The history of information storage goes back to pre-historic times where mankind used red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide and charcoal to paint information about their life on rock walls, caves and ceilings. As mankind evolves, the way of storing information evolves as well.
We are now living in the 21st century, where everything comes in small size, including data storage. Let us preview some of the data storages, and how they have evolve in functions and sizes.
1950's
Hard Disk
A hard disk uses rigid rotating platters. It stores and retrieves digital data from a planar magnetic surface. Information is written to the disk by transmitting an electromagnetic flux through an antenna or write head that is very close to a magnetic material, which in turn changes its polarization due to the flux. The information can be read back in a reverse manner, as the magnetic fields cause electrical change in the coil or read head that passes over it.
The first computer with a hard disk drive as standard was the IBM 350 Disk File, introduced in 1956 with the IBM 305 computer. This drive had fifty 24 inch platters, with a total capacity of five million characters. In 1952, an IBM engineer named Reynold Johnson developed a massive hard disk consisting of fifty platters, each two feet wide, that rotated on a spindle at 1200 rpm with read/write heads for the first database running RCAs Bismark computer. The storage capacity of the 305's 50 two-foot diameter disks was 5 megabytes of data.
Hard Disk
1960's
Music Tape
The compact audio cassette audio storage medium was introduced by Philips in 1963. The compact cassette had originally been intended for use in dictation machines, but soon became, and remains, a popular medium for distributing prerecorded music. Starting in 1979, Sony's Walkman helped the format become widely used and popular.
The cassette was a great step forward in convenience from reel-to-reel audio tape recording, though because of the limitations of the cassette's size and speed, it compared poorly in quality. Unlike the open reel format, the two stereo tracks lie adjacent to each other rather than a 1/3 and 2/4 arrangement. This permitted monaural cassette players to play stereo recordings "summed" as mono tracks and permitted stereo players to play mono recordings through both speakers. The tape is 1/8 inch (3.175 mm) wide, with each stereo track being 1/32 inch (0.79 mm) wide and moves at 17/8 inches per second (47.625 mm/s). For comparison, the typical open reel format was ¼ inch (6.35 mm) wide, each stereo track being 1/16 inch (1.5875 mm) wide, and running at either 3¾ or 7½ inches per second (95.25 or 190.5 mm/s). Some machines did use 17/8 inches per second (47.625 mm/s) but the quality was poor.
Music Tape
Twistor Memory
Twistor memory is, similar to core memory, formed by wrapping magnetic tape around a current-carrying wire. It was developed at Bell Labs, but it was used for only a brief time in the marketplace between 1968 and the mid-1970s. It was often replaced by RAM chips.
Twistor Memory
1970's
Bubble Memory
Bubble Memory uses a thin film of a magnetic material to hold small magnetized areas, known as bubbles, which each store one bit of data.
Andrew Bobeck invented the Bubble Memory in 1970. His development of the magnetic core memory and the development of the twistor memory put him in a good position for the development of Bubble Memory.
It is conceptually a stationary disk with spinning bits. The unit, only a couple of square inches in size, contains a thin film magnetic recording layer. Globular-shaped bubbles (bits) are electromagnetically generated in circular strings inside this layer. In order to read or write the bubbles, they are rotated past the equivalent of a read/write head.
Bubble Memory
8" Floppy Disk
A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a circular piece of thin, flexible (i.e. "floppy") magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic wallet. Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive.
In 1967 IBM started developing a simple and inexpensive system for loading microcode into their System/370 mainframes. It should be faster and more purpose built than tape drives that could also be used to send out updates to customers for $5. The result of this work was a read-only, 8-inch (20 cm) floppy they called the "memory disk", holding 80 kilobytes in 1971.
8'' Floppy Disk
5 1/4" Floppy Disk
In 1976 Alan Shugart developed a new floppy disk. The main reason for this development was that the normal **8 inch floppy disk** was to large for using it in desktop computers. So the new 5.25 inch floppy disk was born. Its storage capability was 110 kilobytes. These new floppy disk drives were cheaper than the ones for 8 inch floppy disks and replaced them very quickly.
5 1/4 Floppy Disk
1980's
Compact Disc
A compact disc (or CD) is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio.
A standard compact disc, often known as an audio CD to differentiate it from later variants, stores audio data in a format compliant with the red book standard. An audio CD consists of several stereo tracks stored using 16-bit PCM coding at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. Standard compact discs have a diameter of 120mm, though 80mm versions exist in circular and "business-card" forms.
Compact Disk
1990's
Magneto-Optical Disc (MOD)
Magneto-Optical disc is an optical disc format that uses a combination of optical and magnetic technologies. The sizes of discs are usually 3.5'' or 5.25'', and disk capacities are usually one of 128MB/230MB/540MB/640MB/1.3GB/2.6GB. A special Magneto-optical drive is required to read these discs.
Magneto-Optical Disc
MiniDisc
A MiniDisc (MD) is a disc-based data storage device for storing any kind of data, usually audio. The technology was announced by Sony in 1991 and introduced January 12, 1992. Along with Philips' Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) system, MiniDisc was targeted as a replacement for analogue cassette tapes as the recording system for Hi-Fi equipment. What became a very brief format war ended when DCC was phased out in 1996.
Mini Disc
Compact Flash
CompactFlash (CF) is a data storage device that uses the flash memory in a standardized enclosure. On a CF there is the memory as well as the controller (the electronic that writes and read the memory) and so the CF can be read by older devices as well.
Flash memory devices are non-volatile and solid state, and thus are more robust than disk drives, and consume around 5% of the power required by small disk drives. They operate at 3.3 volts or 5 volts, and can be swapped from system to system. CF cards with flash memory are able to cope with extremely rapid changes in temperature. Industrial versions of flash memory cards can operate at a range of -45°C to +85°C. CF devices are used in handheld and laptop computers (which may or may not take larger form-factor cards), digital cameras, and a wide variety of other devices, including desktop computers.
Compact Flash
DVD
DVD is the new generation of optical disc storage technology. DVD is essentially a bigger, faster CD that can hold cinema-like video, better-than-CD audio, still photos, and computer data. DVD aims to encompass home entertainment, computers, and business information with a single digital format. It has replaced laserdisc, is well on the way to replacing videotape and video game cartridges, and could eventually replace audio CD and CD-ROM. DVD has widespread support from all major electronics companies, all major computer hardware companies, and all major movie and music studios. With this unprecedented support, DVD became the most successful consumer electronics product of all time in less than three years of its introduction. In 2003, six years after introduction, there were over 250 million DVD playback devices worldwide, counting DVD players, DVD PCs, and DVD game consoles.
DVD
Multimedia Card (MMC)
The Multimedia Card (MMC) is a flash memory memory card standard. Unveiled in 1997 by Siemens and SanDisk, it is based on Toshiba's NAND-based flash memory, and is therefore much smaller than earlier systems based on Intel NOR-based memory such as Compact Flash. MMC is about the size of a postage stamp: 24mm x 32mm x 1.5mm. MMC originally used a 1-bit serial interface, but newer versions of the specification allow transfers of 4 or sometimes even 8 bits at a time. They have been more or less superseded by SD cards, but still see significant use because MMC cards can be used in any device which supports SD cards.
Typically, an MMC card is used as storage media for a portable device, in a form that can easily be removed for access by a PC.
Multimedia Card
2000's
USB Key
A USB Flash Drive is essentially NAND-type flash memory integrated with a USB interface used as a small, lightweight, removable data storage device. This hot-swappable, non-volatile, solid-state device is universally compatible with post-Windows 98 platforms, Macintosh platforms, and most Unix-like platforms.
USB Flash Drive are also known as "pen drives", "thumb drives", "flash drives", "USB keys", "USB memory keys", "USB sticks", "jump drives", "keydrives","vault drives" and many more names. They are also sometimes miscalled memory sticks (a Sony trademark describing a different type of portable memory).
USB Key
XD Picture Card
The xD-Picture Card is a flash memory memory card format developed and introduced to the market in July 2002 by Olympus and Fujifilm. xD cards are used exclusively in Olympus and Fujifilm digital cameras, and are available in a range of sizes, from 16 MB to 1 GB. They primarily compete with formats such as Secure Digital Card (SD),CompactFlash (CF), and Sony Memory Sticks. xD stands for "extreme digital."
The history of information storage goes back to pre-historic times where mankind used red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide and charcoal to paint information about their life on rock walls, caves and ceilings. As mankind evolves, the way of storing information evolves as well.
We are now living in the 21st century, where everything comes in small size, including data storage. Let us preview some of the data storages, and how they have evolve in functions and sizes.
Hard Disk
A hard disk uses rigid rotating platters. It stores and retrieves digital data from a planar magnetic surface. Information is written to the disk by transmitting an electromagnetic flux through an antenna or write head that is very close to a magnetic material, which in turn changes its polarization due to the flux. The information can be read back in a reverse manner, as the magnetic fields cause electrical change in the coil or read head that passes over it.
The first computer with a hard disk drive as standard was the IBM 350 Disk File, introduced in 1956 with the IBM 305 computer. This drive had fifty 24 inch platters, with a total capacity of five million characters. In 1952, an IBM engineer named Reynold Johnson developed a massive hard disk consisting of fifty platters, each two feet wide, that rotated on a spindle at 1200 rpm with read/write heads for the first database running RCAs Bismark computer. The storage capacity of the 305's 50 two-foot diameter disks was 5 megabytes of data.
Music Tape
The compact audio cassette audio storage medium was introduced by Philips in 1963. The compact cassette had originally been intended for use in dictation machines, but soon became, and remains, a popular medium for distributing prerecorded music. Starting in 1979, Sony's Walkman helped the format become widely used and popular.
The cassette was a great step forward in convenience from reel-to-reel audio tape recording, though because of the limitations of the cassette's size and speed, it compared poorly in quality. Unlike the open reel format, the two stereo tracks lie adjacent to each other rather than a 1/3 and 2/4 arrangement. This permitted monaural cassette players to play stereo recordings "summed" as mono tracks and permitted stereo players to play mono recordings through both speakers. The tape is 1/8 inch (3.175 mm) wide, with each stereo track being 1/32 inch (0.79 mm) wide and moves at 17/8 inches per second (47.625 mm/s). For comparison, the typical open reel format was ¼ inch (6.35 mm) wide, each stereo track being 1/16 inch (1.5875 mm) wide, and running at either 3¾ or 7½ inches per second (95.25 or 190.5 mm/s). Some machines did use 17/8 inches per second (47.625 mm/s) but the quality was poor.
Twistor Memory
Twistor memory is, similar to core memory, formed by wrapping magnetic tape around a current-carrying wire. It was developed at Bell Labs, but it was used for only a brief time in the marketplace between 1968 and the mid-1970s. It was often replaced by RAM chips.
Bubble Memory
Bubble Memory uses a thin film of a magnetic material to hold small magnetized areas, known as bubbles, which each store one bit of data.
Andrew Bobeck invented the Bubble Memory in 1970. His development of the magnetic core memory and the development of the twistor memory put him in a good position for the development of Bubble Memory.
It is conceptually a stationary disk with spinning bits. The unit, only a couple of square inches in size, contains a thin film magnetic recording layer. Globular-shaped bubbles (bits) are electromagnetically generated in circular strings inside this layer. In order to read or write the bubbles, they are rotated past the equivalent of a read/write head.
8" Floppy Disk
A floppy disk is a data storage device that is composed of a circular piece of thin, flexible (i.e. "floppy") magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangular plastic wallet. Floppy disks are read and written by a floppy disk drive.
In 1967 IBM started developing a simple and inexpensive system for loading microcode into their System/370 mainframes. It should be faster and more purpose built than tape drives that could also be used to send out updates to customers for $5. The result of this work was a read-only, 8-inch (20 cm) floppy they called the "memory disk", holding 80 kilobytes in 1971.
5 1/4" Floppy Disk
In 1976 Alan Shugart developed a new floppy disk. The main reason for this development was that the normal **8 inch floppy disk** was to large for using it in desktop computers. So the new 5.25 inch floppy disk was born. Its storage capability was 110 kilobytes. These new floppy disk drives were cheaper than the ones for 8 inch floppy disks and replaced them very quickly.
Compact Disc
A compact disc (or CD) is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio.
A standard compact disc, often known as an audio CD to differentiate it from later variants, stores audio data in a format compliant with the red book standard. An audio CD consists of several stereo tracks stored using 16-bit PCM coding at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. Standard compact discs have a diameter of 120mm, though 80mm versions exist in circular and "business-card" forms.
Magneto-Optical Disc (MOD)
Magneto-Optical disc is an optical disc format that uses a combination of optical and magnetic technologies. The sizes of discs are usually 3.5'' or 5.25'', and disk capacities are usually one of 128MB/230MB/540MB/640MB/1.3GB/2.6GB. A special Magneto-optical drive is required to read these discs.
MiniDisc
A MiniDisc (MD) is a disc-based data storage device for storing any kind of data, usually audio. The technology was announced by Sony in 1991 and introduced January 12, 1992. Along with Philips' Digital Compact Cassette (DCC) system, MiniDisc was targeted as a replacement for analogue cassette tapes as the recording system for Hi-Fi equipment. What became a very brief format war ended when DCC was phased out in 1996.
Compact Flash
CompactFlash (CF) is a data storage device that uses the flash memory in a standardized enclosure. On a CF there is the memory as well as the controller (the electronic that writes and read the memory) and so the CF can be read by older devices as well.
Flash memory devices are non-volatile and solid state, and thus are more robust than disk drives, and consume around 5% of the power required by small disk drives. They operate at 3.3 volts or 5 volts, and can be swapped from system to system. CF cards with flash memory are able to cope with extremely rapid changes in temperature. Industrial versions of flash memory cards can operate at a range of -45°C to +85°C. CF devices are used in handheld and laptop computers (which may or may not take larger form-factor cards), digital cameras, and a wide variety of other devices, including desktop computers.
DVD
DVD is the new generation of optical disc storage technology. DVD is essentially a bigger, faster CD that can hold cinema-like video, better-than-CD audio, still photos, and computer data. DVD aims to encompass home entertainment, computers, and business information with a single digital format. It has replaced laserdisc, is well on the way to replacing videotape and video game cartridges, and could eventually replace audio CD and CD-ROM. DVD has widespread support from all major electronics companies, all major computer hardware companies, and all major movie and music studios. With this unprecedented support, DVD became the most successful consumer electronics product of all time in less than three years of its introduction. In 2003, six years after introduction, there were over 250 million DVD playback devices worldwide, counting DVD players, DVD PCs, and DVD game consoles.Multimedia Card (MMC)
The Multimedia Card (MMC) is a flash memory memory card standard. Unveiled in 1997 by Siemens and SanDisk, it is based on Toshiba's NAND-based flash memory, and is therefore much smaller than earlier systems based on Intel NOR-based memory such as Compact Flash. MMC is about the size of a postage stamp: 24mm x 32mm x 1.5mm. MMC originally used a 1-bit serial interface, but newer versions of the specification allow transfers of 4 or sometimes even 8 bits at a time. They have been more or less superseded by SD cards, but still see significant use because MMC cards can be used in any device which supports SD cards.Typically, an MMC card is used as storage media for a portable device, in a form that can easily be removed for access by a PC.
USB Key
A USB Flash Drive is essentially NAND-type flash memory integrated with a USB interface used as a small, lightweight, removable data storage device. This hot-swappable, non-volatile, solid-state device is universally compatible with post-Windows 98 platforms, Macintosh platforms, and most Unix-like platforms.
USB Flash Drive are also known as "pen drives", "thumb drives", "flash drives", "USB keys", "USB memory keys", "USB sticks", "jump drives", "keydrives","vault drives" and many more names. They are also sometimes miscalled memory sticks (a Sony trademark describing a different type of portable memory).
XD Picture Card
The xD-Picture Card is a flash memory memory card format developed and introduced to the market in July 2002 by Olympus and Fujifilm. xD cards are used exclusively in Olympus and Fujifilm digital cameras, and are available in a range of sizes, from 16 MB to 1 GB. They primarily compete with formats such as Secure Digital Card (SD), CompactFlash (CF), and Sony Memory Sticks. xD stands for "extreme digital."BACK