An Old 5MB Hard Drive Filled Up an Entire Room

Hard drives of the past held far less data, but came in much bigger packages.

5MB Hard Drive Once Filled Up a Room — Quick Take

BizTech Staff [1]

If you think your desktop computer takes up too much space, consider yourself lucky that you weren’t in the computer business back in 1956. A 5-megabyte hard drive required a forklift just to move it around back then, as seen in this photo from The Next Web [2] of an IBM 305 RAMAC.

Dubbed a ‘supercomputer’ back in the day, the 5MB hard drive weighed more than a ton. Compare that with a 1.5-terabyte external drive that weighs less than 3 pounds today. We’ve come a long way, baby.

old 5mb hard drive from 1956

For more fun with retro technology, read our article “10 Old-School Technologies Fondly Remembered.” [3]

Links:
[1] http://www.biztechmagazine.com/author/biztech-staff
[2] http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/12/26/this-is-what-a-5mb-hard-drive-looked-like-is-1956-required-a-forklift/
[3] http://www.biztechmagazine.com/article/2011/12/10-old-school-technologies-fondly-remembered

An Old 5MB Hard Drive Filled Up an Entire Room — Quick Take