Data Formats: Hard Drives & Flash Drives

More permanent internal computer drives also used magnetic data storage, with hard disk drives introduced by IBM in 1956. While floppy disks used magnetic coated plastic disks to store data, hard drives used more rigid metal, glass, or ceramic platters. As hard drives did not need to be portable and were housed within computers, they were able to store significantly more data than floppy disks or other removable media. The first production hard drive made by IBM in 1957 could hold 3.75 megabytes, occupied 68 cubic feet of space, and weighed 2,000 pounds. In comparison, the modern spinning disk hard drive has a standardized size of 3.5" and can store up to 26 terabytes of data. The most modern data storage system, used for both portable and internal purposes, are solid state drives composed of flash memory. These drives lack moving parts, instead relying on rewritable electronic transistors. This type of storage is dense, with a device only centimeters in size capable of storing up to 4TBs of data.