Disk Drives, how far have we come

[kknudson]

Check out the link.

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/storage/storage_2314.html

Each of those cabinets is roughly the size of a small (apartment size, not just undercounter) refrigerator.
The lower sections are draws with a removable disk pack.

The section on the right is the controller, nowadays handled by a chip or two on the motherboard.
Heat, when I worked with these we would send out for food, then put it on top of the controller, under a disk pack cover and keep it warm (very).

That unit in it’s entirety holds 233 MEG, yes MEG your cameras SD card is how big ???? So each 30ish pound removable pack holds 30ish MEG.

Access times, Average 60ms minimum is 25ms, today’s drives low single digits.

Cost about a ¼ of a million bucks, in the 70s.

You could only have 8 drawers active at any time. There was a fist sized interchangeable plug that gave each drawer its address. The spare allowed you to have one drive setup for the next step, or available in case of breakdown.

I also believe the heads were moved by Hydralics, not the Winchester (effectively a speaker coil) mechanism used in todays drives.
I know the 2311s were hydralic, I believe it was the 33?? series that went winchester.