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-------------------------------------------------------------- This story was printed from ZDNet Australia. --------------------------------------------------------------
Photos: A brief history of drives

By Angus Kidman, ZDNet.com.au
July 18, 2008
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/hardware/soa/Photos-A-brief-history-of-drives/0,130061702,339290666,00.htm


Hard drives weren't always so compact or so capacious, as a quick pictorial tour through the museum of hard drives at the HDS SAN Technology Centre in Odawara, Japan, reveals.

Photos: A brief history of drives

The prosaically labelled Hard Disk Drive Corner takes us back to a time when drives were big and engineers were nervous.

Photos: A brief history of drives

This H-6584 system from 1967 looks like it would fit perfectly into a 1960s laminex kitchen, but actually boasts what was then a massive amount of data — 7.25MB.

Photos: A brief history of drives

Fast-forward to 1985 and things were improving substantially — this H-6585 had graduated to 5GB. OK, it's less storage capacity than an iPhone, but it's quite possibly still more useful.

Photos: A brief history of drives

Despite advances in size, the era of ugly drive containers that looked like filing cabinets was far from over. This H-6587 from 1990 stored 11.3GB.

Photos: A brief history of drives

The left-hand drive is the core of the H-6587 unit seen in the previous picture. Do not try installing this in your desktop system.


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