IBM and the history of storage media

There can never be a story, journal, book, or even discussion on the history of hard drives and storage media without mentioning three letters: IBM . We're all familiar with this well-known tech giant, but we might not all be familiar with some of its great achievements.

International Business Machines, or IBM as we know it, has been around for quite some time. Known as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording (or CTR) Company back in the early 1900s, IBM is better known for building the very first hard disk drive, the first PC, its servers, desktops, and laptops.

Between the years 1956 and 1957, IBM made major inroads with the development and release of the 305 RAMAC (an acronym for Random Access Method of Accounting and Control), which utilized the first disk storage technology. This revolutionary technology weighed in at approximately one ton, and was roughly 16 square feet in size. The disk space capacity of this behemoth, however, was only 5 MB (megabytes - yes, I said megabytes) in size.

Although 5 MB by today's standard is roughly the size of a high-definition photo taken with a mobile device, all things considered, this really was a monumental achievement for its time. Before IBM's invention, data was stored on punch cards that could amount to as many as millions of cards just to hold a few megabytes.

A major issue faced back then with the introduction of this digital storage was the size of the device. Transportation by plane and truck may not have been an option for many; the space to store this would also have been an issue.

As technology progressed, IBM announced a much more portable computer in 1975, released as the IBM 5100 Portable Computer. In the 1980s, specifically 1981, we saw the birth of the IBM Personal Computer. Weighing in at much less than its predecessor, this portable computer also had a much more affordable price tag of between $8000 and $20,000 USD.

It wasn't until 1981 when IBM released the first personal computer that portability of computers was becoming an actual reality. With a price tag of $1,565, owners were afforded a keyboard and mouse, with options for a monitor, printer, and floppy drives. Apart from the floppy drives, this was the standard for today's personal computers.

Along with this newer and more portable technology, there were also improvements in data storage media over the years, which saw advancements from magnetic tape storage, to floppy disks and diskettes, CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray disks, and, of course, mechanical and solid-state drives.