The History About A Hard Drive

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Introduction

In this report I will be investigating and analysing the development of storage devices and also explain the role that it has on meeting the business demands and requirements. Also I will be adding conclusion at the end of the report to add a recommendation and summarise the main points discussed in the report. At the end of the report I will be using the Harvard referencing system to cite the sources of the information that has been gathered and used for the report and then I will be creating list for the following references.

Main body of Report (with the appropriate headings and sub-headings)

Development of storage devices (history, technology, type and size)

Any device which is used to store data is known as a 'storage device'. There are a number of different storage devices, each with their own purpose and use. The storage devices group into three categories and this includes internal, external storage devices and network storage systems. The internal storage devices have items such as hard drive, CD/DVD diskette and floppy. The external storage devices include USB flash drive and external hard drive. There is also network storage system and this is called "cloud computing" which is latest method of storing large data on the network.

Past

Under this heading, I will be talking about the past technology involved with the development of the storage devices and how they developed through time and also the impact that it had on the business with regards to meeting their demands and needs.

Floppy drive http://www.komecomputers.com/image-files/picture-of-floppy-diskette-drive.jpg

Floppy drives are small, removable, media storage devices. The floppy disk drive reads data from and writes data to a small disk. The most common type is the 3.5" drive followed by the completely obsolete 5.25" drive, among other sizes. The first floppy disks was introduced in 1971 and in later 1978 more business were using this disk and it had 160 KB disk space and it had a single side of 5.25". The popularity of floppy disk increased in 1980s and as a result the floppy drive became the primary storage device for all small and large businesses. The businesses primarily used the floppy disks to store files that have been created using word processors and for microcomputers. Then as the demand grew the manufacturers were finally able to increase the capacity to 1.44MB floppy diskettes which was widely used in the 1990's. It was replaced by CD and DVD drives later on.

CD drives

The CD-ROM was invented in 1984 by Philips and Sony and it became commercially available in 1985. It was first used to write access amounts of information to a single disk.

CD-ROM is an optical media storage device. CD-ROM means Compact Disk – Read Only Memory. This demands that data cannot be replaced on this type of disk. It holds data and programs that do not need to change (read only). Early CD-ROM drives were slow, running at 1X or 150 kilobytes per second, but the technology quickly grew to where drives run at 52X speeds, making large application files quick and efficient to install.

What makes the CD-ROM alternative choice over floppy disk is the fact that, it has the capability of storing hundreds of times more data than the floppy disk e.g. floppy disk can only store up to 1.44MB and CD-ROMs can accommodate data up to 912.3MB. In addition, the CD-ROM provides the businesses an inexpensive way of storing large amounts of data which is more convenient especially to the small business because they can afford them. By the early 1990s most computers sold included CD-ROM drives.

There are different types of CD discs available and this includes Compact Disc Rewritable (CD-RW). This is a disc that is used for burning data, audio and video files onto disc. Another type of CD disc is called CD-Rs and it stands for Recordable Compact Discs. Both can accommodate data up 700MB and will only allow one-time recording on a Compact Disc. Therefore, small and large businesses have chosen this method of storing their data as alternative to the floppy disk which was not providing the small/large businesses the large disk space they wanted at the time and it is still being used by most businesses for data storage and other purposes.

At the present, however CD disks have been replaced with external hard drives because they offer more capacity and businesses will be able to keep them safe in an external location in case of a hazards e.g. fire in the workplace or etc.

Present

Under this heading, I will be discussing the present technology involved with the development of the storage devices and how they currently have impact on the businesses and how they meet the demands and needs of the business.

Hard drive

The first storage device that was introduced was a hard drive and it was IBM Model 350 Disk File that came with the IBM 305 RAMAC computer in 1956. The drive was only able to accommodate 5MB of data and for the price of $10,000 a megabyte and it was the size of a fridge. In addition because of the high price, it was only being purchased by big companies However as time progressed there were larger capacity hard drives available for use including 100GB to 3TB and they have also become inexpensive and allows more space than any other storage device and that is why it is used by all the business offices around the world.

As a result of technological advancement, today we have hard drives that are able to accommodate up to 3TB storage capacity. Large businesses and companies use that amount and especially businesses that work with graphical designs and are using 3D modelling software’s such as AutoCAD which is used by most automotive companies. However small and medium business today are using up to 500GB memory for office and general use which is included in many desktop PCs that are sale in the market.

The reason hard drives are important is because most PC come with the hard drive because it is used as permanent storage location for all files and programs saved by the user. In conclusion, this has become the most dominant device for data storage in commercial and personal computers from early 1960s to date.

USB Flash drive

History, types and sizes in a business context

A USB flash drive is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface. They are fast, durable and have vast storage space capacity and it is reliable. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. USB flash drives are used to store documents, photos, files, music videos and more.

The first USB product was released in 1996, by companies such as Compaq, DEC, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Nortel, and NEC. By 1998 the standard had been widely adopted by every business around the world. In 2000 the USB 2.0 standard was released and the second generation of USB came with has a much faster data-transfer speed than previous version.

They are available in different sizes varying from 256MB to 64GB. It is said that the first commercially-available USB flash drive was called the "ThumbDrive," it was produced by Trek Technology in the year 2000. Soon IBM came out with its own model known as the "DiskOnKey". By 2002, there were several companies which entered the market producing a similar product and marketing it.

If we look at the analysis of how the USB storage device or has developed over time. In 2005, the USB flash drive became a new a storage device with a restricted capacity. It was reliable and small, but the first models that came into the market had at most 1 gigabyte of storage capacity and were expensive. At the moment, we can find smaller version of USB sticks that have great storage capabilities up to 32 gigabytes and now we can find even 64GB. In addition, it had greatly improved their transfer rate between the computer and the device, thanks to the implementation of the 400mbps USB 2 port which meets the requirement of the business.

Currently, USB flash drives have become the most popular data storage devices for businesses and among the benefits are it is lightweight, small and easy to carry from one place to another.

Future

Under this heading, I will be discussing the future technology involved with the development of the storage devices and what impact they will have in the future on the businesses and relate it to the demands and needs of the business.

Cloud storage

The "cloud" in cloud computing can be defined as the set of hardware, networks, storage, services, and interfaces that have been combined in order to deliver aspects of computing as a service. Cloud services include the delivery of software, infrastructure, and storage over the Internet (either as separate components or a complete platform) based on user demand.

The Cloud storage is a typical model of networked online storage where essentially the data is stored and kept in a virtualised pool of storage which is usually hosted by third parties. There are e-mail services that provide cloud storage such as Hotmail, G-mail and there are other web services such as dropbox which allow the individuals or businesses store and access their private data virtually from anywhere by using this web service. This is beneficial to the businesses that are constantly travelling to meet their clients around the world without having to carrying the physical storage devices which can easily be lost when travelling.

The architecture of the cloud storage typically consists of a master control server and several storage servers.

Another benefit to this method compare to the physical storage devices is the size. The capacity of the cloud storage is virtually unlimited because it allows you store data on multiple servers remotely. Also saves time by allowing you to access remotely from a remote database than of storing information to your computer's hard drive or other local storage device.

Cloud computing is new technology which is gradually becoming popular in the business world because it has the potential to change the way companies store and access their data in a cloud environment by providing these services to their customers, business clients, and suppliers. There are already companies that who have and use the cloud storage system, this include big companies such as Google and Amazon, already have most of their IT resources in the cloud.

Marketplace

Currently the storage device that is dominant in the market place is the hard drives.

There are more than 200 companies that have manufactured hard disk drive units, however most current units are manufactured by Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital. The below table shows that the dominant manufacturer for hard drive is the Western Digital company which had a growth of 10.1% in 2012 and has manage to sold 63.8 million quantities of units. Second best is the Seagate which has total sales of 60.7 million units which comes very close to the sales of the Western Digital company.

The Worldwide revenues for hard disk drives shipments are expected to reach $38 billion in 2012, up about 19% from $32 billion in 2011.

Conclusions (based on analysis, evidence and observations found in main report)

The development of the storage devices has been remarkable when looking at the past technology that we had up to today and seeing how the size and speed has changed and influenced the choice of the storage devices in the market.

The technology has changed greatly over time and we are currently in a time of information. If we look at 100 years ago we were not concerned technology of data storage that much because people where used to keeping everything in physical files and folders and keeping them in filing cabinets. Now the whole world is keeping the information in storage device or in a server and using new technologies which have provided ease of use and faster way of storing information.

In conclusion I have done research and I have carried out analysis and I have seen that the CD-ROM are becoming obsolete and hard drives particularly external hard drives are becoming better choice today for the most of the people. This is because they have managed evolve and keep up with the demands of the people and have upgraded their capacity to suit the needs of the large businesses which have large customer database and need more space to maintain this.

The future technology shows that the hard drive will be eventually replaced by cloud computing.