in this article about perpendicular recording explains,
perpendicular recording doesn't stack bits oon top of each other.
Rather, the magnetic domains are flipped on their side relative to
how they were oriented in older drives, which turns out to allow
them to be safetly packed closer together.

[wtortorici]

5 MB HD

If memory serves me I purchased a WD 5 MB in 1982 foe $499 plus shipping for my TRS 80. It used the same connection as the 5.25" floppies.

[wtortorici]

Oh, by the way...

Radio Shack's DOS did not support the hard drive. The DOS was from a company in Boulder CO. I think it was called Quick DOS.

[Stan Johnson]

Old HD days are nubered

It is high time for newer faster more reliable technology. There is a great need to move beyond the popular (but old) hard drive technology we currently now use.

[robertpotter]

"universal" memory to replace existing technologies over time

I think that "universal" memories will be next disruptiuve technology because they plan to provide equivalent or faster, recording and reading thoroughput and be non-volatile. These may include miniturized core-based memory and other nano derived technologies. The storage capacities available in new universal memories will limit replacable applications and will occure in this order: 1) SRAM, 2) Dynamic RAM, 3) Flash memory, and 4) Hard disk memory.

[grmells]

Univac Options

I worked on Univac 1108 gear in the early 70's and it still had a drum as local high speed storage, the Fastrand drum for next fastest (it address methaod of position, head (or track) and sector was still the method used to assign storage, and a then new 550Mb drive unit that had 24 inch platters in a 3 by 3 by 4 foot enclosure.

[grmells]

Univac Options

I worked on Univac 1108 gear in the early 70's and it still had a drum as local high speed storage, the Fastrand drum for next fastest (it address methaod of position, head (or track) and sector was still the method used to assign storage, and a then new 550Mb drive unit that had 24 inch platters in a 3 by 3 by 4 foot enclosure.

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Memory failure

You must be having a memory failure if you say that the drives were 550Mb. Even 50Mb would be unlikely for that time.