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Hard drive hits the big five-zero

Sep 12, 2006

As the venerable magnetic storage reaches its 50th anniversary, we take a trip back in time to when it all began.

Bill Healy, executive vice president at Hitachi, holds up a platter from a 1-inch microdrive in his right hand. In his left is a 24-inch platter from IBM's RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control), which came out 50 years ago. A 1-inch 8GB platter holds more than 80,000 times as much data as a single 24-inch RAMAC platter. An 8GB 1-inch drive holds 1,600 times as much data as RAMAC.
Credit: Michael Kanellos, CNET News.com