[HN Gopher] The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
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The Hard Disk That Changed the World (2006)
Author : grunthos
Score : 39 points
Date : 2022-06-15 10:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newsweek.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newsweek.com)
| cm2187 wrote:
| Hard drives are at this stage where no one will really miss them
| given their performance vs SSDs, but still common enough to not
| attract nostalgia. I think it is still mind blowing that such a
| cheap device can move a physical head over a disk within a
| minuscule precision, both in term of position and distance above
| the disk, and this many times per second. Yes it doesn't do a
| million iops, it only does like 10 iops, but I am still impressed
| we get those 10 iops on a cheap consumer devices that stores TBs
| of data.
| pjdesno wrote:
| WD says that the track width on their newest drives is about
| 50nm. The servo has to position the head with an accuracy
| considerably smaller than that, especially for writes - for
| reads you can just try again if you're off center. (which is
| why some drives have different seek time numbers for read and
| write - they don't need as much "settling time" for reads) For
| comparison, green light has a wavelength of about 550nm.
| jasongill wrote:
| I know you're making an exaggerated comparison, but 10 IOPS
| would be closer to the performance of a floppy disk than even a
| 5400rpm consumer hard drive (depending on workload, of course).
| Imagine if we still had to deal with the performance of floppy
| drives on a daily basis!
| cm2187 wrote:
| Actually I thought this was 10. Just double checked and a
| consumer drive in more like 50. Floppy disk seems to be less
| than 5.
| bdavis__ wrote:
| Nope. CDC 300MB Removable platters SMD.
|
| http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/201...
|
| More storage than you thought possible. And it was widely used
| for about 10 years.
| blakesterz wrote:
| "The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-
| oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5
| megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of
| Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog.""
|
| So maybe a dumb question... what were they doing with that thing
| back in 1956? That's such a small amount of data in such a large
| space, was this actually used to do anything useful after it was
| sold?
| biggieshellz wrote:
| It replaced a tub file
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tub_file), where workers would
| pull individual cards by hand.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| No, video, no audio. Decent amount of storage for text/data
| files. Offload the old ones to tape. Make do with what's
| available.
| tresqotheq wrote:
| kps wrote:
| It's the equivalent of 36 feet of punch cards. That's a _lot_
| of storage.
| bluedino wrote:
| Some of the first personal computers only came with 4k of
| memory
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| It's not a dumb question. Consider the value in moving
| calculations from paper to a spreadsheet.
|
| That's _about_ what it was like in the early computing days in
| terms of overall amount of data and the types of general
| processing that were done with it. Incredibly useful but only
| applicable to a narrow range of tasks.
| tresqotheq wrote:
| yesenadam wrote:
| Hi. You seem new to HN, and have already written a few such
| comments. Don't do that here, thanks. Please read the "In
| comments" section of the guidelines, which starts with "Be
| kind." Thanks.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Don't think of it as two MP3s. Think of it as 25-30 book-length
| volumes of text.
|
| That was plenty to handle payroll, inventory, sales, etc. for a
| business, especially since the data model back then was to only
| keep current, live data on the disk, while archiving old data
| off on tapes.
| xtracto wrote:
| Also, reading from the article they are mentioning that there
| _was_ already tape storage (non random access). I can imagine
| that the 5MB random access disks were using as "working
| memory" and then results where still stored in tape.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Definitely.
|
| "Batch processing" often involved reading the data off one
| tape into the CPU, processing it, then writing it back out
| onto another tape.
|
| "Computer operators" basically did nothing but load the
| proper tapes onto the drives at the proper times (plus
| replacing printer consumables, etc.).
| xtracto wrote:
| My first computer with a hard disk was 10MB. You could store
| the operating system (MSDOS 5) and several programs (I remember
| Professional Write and QPRO. Not only that, but you could even
| store games. Prince of Persia was available in 2 floppies (5
| 1/4") with 720KB each one. You could store the whole game in
| the hard disk as well... This was around 1990.
|
| In 1956, 5MB was plent of storage.
| kube-system wrote:
| Very successful graphing calculators have main storage measured
| in kilobytes.
|
| You aren't running npm install on these machines, you're mostly
| working with numbers.
| tpmx wrote:
| https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/ramac/
|
| _Before RAMAC, information had to be entered by running a
| stack of cards through a punched card machine, and answers
| would arrive in hours or days. RAMAC could find data in
| seconds, alter it, and move on to find a completely different
| piece of data. It let enterprises think about data in new ways,
| mixing and matching it on the fly. Random access made the
| relational database possible._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database#1960s,_navigational_D...
|
| _The introduction of the term database coincided with the
| availability of direct-access storage (disks and drums) from
| the mid-1960s onwards. The term represented a contrast with the
| tape-based systems of the past, allowing shared interactive use
| rather than daily batch processing._
| [deleted]
| pjdesno wrote:
| There's one on display at TJ Watson labs. It's kind of cool.
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