Storage Toolkit

Hard drives: a pictorial history

ZDNet Staff CNET

Published: 13 Sep 2006 15:10 BST

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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, which had 50 platters.

Photo: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com

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