Hard drives have gotten smaller... and larger... and cheaper

[Platapus]

The physical size of hard drives have gotten a lot smaller and the capacity has gotten a lot larger since this one.



IBM model 350 Disk Unit. Weighed about a ton and consisted of fifty 24 inch diameter disks. This gave it a total storage capacity of 3.75 mb.

Well, they think it could hold 3.75MB. The problem is that the Megabyte, as we know it with 8 bits per byte had not been developed until 1964. So this hard drive used 6 bit bytes. At least they could advertise it as 5 million byte capacity!

You could not buy one, but IBM would lease it to you for $3,200 per month... and that was back in 1956! In 1956, $3200 would buy you a very nice Ford and was almost the average wage then.

As Petapixel points out. I would need 21 of these units to store one image from my D800. That only comes out to $67,200 per month to lease the storage for one image.

http://petapixel.com/2014/10/29/take...d800-raw-file/

"The 350 Disk Storage Unit consisted of the magnetic disk memory unit with its access mechanism, the electronic and pneumatic controls for the access mechanism, and a small air compressor. Assembled with covers, the 350 was 60 inches long, 68 inches high and 29 inches deep. It was configured with 50 magnetic disks containing 50,000 sectors, each of which held 100 alphanumeric characters, for a capacity of 5 million characters. "


The last model 350 was withdrawn from service on August 18, 1969

http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ex...orage_350.html

Looking at my 8gb thumb drive that is already pretty old and small..... Things have improved.