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This project first explains what the word hard drive means, it also explains how the hard
drives evolved, the kinds of hard drives and how they differ.

What is a hard drive?

The Hard Disk or sometimes called a Hard Drive, is the main storage space inside the
PC. It is a permanent storage component unlike the RAM (system memory). It is
possible for the computer to function without a hard disk, however it would be basically
useless to the user as he/she would not be able to use an Operating system or have
any programs to use.

Hard disks use circular hard platters to store data on. They are in pristine condition
with a mirror like finish to them. These platters are locked away inside a steel casing
as unclean air can easily ruin a hard disk. This is why a person should never remove
the casing from the hard disk, it is very unlikely a person will be able to put it back
together as a working component.

EVOLUTION OF HARD DRIVES

The commercial usage of 

 began in 1956 with the shipment of an IBM
305 RAMAC system including IBM Model 350 disk storage. Hard disk drives replaced
earlier drum memory systems due to their relative economy. By replacing the fixed
array of read/write heads of a drum with a moving read/write head, the relatively
expensive electronics for a read/write channel could be used to access a much larger
area of magnetic surface, at the cost of seek time to position the head.

For many years, hard disk drives were large, cumbersome devices, more suited to use
in the protected environment of a data center or large office than in a harsh industrial
environment (due to their delicacy), or small office or home (due to their size, cost, and
power consumption). Before the early 1980s, most hard disk drives had 8-inch
(actually, 210 - 195 mm) or 14-inch platters, required an equipment rack or a large
amount of floor space (especially the large removable-media drives, which were
frequently comparable in size to washing machines), and in many cases needed high-
current and/or three-phase power hookups due to the large motors they used.
Because of this, hard disk drives were not commonly used with microcomputers until
after 1980, when Seagate Technology introduced the ST-506, the first 5.25-inch hard
drives, with a formatted capacity of 5 megabytes.

The capacity of hard drives has grown exponentially over time. With early personal
computers, a drive with a 20 megabyte capacity was considered large. During the mid-
1990s the typical hard disk drive for a PC had a capacity of about 1 GB. As of July
2010, desktop hard disk drives typically have a capacity of 500 to 1000 gigabytes,
while the largest-capacity drives are 3 terabytes.

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IBM 350
Main article: early IBM disk storage

The IBM 350 Disk File, invented by Reynolds Johnson, was introduced in 1956 with the
IBM 305 RAMAC computer. This drive had fifty 24 inch platters, with a total capacity of
five million characters. A single head assembly having two heads was used for access
to all the platters, making the average access time very slow (just less than 1 second).

The IBM 1301 Disk Storage Unit , announced in 1961, introduced the usage of a head
for each data surface with the heads having self acting air bearings (flying heads).

Also in 1961, Bryant Computer Products introduced its 4000 series disk drives. These
massive units stood 52 inches (1.3 m) tall, 70 inches (1.8 m) wide, and had up to 26
platters, each 39 inches (0.99 m) in diameter, rotating at up to 1200 rpm. Access times
were from 50 to 205 m/s. The drive's total capacity, depending on the number of platters
installed, was up to 205,377,600 bytes, or 196 MB

The first disk drive to use removable media was the IBM 1311 drive, which used the
IBM 1316 disk pack to store two million characters.

In 1973, IBM introduced the IBM 3340 "Winchester" disk drive, the first significant
commercial use of low mass and low load heads with lubricated media. All modern disk
drives now use this technology and/or derivatives thereof. Project head designer/lead
designer Kenneth Haughton named it after the Winchester 30-30 rifle after the
developers called it the "30-30" because of it was planned to have two 30 MB spindles;
however, the actual product shipped with two spindles for data modules of either 35 MB
or 70 MB.
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Internal drives became the system of choice on PCs in the 1980s. Most
microcomputer hard disk drives in the early 1980s were not sold under their
manufacturer's names, but by OEMs as part of larger peripherals (such as the Corus
Disk System and the Apple Profile). The IBM PC/XT shipped with a standard internal
10MB hard disk drive; however, and this started a trend toward buying "bare" drives
(often by mail order) and installing them directly into a system. One interesting
exception was Apple Computer's 10MB "widget" proprietary HDD introduced in 1984
and discontinued along with the Lisa a year later.

External hard drives remained popular for much longer on the Apple Macintosh and
other platforms. Every Mac made between 1986 and 1998 has a SCSI port on the
back, making external expansion easy; also, "toaster" Compact Macs did not have
easily accessible hard drive bays (or, in the case of the Mac Plus, any hard drive bay
at all), so on those models, external SCSI disks were the only reasonable option.