Evolution of Storage Devices(primary/secondary)

Now, this part is for magnetic storage evolution or any other computer memory that is evolved with times. Facts and figures are so intriguing that noone hardly manages to keep out of it. The fascination is just overwhelming to experience. There was a time when per MB costed around $100. Imagine harddisk of 10 MB for a personal computer of that time. Now, how much would it cost for 40 GB at that time?? (i.e 1024 x 1024 x 40 x 71= NRs 2977955840). By the way GigaBytes of harddisks were a mere dream at that time. Now we are dreaming of Harddisks starting with the capacity in Terabytes. We wow at 750 GB Sata drives at the moment. I think after 5 years, we won't wow anymore for 750 GB of drives. Because, by then, harddrives would be more volatile,portable and with humongous capacity.

Did you know,Seagate introduced the first hard disk for PCs in 1979. It held 5 MB of data. he he.. and that Sony introduced the 3.5 inch floppy in 1981. Now, these days, nobody uses floppy disk and drives. They are almost extinct. Floppy drives are being replaced by DVD-ROM drives or simply USB port for portable pen drives which can be booted off just exactly as old floppy drives.

These days, graphics cards are shipped with GDDR3 memory. It's more efficient in managing consumption of power and faster graphics processing. So, there are more things which we are unknown of or unaware of. The following points would tell us how these wonderful magnetic storage devices and RAMs are evolved and still going ahead. We are in the verge of nano-technology. If this becomes every households necessity, then one day, we'll be carrying 400 terabytes of information on a size of matchbox. We'll be living our lives with the minute processor inside our blood and vein for health monitoring. Lets hope. Future lies ahead. We can dream and it's usage is immense.

1. Prior to newer forms of DRAM, FPM DRAM ( Fast Page Mode DRAM) was the most common kind of dynamic RAM in personal computer.

2. The production of a 32 MB DRAM chip that weighs two grams requires 32 kg of water, 1.6 kg of fossil fuel, 700gm of elemental gases and 72gm of hazardous chemicals.

3. Robert Heath Dennard, of the IBM T J watson research center, was the inventor of RAM.

4. In 1970, the newly formed Intel publicly released the 1103, the first DRAM chip. By 1972 it was the best selling semiconductor memory chip in the world.

5. In 1970, Fairchild Corporation invented the first 256-k Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) chip.

6. Static Random Access Memory(SRAM) is faster and better than Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM).

7. In the 1950s, Jacob Rabinow invented the first magnetic computer memor to use a disk instead of a tape for data storage.

8. Reynold Johnson, who headed the IBM team that was to develop the first RAM, was a B.S. in Education Administration.

9. In late 1955, Reynold Johnson presented the first ever working hard drive to IBM management, termed the RAMAC.

10. Super Audio CD players, created by Sony and Philips Electronics, can accomodate more than four times the information of the current CD format.

11. On April 22nd 2004, scientist at stanford announced the descovery of the upper speed limit at which data can be written to a hardrive. This limit is much higher than what is achieved by current devices.

12. Contrary to what most people believe, a hard disk head does not touch the platter surface. It floats a few micrometres above platter.

13. The first hard drives commercially available were about 5 to 10 MB, and sold for $100 per megabyte. At those prices, a 40GB hard disk would cost $4000000 or Rs 18 crore in today's price.

14. Magnetoresistive (MR0 head technology is used in disk drives to allow higher storage densities than the older inductive-head technology.

15. Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD) is a term for one or more disk drives that form a single volume. However, the information on these disks is not striped in any way or protected,

16. The first hard drive available for the Apple II had a capactiy of 5 B.

17. Seagate introduced the first hard disk for PCs in 1979. It held 5 MB of data.

18. Sony introduced the 3.5 inch floppy in 1981.

19. CD-ROM XA was developed jointly by Sony, Philips and Microsoft, and its specifications were published in an extensive to the Yellow Book.

20. A hard disk is very vulnerable to vibrations; a minor bump can make the head crash into the disk's surface. The damage usually cannot be repaired, causing data loss and hard disk damage.

21. GDDR3 is a new standard for RAM in graphics, aimed at increasing speed and reducing power consumption.

22. NRAM is a new kind of RAM being developed by Nantero Corp. in Massachusetts. It will use nanotubes to store 1S and 0s. It will be faster and denser than DRAM, and will be non-volatile.

23. MRAM- magnetic RAM- will probably be out this decade, and will replace DDR and flash. It promisies faster data access, lower power consumption and greater data storage density.

24. Reqular RAM is electricity-based and that's why it's volatile. In contrast, memory like flash is magnetism-based, which is why no power supply is required to keep data intact.

25. The difference in CD and DVD technology lies mostly in the laser. DVDs pack the data elements closer together on the disk, so a much more precise laser is required to read and write data off DVDs.

26. It is possible to run a P-III processor without a heatsink, becuase Intel bundles along protection devices that clocks down the CPU to get it back to a stable temperature.

27. An AMD 1400 chip running without a heatsink gets as hot as 370 degress Celsius.