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Organization: Internet Archive

Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain.

Collection: yahoo.com

TIMESTAMPS

Home

Cost of
Hard Drive Storage Space

Prediction: The cost for 128 kilobytes of memory
will fall below U$100 in the near future.
Creative Computing magazine
December 1981, page 6

At $100 for 128 kilobytes, the price of 256 megabytes comes to $200,000.


RAM (random-access memory) is now
at record low prices, with many vendors
offering 256-megabyte modules for U$50 or less.
San Francisco Chronicle, 27 September 2001

These items refer to static (no moving parts) memory modules, not to hard drives,
but this astonishing reduction in cost over the last couple of decades
has occurred both in static memory and in rotating hard drives.
Both are essential to the operation of modern computers.

Make it bigger, faster, cheaper.
— Al Shugart
Chairman and CEO of Seagate Technology Inc.
(originally Shugart Technology Inc.)

Alan Shugart Wikipedia

Alan Shugart milestones, Computer History Musuem
Alan Shugart biography, Computer History Musuem

Al Shugart's Speech At Conference marking
100th Anniversary of Magnetic Recording
14 December 1998
“The electronics were all in vacuum tubes...”

Alan Shugart obituary New York Times, 15 December 2006

Since the introduction of the disk drive in 1956, the density
of  information  it  can  record  has  swelled  from  a  paltry
2,000 bits  to  100 billion  bits  (gigabits),  all  crowded  in
the small  space  of a  square  inch.   That  represents a
50-million-fold increase.  Not even Moore's silicon chips
can boast  that kind  of progress... Without the continual
squeezing  of bits  onto  ever  shrinking  hard drives, the
world of information as we know it today, and tomorrow,
will come to a grinding halt...
Kryder's Law
Scientific American
August 2005

Mark Kryder
Wikipedia

The cost of hard drives, used in computers for storing data in large quantities, has been falling rapidly for many years.  Below are some details.  Note the steep decline in the cost per megabyte. The column headed "W" shows the warranty duration in years.  The "Price of Drive" is the retail price, sales taxes extra.  The "Cost per megabyte" is the retail price, all taxes included.  Prices are in Canadian currency, except prices marked "U$" which are in United States currency.  These examples have been selected from hard drives advertised for sale at retail, to show the lowest available per-megabyte cost.

This project — a history of the remarkable decline in cost of hard drive data storage capacity — began with an email exchange in July 1996.  Much of the above information was gathered July-September 1996.  Later updates below:

Hard disk drives have been the dominant device for secondary storage of data in general purpose computers since the early 1960s.

All of the above, except the 1956 item, were and are hard drives for use with personal computers.  For comparison, the cost of plain paper comes to about $5 per megabyte just for the paper, (taking one megabyte to be equivalent to about 500 pages typed one side single-spaced, with the retail cost of paper at one cent per letter-size sheet, which is a reasonably average price in the 1990s).

February 1980 ad offering
Winchester hard disk drive
for North Star personal computer.
Click on image to see the whole ad.

• Comrex Comfiler 10 megabyte, for QX-10
• Pegasus (Great Lakes) 10 megabyte internal unit for IBM
• Pegasus (Great Lakes) 23 megabyte external unit (with controller)
• Tecmar 5 megabyte removable cartridge Winchester in PC
• CTI 11 megabyte internal hard disk for DEC Rainbow
  [DEC meant 'Digital Equipment Company' (bought by Compaq in 1998)]

• Cameo
• DSS
• Fourth Dimension
• Franklin
• Corona
• QCS
• Quadram
• Santa Clara
• Tallgrass
• Xcomp

Sales Tax: Throughout 1999, and continuing into 2000, the sales tax in Nova Scotia was/is 15%.  It is added to each purchase at the time of sale.  Advertised prices of computer hardware and software are always stated without the sales tax; the purchaser pays the advertised price plus 15%.  This tax is known officially as the H.S.T. or Harmonized Sales Tax.  "Harmonized" means this is a combined tax, partly federal and partly provincial.  (Originally, the governments called this the Blended Sales Tax, but changed to the alternative name when political opponents began calling it the B.S. Tax.)

Note 105

—  Source (archived in the Wayback Machine on 18 July 2004):
http://web.archive.org/web/20040718032421/http://www.directdial.com/ca/shop/go/hard-drive-sata-all.asp

—  Source (archived in the Wayback Machine on 16 October 2007):
http://web.archive.org/web/20071016204918/http://www.directdial.com/ca/shop/go/hard-drive-sata-all.asp

—  Source (archived in the Wayback Machine on 18 November 2007):
http://web.archive.org/web/20071118043856rn_1/www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&rh=n:595046&page=1

—  Source:
http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=amb_link_7719852_17?ie=UTF8&hidden-keywords=internal&rh=n%3A677242011&pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0V6XZ06SHWKKMP74QQEJ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1250483822&pf_rd_i=677273011

•  Western Digital 2 TB
•  Manufacturer model number:  WD2003FYYS
•  5 Year Limited Warranty
•  Rotation speed:  7200rpm
•  Formatted Capacity:  2,000,398 megabytes
•  Nominal Capacity:  2 terabytes
•  Interface:  SATA 3 Gb/s
•  User Sectors Per Drive:  3,907,029,168
•  1.2 million hours MTBF

Power Dissipation:
•  Read/Write:  10.7 watts
•  Idle:  8.1 watts
•  Standby:  1.5 watts
•  Sleep:  1.5 watts

—  Sources:
http://www.directdial.com/ca/shop/go/hard-drive-sata-all.asp?menu=60,64,
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=732

•  Western Digital Caviar Black 1 TB
•  Manufacturer model number:  WD1001FALS
•  5 Year Limited Warranty
•  Rotation speed:  7200rpm
•  Formatted Capacity:  1,000,236 megabytes
•  Nominal Capacity:  1 terabyte
•  Interface:  SATA 3 Gb/s
•  User Sectors Per Drive:  1,953,525,168
•  Non-Recoverable Errors:  one per 10¹⁵

Power Dissipation:
•  Read/Write:  8.4 watts
•  Idle:  7.8 watts
•  Standby:  1.0 watts
•  Sleep:  1.0 watts

—  Sources:
http://www.directdial.com/ca/shop/go/hard-drive-sata-all.asp?menu=60,64,
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=488

•  Seagate Pipeline 5900
•  Manufacturer model number:  ST31000322CS
•  5 Year Limited Warranty
•  Rotation speed:  5900rpm
•  Nominal Capacity:  1 terabyte
•  Interface:  7-pin Serial ATA
•  Guaranteed Sectors:  1,953,525,168
•  Annual Failure Rate:  0.55% (1/180)

—  Sources:
http://www.directdial.com/ca/shop/go/hard-drive-sata-all.asp?menu=60,64,
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/consumer_electronics/pipeline/

•  Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
•  Manufacturer model number:  ST31500341AS
•  5 Year Limited Warranty
•  Rotation speed:  7200rpm
•  Nominal Capacity:  1.5 terabyte
•  Interface:  SATA 3Gb/s NCQ

—  Sources:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00066IJPQ/ref=asc_df_B00066IJPQ1204460
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/consumer_electronics/

—  Source:
http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=amb_link_7719852_17?ie=UTF8&hidden-keywords=internal&rh=n%3A677242011&pf_rd_m=A3DWYIK6Y9EEQB&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0V6XZ06SHWKKMP74QQEJ&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1250483822&pf_rd_i=677273011

1977 ad offering a
Paper Tape Punch/Reader
as a "mass storage peripheral"
for the Heathkit H11 personal computer.
Click on image to see the whole ad.

Glossary

In seventy years of life you would be exposed to around six gigabytes of ASCII (text)... This chart suggests that next year (1998) the Web will be as large as the Library of Congress...

2004 March

Seagate Sees the Future:
Storing the U.S. Library of Congress
on a Fifty-Cent Coin

Areal density research findings to be presented at
American Physical Society Conference

1999 December

Hard Drive Capacity Barriers

8.4 GB Barrier

• Operating systems that recognize extended BIOS functions:
• Windows 95
• Windows 98

• Operating systems that do not recognize extended BIOS functions:
• DOS 6.xx and earlier
• Windows 3.1x
• Windows NT
• Novell NetWare
• OS/2 Warp

2.1 GB Barrier

528 MB Barrier

1998 September

Getting Around the 8.4 GB Barrier

2001 May 22

Computer Disk Storage Space
Outpaces Moore's Law

Superparamagnetic Limit Exceeded by IBM Researchers

More Hard Drive History

1999 September 10

Why Was it Called the Winchester Drive?

There is a persistent story, that the hard drive was called Winchester because the first ones were invented by the IBM research lab in San Jose.  According to this account, the lab was across the street from the Winchester House, home of the widow of the man who invented the Winchester rifle.  The lab guys thought the new drive was as fast as a bullet from a Winchester.  While this story has been circulating for many years, it isn't accurate.

It is true that the widow of the man who invented the Winchester rifle built a mansion in San Jose.  It is still a major tourist attraction known as the Winchester Mystery House.  Although the RAMAC was invented at a site close to downtown San Jose, it was not very near the Winchester House.  By 1969-1973 when the Winchester disk drive was being developed, IBM had moved its development lab to southern outskirts of San Jose, over ten miles from the Winchester house.  Today one finds a movie theater, a shopping center, and a freeway across the street from the Winchester house.  The IBM Research lab in San Jose was not involved at all.  We didn't get into disk drives until 1979.  The Winchester was invented at the product development lab.

Tom Howell, VP, Research
Quantum Corporation Milpitas, California

From: Tom Howell <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: Historical notes about Hard Drives
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 1999 18:07:52 -0700

1998 August 16

Prediction: Hard Drive Cost
Below 3¢ per Megabyte
By December 1998

1999 June 23

1996 December 22

1997 December 30

IBM Sets New World Record
for Disk Drive Storage

• IBM's progressive records in hard drive storage capacity:
• announced in December 1989
  1 gigabit per square inch [150 megabits per square centimetre]
• announced in March 1995
  3 gigabits per square inch [460 megabits per square centimetre]
• announced in December 1996
  5 gigabits per square inch [770 megabits per square centimetre]
• announced in December 1997
  11 gigabits per square inch [1,700 megabits per square centimetre]

New record surpasses 11 billion bits per square inch
1,700 megabits per square centimetre

Western Digital and IBM
Hard Drive Licensing Agreement

2001 May

Seagate Produces Highest Capacity Hard Drive in the World
181 gigabytes

2002 June

IBM High-Capacity Hard Drive
146 gigabytes

2002 December

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

1981 December

Bubble Memory Challenges
Winchester Hard Drives

We've mentioned several times in this column that the expectation that bubble memory devices would replace other mass storage devices such as disks and tapes has just not been happening.  Now, further clouding the future of bubble memories, National Semiconductor has announced its withdrawal from the field.  This leaves Intel, now specializing in 128 kilobyte devices, as the major US supplier of bubble memories.  Motorola is also still committed to the field.  However, in contrast to the eight or ten manufacturers who jumped on the bubble band wagon five or six years ago, the fact that only two are still committed sheds serious doubt on the future of bubble memories as a viable and economic device.  Steward Sando, marketing manager for Intel, predicted the cost for 128k bytes of bubble memory will fall below U$100 in the near future, thus making it competitive with other types of solid state memory or Winchester disks.  While Intel's largest bubble memory is currently the 128 kilobyte device, the firm will introduce a 512 kilobyte device in the not too distant future according to Sando.  By 1985 that device will cost about U$150.  So, amid the dropouts, Intel remains.  Will they be able to repeat the success of their line of microprocessors (4004, 8008, 8080, ...) or will they eventually give up on bubble devices?  Only time will tell.
[Source: Item Yet Another Bubble Bursts in the regular column "Dateline: Tomorrow" by David H. Ahl, in Creative Computing magazine, December 1981, page 6.]

Bubble memory is a type of non-volatile computer memory that uses a thin film of a magnetic material to hold small magnetized areas, known as "bubbles", which each store one bit of data.  Bubble memory started out as a promising technology in the early 1970s.  By the mid-1970s practically every large electronics company had teams working on bubble memory.  By the late 1970s several products were on the market, and Intel released their own 1 megabit version, the 7110.  In the early 1980s, however, bubble memory became a dead end with the introduction of higher-density, faster, and cheaper hard disk systems.  Almost all work on it stopped...
—  Source: Bubble memory
    http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/111012

2011 November 15

Buying Guide: External Hard Drives

Which brand to buy?  Everyone has a horror story about a drive from Company X or Company Y going south on them, along with a warning to steer clear of everything with a particular brand name on it.  But the truth is all drives fail at some point, no matter who makes them.  Your primary concerns should be the size of the actual drive and the warranty period.  500GB and 1TB drives have been around for a long time and are well proven.  2TB drives are newer but are now considered by most consumer watchdogs to be just as reliable as 1TB drives.  Stay away from 3TB drives for the time being until they've been proven in the field.  A 2-year warranty is standard for most hard drives, but 3-year warranties are quickly becoming more common...
—  Source: Buying Guide: External Hard Drives Wired
    http://www.wired.com/reviews/2011/11/buyingguide-hard-drives/?pid=1756

2012 January

Hard Drive Manufacturers
Slash Their Warranty Periods

Seagate and Western Digital are shortening their hard-drive warranties – in some instances from five years to one – to save money or redirect it to new products.  Seagate reduced its warranties on certain drives as of December 31, 2011, and Western Digital followed on January 2, 2012.  But all drives that shipped before those dates will continue to carry their original warranty term...

Seagate is redirecting money previously spent on upholding longer warranties into product development.  Seagate's new warranties apply to internal hard drives for laptops, desktops, and consumer electronic devices.  The drive manufacturer says warranties on "mission critical enterprise drives," such as its Cheetah line and its exernal drives, are unchanged.

Seagate has reduced its warranty periods from five years to three for "nearline" products, such as the Constellation 2 series.  Similarly it has lowered the Momentus XT's warranty period frpm five years to three.  At the same time, Seagate has changed its warranty policy from five years to one year for certain desktop and notebook drives, such as the 3.5-inch Barracuda and Barracuda Green drives and the 2.5-inch Momentus (5400 and 7200-rpm) drive...

Western Digital is reducing warranties on its Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue drives from three years to two... A WD spokesperson denied that these changes had anything to do with recent flooding in Thailand, which has severely affected the company's manufacturing capability.

—  Source: PCWorld (magazine) v30 n3, March 2012

2012 January 12

IBM Smashes Moore's Law,
Cuts Bit Size to 12 Atoms

IBM announced Thursday that after five years of work, its researchers have been able to reduce from about one million to twelve the number of atoms required to create a bit of data.

by Lucas Mearian

Computerworld —  IBM announced Thursday (12 January 2012) that after five years of work, its researchers have been able to reduce from about one million to 12 the number of atoms required to create a bit of data.  The breakthrough may someday allow data storage hardware manufacturers to produce products with capacities that are orders of magnitude greater than today's hard disk and flash drives...  "Moore's Law is basically the drive of the industry to shrink components down little by little and then solve the engineering challenges that go along with that but keeping the basic concepts the same.  The basic concepts of magnetic data storage or even transistors haven't really changed over the past 20 years," said Andreas Heinrich, IBM Research Staff Member and lead investigator on this project.  "The ultimate end of Moore's Law is a single atom.  That's where we come in"...  Heinrich is quick to point out that the breakthrough is more theoretical than practical at this point; storage manufacturers aren't going to build storage devices that use a scanning tunneling microscope to switch bits back and forth to store data.  But the research proves storage mediums can be vastly denser than they are today.  "If you look at magnetic data storage element in a solid state device... or in a hard disk drive, you have about one million atoms in each bit," Heinrich said.  "So you have a lot of leeway from where we currently are"...
—  Source: IBM Smashes Moore's Law, Cuts Bit Size to 12 Atoms
    http://www.cio.com/article/697977/IBM_Smashes_Moore_s_Law_Cuts_Bit_Size_to_12_Atoms

Graph: Hard Drive Cost per Gigabyte, 1980-2009
Source: A History of Storage Cost by Matthew Komorowski

  Hits per calendar month
       2014 Mar    1545
       2014 Feb    1713
       2014 Jan    1606

       2013 Dec    1474
       2013 Nov    2354
       2013 Oct    2274
       2013 Sep    1636
       2013 Aug    2255
       2013 Jul    2041
       2013 Jun    1717
       2013 May    1808
       2013 Apr    2402
       2013 Mar    2495
       2013 Feb    1791
       2013 Jan    1720

       2012 Dec    1475
       2012 Nov    2496
       2012 Oct    3909
       2012 Sep    2148
       2012 Aug    3997
       2012 Jul    2884
       2012 Jun    2703
       2012 May    4405
       2012 Apr    3772
       2012 Mar    3985
       2012 Feb    5148
       2012 Jan    5928

       2011 Dec    5401
       2011 Nov    6840
       2011 Oct    5742
       2011 Sep    8140
       2011 Aug    3554
       2011 Jul    3015
       2011 Jun    4099
       2011 May    4606
       2011 Apr    4036
       2011 Mar   19762  (See note 1 below)
       2011 Feb    2607
       2011 Jan    2802

       2010 Dec    2576
       2010 Nov    2527
       2010 Oct    2598
       2010 Sep    2771
       2010 Aug    2297
       2010 Jul    2058
       2010 Jun    2084
Note 1:
The astonishing traffic spike in March 2011 was created
– beginning on March 8th – by a link to this page
in “A History of Storage Cost” by  Matthew Komorowski
http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte

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First uploaded to the WWW:   1996 November
Moved to new hosting service:   2010 May 01
Latest update:   2014 April 03