What did a (mainframe) hard drive look like in 1991?

 

When the IBM 3390 Direct Access Storage Device (DASD) was rolled out in November 1989, it offered up to 22.7 Gigabytes of storage and allowed customers to store more data in a single DASD than ever before.

Boosts in key DASD performance areas -- such as a 40 percent improvement in data transfer rate and 15 percent in average latency -- provided users with a highly reliable, cost effective means of rapidly accessing vast amounts of data.

The 3390 represented three times the storage capacity per square foot of floor space over the IBM 3380K; five times over the 3380 Model E; and ten times over 3380 standard models. The new DASDs also delivered an 18 percent reduction in the cost of a megabyte of disk storage.

The 23Gb IBM 3390 DASD which the above HDA (Head/Disk Assembly) was installed in - listed at $250,000! By way of modern comparison, nowadays you can buy a 1000Gb (1Tb) Western Digital HDD Gold (Enterprise Class) Hard drive for ~£70! Isn't it incredible how things have changed...

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