The first hard disk drive was part of a computer system built by IBM in the mid 1950's called IBM 305 RAMAC, it occupied almost half a room, cost around $50,000, and had only 5 Mb of storage.
Since then, technical improvements lead hard drives to become continuously smaller, cheaper, and their storage capacities have grown over 100,000-times. Although the basic technology has remained the same. Rapidly spinning platters coated with ferromagnetic material hold the data, while a special actuator arm equipped with a read/write head hovers just above it.
Despite the fact that this technology reached a very high level of maturity in recent years, it still suffers from a number of basic limitations due mainly to its mechanical nature. Hard drives are vulnerable to shock, consume relatively high amounts of power in order for the platters to spin, produce a large amount of heat, and take time to start.
Mean while since the advent in 1984 from Toshiba and subsequent introduction of it as a commercial product by Intel, flash prices continue to decline 50% annually and sometimes even at higher rates. Although hard disk drives still have the price edge , analysts agree that the trend in cost reduction is expected to continue. The recent success of MP3 players based on flash memory has contributed greatly to high volumes and, therefore, reduced prices of the media. With the newer technology flash could be able to deliver enough capacity in small footprint.
Samsung has unveiled a consumer Solid State Disk (SSD), which will be tested out on laptops and portable devices first. Releasing 32 GB 1.8” and 2.5” SSDs inside a laptop and an ultra-portable mobile computer, costing $2,430 and $3,700, respectively, in Korea.
No comments:
Post a Comment