60 years of storage innovation

Kicking off the storage revolution almost 60 years ago, IBM introduced the first computer disk storage system in 1956. This system was capable of storing up to five megabytes of data. The evolution of the storage industry means that today, we can store masses and masses of information on miniature devices, and terabytes of data on enterprise storage systems. The following slideshow documents the top 10 storage milestones since the creation of the first computer disk storage system in 1956 - and provides insight to how far storage has come since then. 

1956 - IBM 350 Disk Storage - introduction of the first computer disk storage system. IBM introduced the world’s first computer disk storage system in 1956.  The IBM 350 Disk Storage was a major component of the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Memory Accounting) system. It was used with the IBM 305 RAMAC to provide storage capacities of five, 10, 15 or 20 million characters. In less than a second, the IBM 350 RAMAC’s "random access" arm retrieved data stored on any of 50 spinning disks which contained 50,000 sectors and each of which held 100 alphanumeric characters. Its five megabytes could store a medium-resolution image of DaVinci’s Mona Lisa painting. Disk technology later became the industry's basic storage medium for online transaction processing.

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