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The Story Of GMR Heads

Posted by Hemos on from the expanding-the-horizons-expanding-the-parameters dept.

lopati writes "The story of GMR heads, "the breakthrough that boosted the capacity of hard-drives from a few gigabytes to 100 gigabytes and more--came from chance observation, basic research and a vast, painstaking search for the right materials." Check out the helpful infographic." Background: This is a story, essentially, about how hard drives broke through some of the space limitations at the beginning of the 1990s - pretty cool background.

5 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. Re:MY DAD?? by core10k · · Score: 0, Informative

    Hah. My first computer didn't have a floppy drive. Cassette player all the way, baybee.

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    Go Kathryn Thurber!
  3. Re:So what happened to SCSI? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    You must have missed that Seagate has been selling a 180GB drive for nearly a year now, and will supposedly be releasing a 500GB drive sometime next year.

    They just aren't really priced with home users in mind. Pricewatch has 'em though, if you got the spare cash.

  4. Re:...and then IBM went bad by zonker · · Score: 1, Informative

    Anyone know what the status of the suit against ibm over the 75gxp's is? I have one of these puppies and am afraid to touch it now. Magnetic media is scary enough (from a reliability standpoint) but to have to worry about it just going kaput is another matter entirely...

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    Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away

  5. Re:So what happened to SCSI? by Milican · · Score: 3, Informative

    Well SCSI is inherently more expensive because some complex controller logic is also built into the drive. This allows SCSI to be smart and utilize less CPU cycles for all tasks. I notice a big difference when transferring large (>200MB) files from one SCSI drive to another vs one IDE to another. The difference is my computer is still really responsive, almost like there is no file transfer at all. Now, I know you guys are screaming DMA you dumb@ss. Well DMA is fine, but on big file transfers IDE drives still slow down your computer. IDE drives are cheap because they rely on the CPU to do their extra tasks. Yes, DMA on IDE is awesome, but SCSI is still better. I just wish these jerky manufacturers would go to economics class and learn about supply and demand. Although I am a big fan of SCSI, I cannot justify the extremely high pricing for SCSI drives :(

    JOhn

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    Campaign for Liberty