All of us know what a hard-disk drive is. We talk of 100 GB Disks that are in the market, and most of you would be looking forward to buy a 180 GB disk for your PCs.
An essential component of our PCs and Notebooks...have you ever thought about the technology behind it?

Kumaran, aka Jai, is the inspiration behind this post. He talked to me for about an hour about this electronic thing that PC users rely on a lot.
He knows quite a lot, of that many things that I have not yet come across and answers to many technical questions I had in mind.

A number of innovations to its name, PC pioneer IBM was the first to come up with a magnetic disk drive(1957). The technology was called Random Access Method of Accounting and Control (RAMAC).
Another reason to feel proud to be an IBMer.


The 350 RAMAC stored 5 megabytes (MB) of data, was the size of two large refrigerators and cost $10,000 per MB; the device could store 5 million characters of data on 50 disks, each 24 inches in diameter. Each disk could hold an equivalent of 25,000 punch cards. My eyes popped out on hearing this!


A little later the disk drive IBM 1301 comes into the market.
The IBM design is the subject of a precise definition of standards, in terms of dimensions, colors, graphics, etc.
The IBM computer rooms had unique and outstanding style, in tose days the company was called the Big Blue!

An IBM 1301 Magnetic Disk Drive

to be continued...