Ever since human beings started to learn more and more about the world around them, they felt the need to store the information they stumbled upon in order to make it easier to remember it and to pass it on. The early drawings of the prehistoric man are the first pieces of evidence of that particular need. As time went by, humanity resorted to more practical ways of storing information – like papyrus. Then paper was invented and from that point it was just a step till the printing press came into our lives due to Johannes Gutenberg.

In the past century, the history of computer data storage would change dramatically. The first noticeable form of data storage that could be retrieved by a man-made machine was the punch card and the punch tape. Of course, the amount of information stored on these paper sheets was very small and they were fairly fragile.

The first proper hard disk drive was delivered with the IBM 305 RAMAC computer in 1956. This rudimentary hard disk drive could only store about 5 MB and its dimensions were astounding in comparison to the little memory it actually held. The first hard drive that could store 2.52 GB was released by IBM as well in 1980, but it weighed about 250 kg and was as big as a refrigerator.



While researchers were trying to make the hard drives smaller floppy disks and magnetic tapes came along, replacing the old-fashioned punch cards and punch tapes and allowing information to circulate more easily, as the dimensions of both these means of storing it were a lot smaller and easier to handle, not to mention more reliable.

Slowly but surely the need for more storage space demanded its toll. It wasn’t long till in 1991 the 100 MB 2.5 inch hard drive came into existence. More technology breakthroughs paved the way for higher capacity hard drives, at lower space cost. Also, optical storage devices were invented, like the Compact Disk (CD) in 1980. From there, computer data storage was one step away from where it came to be today.

In the present day, if one would look at the history of computer data storage, he’d be amazed on how rudimentary the equipment was just a few years back. It was merely in 2002 when the limit of 137 GB of storage memory was reached. And in 2007 the first 1 terabyte hard drive was released - Hitachi GST.



Today, you can literally hold entire libraries in the palm of your hand. They can be stacked on a Blu-ray Disk, on an external hard-drive that can reach up to 3 terabytes or flash memory stick. With this much information lying around at every corner, who’d even bother with something so primitive like a punch card? But then again, with so much information around, so easily obtainable and easily transmittable, aren’t we getting a bit ahead of ourselves?