History of Hard Disk
- 1956 – IBM 350, first commercial disk drive, 5 million characters
- 1961 – IBM 1301 Disk Storage Unit introduced with one head per surface and aerodynamic flying heads, 28 million characters per module
- 1962 – IBM 1311 introduced removable disk packs containing 6 disks, storing 2 million characters per pack
- 1964 – IBM 2311 with 7.25 megabytes per disk pack
- 1964 – IBM 2310 removable cartridge disk drive with 1.02 MB on one disk
- 1965 – IBM 2314 with 11 disks and 29 MB per disk pack
- 1968 – Memorex is first to ship an IBM-plug-compatible disk drive
- 1970 – IBM 3330 Merlin, introduced error correction, 100 MB per disk pack
- 1973 – IBM 3340 Winchester introduced removable sealed disk packs that included head and arm assembly, 35 or 70 MB per pack
- 1973 – CDC SMD announced and shipped, 40 MB disk pack
- 1976 - 1976 IBM 3350 "Madrid"—317.5 Megabytes, eight 14" disks, Re-introduction of disk drive with fixed disk media
- 1979 – IBM 3370 introduced thin film heads, 571 MB, non-removable
- 1979 - 1979 IBM 62PC "Piccolo" – 64.5 Megabytes, six 8" disks, First 8-inch HDD
- 1980 – The world's first gigabyte-capacity disk drive, the IBM 3380, was the size of a refrigerator, weighed 550 pounds (about 250 kg), and had a price tag of $40,000( $111 thousand in present day terms), 2.52 GB
- 1980 – ST-506 first 5¼ inch drive released with capacity of 5 megabytes, cost $1500
- 1983 - RO351/RO352 first 3½ inch drive released with capacity of 10 megabytes
- 1986 – Standardization of SCSI
- 1988 - PrairieTek 220 – 20 Megabytes, two 2.5" disks, First 2.5 inch HDD.
- 1989 – Jimmy Zhu and H. Neal Bertram from UCSD proposed exchange decoupled granular microstructure for thin film disk storage media, still used today.
- 1990 – 1990 IBM 0681 "Redwing" – 857 Megabytes, twelve 5.25" disks. First HDD with PRML Technology (Digital Read Channel with 'Partial Response Maximum Likelihood' algorithm)
- 1991 - IBM 0663 "Corsair" – 1,004 Megabytes, eight 3.5" disks; first HDD using magnetoresistive heads
- 1991 - Integral Peripherals 1820 "Mustang" – 21.4 Megabytes, one 1.8" disk, first 1.8 inch HDD
- 1992 – HP Kittyhawk first 1.3-inch hard-disk drive –
- 1993 – IBM 3390 model 9, the last Single Large Expensive Disk drive announced by IBM
- 1994 – IBM introduces Laser Textured Landing Zones (LZT)
- 1997 – IBM Deskstar 16GP "Titan" – 16,800 Megabytes, five 3.5" disks; first (Giant Magnetoresistance) heads
- 1997 – Seagate introduces the first hard drive with fluid bearings
- 1998 – UltraDMA/33 and ATAPI standardized
- 1999 – IBM releases the Microdrive in 170 MB and 340 MB capacities
- 2002 – 137 GB addressing space barrier broken
- 2003 – Serial ATA introduced
- 2003 – IBM sells disk drive division to Hitachi
- 2004 – MK2001MTN first 0.85 inch drive released by IBM with capacity of 2 gigabytes
- 2005 – First 500 GB hard drive shipping (Hitachi GST)
- 2005 – Serial ATA 3Gbit/s standardized
- 2005 – Seagate introduces Tunnel MagnetoResistive Read Sensor (TMR) and Thermal Spacing Control
- 2005 – Introduction of faster SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)
- 2005 – First Perpendicular recording HDD shipped: Toshiba 1.8-inch 40/80 GB
- 2006 – First 750 GB hard drive (Seagate)
- 2006 – First 200 GB 2.5" hard drive utilizing Perpendicular recording (Toshiba)
- 2006 – Fujitsu develops heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) that could one day achieve one terabit per square inch densities.
- 2007 – First 1 terabytehard drive (Hitachi GST)
- 2008 – First 1.5 terabyte hard drive (Seagate)
- 2009 – First 2.0 terabyte hard drive (Western Digital)
- 2010 – First 3.0 terabyte hard drive (Seagate, Western Digital)
- 2010 – First Hard Drive Manufactured by using the Advanced Format of 4,096 bytes a block ("4K") instead of 512 bytes a block
- 2011 – First 4.0 terabyte hard drive (Seagate)
- 2012 - Western Digital announces the first 2.5-inch, 5mm thick drive, and the first 2.5-inch, 7mm thick drive with two platters.(Western Digital)
- 2012 - HGST announces helium-filled hard disk drives, promising cooler operation and the ability to increase the maximum number of platters from five to seven in the 3.5" form factor. (Hitachi GST)
- 2012 - TDK demonstrates 2TB on a single 3.5-inch platter
