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I know of some 17,000 rpm drives used in old servers. I think there where 50 pin SCSI. Very loud and hot.
 
I have personally seen up to 15k in consumer level drives but like others have said for niche markets I am sure there is stuff quicker
 
I know of some 17,000 rpm drives used in old servers. I think there where 50 pin SCSI. Very loud and hot.

I remember in the mid 90's I had a 2GB Quantum Atlas hard drive that was 7,200RPM's and it sounded like it was going to fly apart with how fast it was spinning (now that RPM is the norm). Though in my 7100/66AV with an FWB Jackhammer controller card and 72MB RAM it was smoking fast:cool: with virtually unlimited storage:p.
 
I remember in the mid 90's I had a 2GB Quantum Atlas hard drive that was 7,200RPM's and it sounded like it was going to fly apart with how fast it was spinning (now that RPM is the norm). Though in my 7100/66AV with an FWB Jackhammer controller card and 72MB RAM it was smoking fast:cool: with virtually unlimited storage:p.

Lol 7200 was probably a bit fast for the technology at the time :p Regular HDs were probably 2000 RPM...
 
5 1/2" I think. Hard to see past the metal mesh in the dim server room light.

5 1/4" full height no doubt. Like this one:

5.25_inch_MFM_hard_disk_drive.JPG


Here's another pic of an 8-inch HDD, in the background. The 5 1/4" is the second biggest one. Then 3.5", 2/5", 1.8" and 1". Click on it to see the Gozilla-like 8" in its full glory :eek:

SixHardDriveFormFactors.jpg
 
don't know how fast but when I worked for a bank they had loads of vertical hard drives that were about 2 feet in diameter driven by a 5 hp 3 phase motor

the data cable was approx. 2 inches in diameter later replaced with a 1/4 dia fibre optical cable

1.5 tb took up half the computer floor the other side was filled with liquid cooled mainframes ( 4.5 deg c)


now 1.5 tb fits in your pocket

FYI the total power load fro the floor was 1.2 megawatts with a further 1 megawatt for the A/C
 
Possibly drum memory - the data was stored on a rotating drum, not a flat disk. Each one was about the size of a washing machine, and had a similar drum inside.

Was this the 1970s? Drum drives didn't last long into the 80s. If it was an array of drum drives, then most probably 1.5GB per floor, not 1.5TB.

Was your drum drive like any of the images here?

http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=drum+memory

Or was it drives carrying twin pairs of 10.5 inch open reel tape like in this image?

Ibm704.gif


1.5TB on a floor is more likely with these.
 
Geez. This thread is bringing back some really old memories of huge 8" and 5/25" hard drives that weighed like 10lbs...

I remember running to Radio Shack to buy ribbon cables and connectors to put together SCSI cable for my first Connor HD for my dial-up BBS.
 
I remember in the mid 90's I had a 2GB Quantum Atlas hard drive that was 7,200RPM's and it sounded like it was going to fly apart with how fast it was spinning (now that RPM is the norm). Though in my 7100/66AV with an FWB Jackhammer controller card and 72MB RAM it was smoking fast:cool: with virtually unlimited storage:p.

Those Atlas drives was super fast back then!
I had a Quantum Atlas 10k RPM 36.7GB in my Umax s900 on a U2Wide SCSI controller. It was blazing fast, almost fast in todays standards. If I'm not mistaken it had peak reads close to 80 mb/s, in the late 90s!

Those drives was twice as high as the normal 3.5" tho
 
Possibly drum memory - the data was stored on a rotating drum, not a flat disk. Each one was about the size of a washing machine, and had a similar drum inside.

Was this the 1970s? Drum drives didn't last long into the 80s. If it was an array of drum drives, then most probably 1.5GB per floor, not 1.5TB.

Was your drum drive like any of the images here?

http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=drum+memory

Or was it drives carrying twin pairs of 10.5 inch open reel tape like in this image?

Ibm704.gif





1.5TB on a floor is more likely with these.

No they were multi plater disc in a clear housing, they were the fixed head storage we had demountable hard disc platters ( horizontal drives ) that the operators put a plastic cover on and unscrewed the disc stack, the core on the oldest main frame was the ferrite ring type .
Yes I joined the Bank in 1972 and left 27 years later , we used to do all of the UK and some of Europe
TSO was big then and IPL was the language used , as well as Cobal ect.

Demountable storage http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgu...C5BQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=64&ved=1t:429,r:24,s:0

Fixed Head http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgu...C5BQ&esq=6&page=1&ndsp=64&ved=1t:429,r:25,s:0

Disk Pack http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgu...211&tbs=isch:1&itbs=1&ei=ghv1TMi-GNHpOYC7iaYI
 
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The highest I've seen that we use in our work servers are some 2.5" (12mm height) Seagate Savvio SAS drives at 15,000rpm, 146GB.

For the 3.5", some 600GB Seagate Barracuda Fibre Channels also at 15,000rpm that we use on SANs.

Certainly do not want something like that at home or in your laptop :D
 
Demountable Winchester drives... real history there :) I remember people talking about them. My uncle worked on some of that technology.

Ferrite core memory, was that 1 bit per core? I find core memory fascinating for some reason - I'd quite like to grab an old core card one day. It had to be wound by hand in the early days right? Cost about $1 per bit (in the old dollars).

I saw somewhere that the computer that controlled the Moon landings had core memory - it was more reliable than the new-fangled RAM just coming out then.

At first American engineers wound them, then it was done by US garment workers, then by Shanghai and Japanese women. Some things never change.

Sorry, random fact dump.
 
you are correct on the core, yes it was hand wound

make me feel old just thinking about it ,

it was 1.5 tb storage I remember it well went it took about ten Bullens wagons to move it up from London one weekend they had to use more than was required because of the insurance limit on each wagon 1 million quid,


each drive bank required a 60 amp 415volt 3 phase supply and the main frames ran at 400hz and 208 volts 3 phase

cutting edge at the time now just memories :D
 
What were the harddrives inside the Macintosh Classics (some of the first Macs that had hard drives instead of floppies) like? Anyone know :p

On stason.org I found a couple references for 1980's 3.5" and 5.25" hard drives running at 3600RPM.

Unfortunately looking through my old inCider A+ magazines from 1990 they did not bother listing RPM yet.
 
On stason.org I found a couple references for 1980's 3.5" and 5.25" hard drives running at 3600RPM.

If we're talking about slow computer rotating media, from Wiki:

The FASTRANDs were very heavy (5,000 pounds) and large, approximately 6' long. They required special rigging and mounts to install. At the time of their introduction the storage capacity exceeded any other random access mass storage disk or drum.

There were three models of FASTRAND drives:

* FASTRAND I had a two drums rotating at 15 times per second (880 RPM). The large mass of the rotating drum caused gyroscopic activity in the unit, making it spin once per day on the computer room floor, as the Earth rotated under it.
* FASTRAND II (the majority of units produced) had two counter-rotating drums to eliminate the gyroscopic instability. One actuator bar with heads was located between the drums.
* FASTRAND III increased the recording density by 50%.

880rpm eh? At 15 revs per sec, you could probably count the revs with the naked eye if you were quick.

I'm not sure if I believe that guff about the drum spinning once per day due to the Earth's motion. Anyone think it's true?
 
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