Hard drives are necessary elements in any computing device. The information is stored in them and we can consult it whenever desired. The hard drive of a home computer is quite small , especially when SSD technology has been put at our service. Until recently, the discs were mechanical. In fact, we can still buy computers with this type of hard drive. In them, the information is recorded on metal discs and is read by means of a needle that moves to the necessary point.
The main difference between a mechanical disk or HDD and an SSD is the speed of access to information, much faster in seconds. This is because the information is stored on chips and no mechanical parts are involved. The consideration is the price, which is considerably higher in the case of SSDs, although this gap is narrowing more and more.
But hard drives have undergone a gigantic evolution since the first drive that was manufactured for commercial purposes, although the target audience was companies. It was the IBM 305, a flexible, electronic data processing machine that allowed companies to record transactions as they happened and simultaneously reflect each entry in associated accounts. It was in September 1956, almost 65 years ago. Its dimensions were quite considerable, no less than 1.52 meters long, 1.73 meters high and 74 centimeters deep.
It stored a ridiculous amount of information
In 1956, no files were generated for the volume we now process, the capacity of this disk was the equivalent of 4.2 MB today. Think that a machine of these characteristics could not be available to everyone, since its price was then $ 160,000. It is enough to apply the inflation that has occurred since then to finish astonishing. Its price would now be $ 1.5 million.
The 50 discs that each unit consisted of rotated at 1,200 rpm, which achieves the spin of a domestic washing machine, and its size had nothing to do with that of current mechanical discs. They had a diameter of 20 inches, about 51 centimeters. But this hard disk drive did not work by itself, obviously it needed an attached control unit and a power supply capable of supplying power to all the equipment. 2 years later, in 1958, the IBM 305 RAMAC unit was upgraded, allowing its capacity to be doubled by adding an additional disk.
These units were available until 1961, and the manufacturer IBM managed to sell 1,000 units. It is offering a system of renting by which you could have the drive for $ 3200 a month at the current exchange about $ 31,000 in 2021. And even now esbocemos one smile to know that to store almost 5MB of information a huge machine was needed at that era was a forward. What’s more, the disk managed to access the required information in about 600 milliseconds on average. An achievement that seems unbelievable that happened more than 60 years ago.
The units had to be transported by plane or heavy vehicles, but that large size did not seem to matter to many companies, which saw how they could stop using the punch cards used by computers at the time , or have to store a lot of information. in simple files. The revolution would have made an appearance and there was no turning back.
If we think a bit and are able to put this information into perspective, the advancement that has occurred in computing is astonishing. The information that the IBM 305 RAMAC stored, just over 4 MB, is the current weight of any photograph taken with a mobile phone. Thanks to that pioneering industry, we now have devices in our pockets that are capable of multiplying by 25,000 times the capacity of the IBM 305 RAMAC.
