Diskcon USA 2006

Hard disk drives of all sizes were on display at the Diskcon USA conference in Santa Clara. On the very small side is Toshibas new 0.85-inch drive, with a footprint of only 5x24x32mm. With a spindle speed of 3,600 rpm, the tiny mechanism has a capac

This Samsung hard disk controller board sports 256MB of flash memory. It will turn an ordinary hard disk mechanism into a hybrid drive that can be accessed by Windows Vista. However, many drive makers here were cool on the concept in pa

Want to make sure that your data is really unreadable? Check out the HDC (Hard Disk Crusher) by eDR Solutions of Greenville, S.C. You place a drive in the cabinet, press a button and a steel rod pushes its way through the mechanism. Its fast and utt

Here is what hard drives look like after being sent through eDR Solutions Hard Disk Crusher machine. Ouch! According to the company, the unit wont jam like shredding machines. In addition, the metal and electrical parts of the drive can still be re

With Apple moving to flash memory for the iPod nano and other vendors following suit, theres discussion that drive makers may discontinue the form factor. Representatives from Seagate and Toshiba in a conference panel said while 1-inch drives arent

And many more! This year the IDEMA (International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association) celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first hard drive, the IBM RAMAC. The Diskcon conference opened with a cake commemorating the industry. The Magnet

Part of the annual IDEMA event is a display of current and older storage devices. This is a floppy drive—no kidding (and please dont say, Whats a floppy?). It is the IBM 33FD from 1973, called Igar. The 8-inch diskettes he

Another part of the hard disk history tour shows the evolution of disk size. Its all downhill in size, but not in capacity. In the foreground is a 39-inch platter used in the Bryant Computer 4240 machine from 1961. The drive that held this platter w