It is hard to imagine - on September 13th it will be 50 years since IBM introduced the very first hard drive.

Since that time technology made quite a progress. Compare for yourself:

1956 - RAMAC drive

  • capacity: 5 Megabytes, built from fifty 24" spinning disks
  • weight: about one ton
  • price: $250'000 / year (lease)
  • price per gigabyte: about fifty million dollars

2006 - typical harddrive

  • capacity: 500 GB
  • weight: < 1kg
  • price: ~ $300
  • price per gigabyte: about 60 cents

Amazing, isn't it ?

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