Computer data storage history
Updated: 04/02/2019 by Computer Hope
| Computer hard drive history | |
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1890 | Herman Hollerith developed a method for machines to record and store information onto punch cards to be used for the US census. He later formed the company we know as IBM today. |
| 1946 | Freddie Williams applied for a patent on his CRT (cathode ray tube) storing device in December. The device that later became known as the Williams tube is capable of storing between 512 and 1024 bits of data. |
| 1956 | The first hard drive was released by IBM on September 13, 1956. It is a non-removable device, having a 5 MB storage capacity and costing $50,000. The first use of the hard drive is in the IBM 305 RAMAC system. |
| 1956 | The first external hard drive, the IBM 350 Disk File, was released on September 13, 1956. Reynold B. Johnson, an engineer at IBM, came up with the concept of the external hard drive. |
| 1963 | IBM developed the first removable hard drive, having a capacity of 2.6 MB. |
| 1966 | James Russell invented the concept of a CD (compact disc) in 1996. He was granted a patent for the CD in 1970. |
| 1967 | IBM begins development of floppy disk technology in 1967 at their San Jose, California site. |
| 1971 | The first floppy disk device, the IBM 23FD, and first floppy disk was released by IBM in 1971. The floppy disk is 8 inches in diameter, has a storage capacity of 80 KB, and is read-only. The 23FD is a built-in component of the 2835 Storage Control Unit. |
| 1972 | Memorex released a floppy disk drive, called the Memorex 650, in 1972. The 650 floppy diskette can store 175 KB of data and the floppy drive can be used with many devices. |
| 1976 | Shugart Associates released the first 5.25-inch floppy disk drive in 1976. The 5.25-inch single density floppy disk initially has a capacity of 90 KB. The double density floppy disk has an initial capacity of 113 KB. Disk capacity was later increased by other companies. |
| 1976 | Dataram Corporation releases BULK CORE, the world's first SSD (solid-state drive) storage technology, for DEC and Data General computers. |
| 1979 | Monty Widenius, co-owner of a small company called TcX, creates a reporting tool called Unireg, written in BASIC for a 4 MHz computer with 16 KB RAM. The tool was later ported to the C programming language for UNIX, and developed to become the database software MySQL 1.0 in 1996. Today, the MySQL RDBMS powers approximately 50% of websites on the Internet. |
| 1980 | The first 1 GB (gigabyte) hard drive was developed by IBM, weighing 550 pounds and costing $40,000. |
| 1981 | Sony introduced their first 3.5-inch floppy disk drive in 1981. The 3.5-inch floppy disk has a formatted capacity of 161.2 KB. However, the MIC (Microfloppy Industry Committee) releases a 3.5-inch media specification in 1982 that renders Sony's 3.5-inch floppy disk and drive unusable. |
| 1982 | The first CD (compact disc) was developed by Philips and Sony on August 17, 1982. |
| 1983 | Rodime developed the first 3.5-inch hard drive with a capacity of 10 MB. |
| 1983 | The first single-sided 3.5-inch floppy disk drives, adhering to the MIC specifications were released in 1983. Double-sided 3.5-inch floppy disk drives were released in 1984. |
| 1988 | The specifications for CD-R technology is published by Philips and Sony. The technology was originally named CD-WO (Write Once) or WORM. |
| 1988 | Digipro, a small PC vendor in Alabama, USA, reveals the first SSD prototype built using flash memory. It features Intel's NOR flash memory technology, released earlier the same year. |
| 1990 | The CD-R (recordable CD) technology with the ability to write data to a CD was available on the market starting in 1990. The first devices are nearly the size of a washing machine and cost around $35,000. |
| 1991 | SanDisk brings the first consumer SSD to market, featuring a capacity of 20 MB. |
| 1994 | The Zip drive was introduced by Iomega in 1994. The first zip disk has a capacity of 100 MB. Later zip disks have capacities of 250 MB and 750 MB. |
| 1994 | The CompactFlash flash memory card was first developed and released by SanDisk in 1994. The first CompactFlash cards have a storage capacity of 2 MB. |
| 1995 | The DVD was invented and developed by multiple companies in 1995. Companies involved in the DVD development include Hitachi, JVC, Matsushita Electric, Mitsubishi Electric, Philips, Pioneer, Sony, Time Warner, and Toshiba. |
| 1996 | After 17 years of development, MySQL version 1.0 was released in October 1996. By 2019, it would grow to become the database software powering half of all websites on the Internet. |
| 1997 | Imation develops the SuperDisk drive and diskette, also called the LS-120. The first SuperDisk diskette has a capacity of 120 MB, with a later version having a capacity of 240 MB. |
| 1997 | The rewritable CD, or CD-RW, was introduced in 1997. It allows data to be written to a specific type of rewritable disc again and again. |
| 1997 | The DVD-R (recordable DVD) and DVD-RW (rewritable DVD) discs were developed by Pioneer in 1997. |
| 1997 | The DVD+R and DVD+RW disc format, a recordable DVD that utilizes the "+" format, was created by the DVD+RW Alliance in 1997. The alliance includes Dell, HP, Ricoh, Sony, and Yamaha. |
| 1997 | MMC (MultiMediaCard) was a flash-based memory card developed by SanDisk and Siemens in 1997. |
| 1998 | The Memory Stick was released by Sony in October 1998. The Sony Memory Stick is a memory card that can only be used with Sony devices. |
| 1999 | Amir Ban, Dov Moran, and Oron Ogdan at M-Systems, now SanDisk, developed the first USB flash drive, called a DiskOnKey, in April 1999. It had a storage of capacity of 8 MB and was sold to the public starting in 2000. |
| 1999 | Panasonic, SanDisk, and Toshiba developed the SD (Secure Digital) memory card format and introduced it to the public in August 1999. |
| 2004 | Google begins development of Bigtable, a massively-scaling data storage system used internally for its critical applications. |
| 2006 | The Blu-ray disc format was developed by multiple companies and introduced to the public on January 4, 2006. Companies involved include Dell, Hitachi, Hewlett Packard, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Sony, and TDK. The Blu-ray format was a competing high definition data technology to HD DVD. A Blu-ray disc can store 25 GB or 50 GB of data, depending if it is a single-layer or dual-layer disc. |
| 2006 | Toshiba released the first HD DVD player on March 31, 2006. The HD DVD format was a competing high definition data technology to Blu-ray. An HD DVD can store 25 GB of data per layer. Blu-ray beat out HD DVD in the high definition disc technology war on February 19, 2008. |
| 2006 | Samsung released the first Blu-ray player in June 2006. |
| 2006 | The first Blu-ray rewritable drive available to the mass market was released by Sony, the BWU-100A. It retailed for $699 and was capable of writing data to single-layer and dual-layer Blu-ray discs. |
| 2007 | The first 1 TB (terabyte) hard drive, developed by Hitachi, was released in January 2007. |
| 2007 | MIT student Drew Houston, frustrated by forgetting his USB drive before getting on a train from Boston to New York, conceives of the Dropbox cloud data storage service. In June 2007, he founded Dropbox, Inc. Today, the Dropbox service has over 500 million users worldwide, and handles approximately 4,000 file edits every second. |
| 2013 | Kingston released the first 1 TB USB flash drive in January 2013. |
| 2013 | In July, Samsung announces the XS1715 Enterprise, the first commercial NVMe (non-volatile memory express) data storage drive. It reads data at 3 GB/s, six times faster than Samsung's previous Enterprise drives. |
| 2015 | In May, Google releases a public version of Bigtable as an optional component of GCP (Google Cloud Platform). |
| 2015 | In July, Intel announces 3D XPoint, a multi-planar NVMe data storage technology. Its inaugural line of 3D XPoint memory products, released later the same year, is code-named Optane. |