A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk, is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnetic material. The platters are paired with magnetic heads, usually arranged on a moving actuator arm, which read and write data to the platter surfaces. Data is accessed in a random-access manner, meaning that individual blocks of data can be stored and retrieved in any order. HDDs are a type of non-volatile storage, retaining stored data when powered off. Modern HDDs are typically in the form of a small rectangular box.
The ST-506 and ST-412 were early hard disk drive products introduced by Seagate in 1980 and 1981 respectively, that later became construed as hard disk drive interfaces: the ST-506 disk interface and the ST-412 disk interface. Compared to the ST-506 precursor, the ST-412 implemented a refinement to the seek speed, and increased the drive capacity from 5 MB to 10 MB, but was otherwise highly similar.
Western Digital Corporation is an American computer drive manufacturer and data storage company, headquartered in San Jose, California. It designs, manufactures and sells data technology products, including data storage devices, data center systems and cloud storage services.
The Zip drive is a removable floppy disk storage system that was introduced by Iomega in late 1994. Considered medium-to-high-capacity at the time of its release, Zip disks were originally launched with capacities of 100 MB, then 250 MB, and finally 750 MB.
Seagate Technology Holdings plc is an American data storage company. It was incorporated in 1978 as Shugart Technology and commenced business in 1979. Since 2010, the company has been incorporated in Dublin, Ireland, with operational headquarters in Fremont, California, United States.
A magneto-optical drive is a kind of optical disc drive capable of writing and rewriting data upon a magneto-optical disc. 130 mm (5.25 in) and 90 mm (3.5 in) discs were the most common sizes. In 1983, just a year after the introduction of the compact disc, Kees Schouhamer Immink and Joseph Braat presented the first experiments with erasable magneto-optical compact discs during the 73rd AES Convention in Eindhoven. The technology was introduced commercially in 1985. Although optical, they normally appear as hard disk drives to an operating system and can be formatted with any file system. Magneto-optical drives were common in some countries, such as Japan, but have fallen into disuse.
SyQuest Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: SYQT) was an early entrant into the hard disk drive market for personal computers. The company was founded on January 27, 1982 by Syed Iftikar who had been a founder of Seagate, along with Ben Alaimo, Bill Krajewski, Anil Nigam and George Toldi. Its earliest products were the SQ306R, a 5 MB 3.9" (100 mm) cartridge disk drive and associated Q-Pak cartridge for IBM XT compatibles. Subsequently a non-removable medium version was announced, the SQ306F.
MiniScribe Corporation was a manufacturer of disk storage products, founded in Longmont, Colorado in 1980. MiniScribe designed and sold stepper motor-based hard disk drives with a large amount of onboard logic for the time. They eventually moved into higher-profile voice coil motor designs, and won major contracts with IBM. Massive financial fraud starting in 1987 led to bankruptcy in 1990, when their assets were bought by Maxtor and renamed Maxtor Colorado Corporation.
The ProFile is the first hard disk drive produced by Apple Computer, initially for use with the Apple III personal computer. The original model had a formatted capacity of 5 MB and connected to a special interface card that plugged into an Apple III slot. In 1983, Apple offered a ProFile interface card for the Apple II, with software support for Apple ProDOS and Apple Pascal.
The Microdrive is a type of miniature, 1-inch hard disks produced by IBM and Hitachi. These rotational media storage devices were designed to fit in CompactFlash (CF) Type II slots.
LaCie is an American-French computer hardware company specializing in external hard drives, RAID arrays, optical drives, Flash Drives, and computer monitors. The company markets several lines of hard drives with a capacity of up to many terabytes of data, with a choice of interfaces. LaCie also has a series of mobile bus-powered hard drives.
Conner Peripherals, Inc., was a company that manufactured hard drives for personal computers. Conner Peripherals was founded in 1985 by Seagate Technology co-founder and San Jose State University alumnus Finis Conner. In 1986, they merged with CoData, a Colorado start-up founded by MiniScribe founders Terry Johnson and John Squires. CoData was developing a new type of small hard disk that put the capacity of a 5.25-inch drive into the smaller 3.5-inch format. The CoData drive was the first Conner Peripherals product. The company was partially financed by Compaq, who was also a major customer for many years.
In 1953, IBM recognized the immediate application for what it termed a "Random Access File" having high capacity and rapid random access at a relatively low cost. After considering technologies such as wire matrices, rod arrays, drums, drum arrays, etc., the engineers at IBM's San Jose California laboratory invented the hard disk drive. The disk drive created a new level in the computer data hierarchy, then termed Random Access Storage but today known as secondary storage, less expensive and slower than main memory but faster and more expensive than tape drives.
The Apple Hard Disk 20SC is Apple's first SCSI based hard drive for the Apple II family as well as the Macintosh and other third party computers using an industry standard SCSI interface.
Rodime was an electronics company specialising in hard disks, based in Glenrothes, Scotland. It was founded in 1979 by several Scottish and American former employees of Burroughs Corporation and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1986, becoming Rodime PLC.
The Seagate Barracuda is a series of hard disk drives and later solid state drives produced by Seagate Technology that was first introduced in 1993.
Terry Johnson was an engineer and entrepreneur notable for his pioneering work on hard disk drives (HDD). Johnson's early career included engineering and management roles in magnetic recording at IBM (1964–70) and Memorex (1971–73). He then joined in the development of STC 8000 Super Disk, a high-end, rotary actuator HDD funded by StorageTek.
Finis Conner is an American entrepreneur and pioneer of the disk drive industry, founding industry leaders Shugart Associates, Seagate Technology and Conner Peripherals. Conner Peripherals, a major HDD manufacturer, was founded in 1987, and by 1990 had become the fastest-growing start-up in the history of U.S. commerce up until that point. Conner Peripherals was acquired by Seagate in 1996.
Areal Technology, Inc., was an American hard disk drive manufacturer active from 1987 to 1999. The company was the first to produce hard drives employing glass as the substrate for their platters, allowing for significantly higher data densities and greater shock resistance. Other hard drives manufacturers across the board soon followed suit with this approach. In 1993, Areal was sold to Tomen Electronics and Sanyo, who operated the company as a joint venture. Areal continued as a subsidiary until 1999.
MiniStor Peripherals, Inc., was a public American computer hardware company based in San Jose, California, and active from 1991 to 1995. The company was the first to manufacture and market PC Card spinning hard drives, based on the 1.8-inch hard drive specification invented earlier by Intégral. The company briefly rode a wave of success in this market before dissolving amid bankruptcy proceedings in April 1995.
