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Gramophone record
Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008. Along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. -
Phonograph Cylinder
The first practical sound recording and reproduction device was the mechanical phonograph cylinder, invented by Thomas Edison in 1877 and patented in 1878. -
Delay Line Memory
Use of a delay line for a computer memory was invented by J. Presper Eckert in the mid-1940s for use in computers such as the EDVAC and the UNIVAC I. Eckert and John Mauchly applied for a patent for a delay line memory system on October 31, 1947; the patent was issued in 1953. This patent focused on mercury delay lines, but it also discussed delay lines made of strings of inductors and capacitors, magnetostrictive delay lines, used rotating disks to a read head. -
Hard Disk
A hard disk implements rotating platters, which stores and retrieves bits of digital information from a flat magnetic surface. Disk media diameter was nominally 8 or 14 inches (200 or 360 mm) and were typically mounted in standalone boxes (resembling washing machines) or large equipment rack enclosures. Individual drives often required high-current AC power due to the large motors required to spin the large disks. Hard disk drives were not commonly used with microcomputers until after 1980, when -
8-Track Tape
The Eight Track tape recording system was popular from 1965 to the late 1970s. While today it has become an icon of obsolescence, it was a great commercial success and paved the way for all sorts of innovations in portable listening. The eight track tape consisted of an endless loop of standard 1/4-inch magnetic tape, housed in a plastic cartridge. On the tape were eight parallel soundtracks, corresponding to four stereo programs. For many people old enough to have owned an eight track system. -
8-inch Floppy Disk
The "floppy" was invented by IBM engineers led by Alan Shugart. The first disks were designed for loading microcodes into the controller of the Merlin (IBM 3330) disk pack file (a 100 MB storage device). A floppy is a circle of magnetic material similar to other kinds of recording tape such as. The disk drive grabs the floppy by its center and spins it like a record inside its housing. The first Shugart floppy held 100 KBs of data. -
5.25-inch Floppy Disk
Allan Shugart developed a the 5.25-inch floppy disk in 1976. Shugart developed a smaller floppy disk, because the 8-inch floppy was too large for standard desktop computers. The 5.25-inch floppy disk had a storage capacity of 110 kilobytes. The 5.25-inch floppy disks were a cheaper and faster alternative to its predecessor. -
CD Rom
During the 1960s, James T. Russel thought of using light to record and replay music. As a result, he invented the optical digital television recording and playback television in 1970; however, nobody took to his invention. In 1975, Philips representatives visited Russel at his lab. They paid Russel millions for him to develop the compact disc (CD). In 1980, Russel completed the project and presented it to Sony. -
3.5-inch Floppy Disk
The 3.5-inch floppy disk had significant advantages over its predecessors. It had a rigid metal cover that made it harder to damage the magnetic film inside. -
Flash Memory
Dr. Fujio Masuoka from Toshiba invented the first flash memory in 1984. When Intel introduced it as a commercial product four years later, the flash market grew by several orders of magnitude. In the late 1980s, the Israeli company Msystems (now part of Sandisk) started selling flash storage solutions for the military and aerospace industries (the lack of moving parts made them ideal for ruggedized systems). At the time 1MB of flash cost thousands of dollars. -
DDS
DDS uses tape with a width of 3.8mm, with the exception of the latest formats, DAT 160 and DAT 320, which are 8mm wide. Initially, the tape was 60 meters (197 feet) or 90 meters (295 ft.) long. Advancements in materials technology have allowed the length to be increased significantly in successive versions. A DDS tape drive uses helical scanning for recording, the same process used by a video cassette recorder (VCR). If errors are present, the write heads rewrite the data. -
MOD (PDF)
The Magneto-Optical disc emerged onto the information technology field in 1990. This optical disc format used a combination of optical and magnetic technologies to store and retrieve digital data. A special magneto-optical drive is necessary to retrieve the data stored on these 3.5 to 5.25-inch discs. -
MiniDisk
The MiniDisk stored any kind of digital data; however, it was predominately used for audio. Sony introduced MiniDisk technology in 1991. In 1992, Philip's introduced the Diigtal Compact Cassette System (DCC). MiniDisk was intended to replace the audio cassette tape before it eventually phased out in 1996. -
Compact Flash
CompactFlash (CF), also known as “flash drives,” used flash memory in an enclosed disc to save digital data. CF devices are used in digital cameras and computers to store digital information. In 2008, a variant of CompactFlash, CFast was announced. CFast (also known as CompactFast) is based on the Serial ATA interface rather than the Parallel ATA interface used by the original CompactFlash cards. -
DVD
DVD became the next generation of digital disc storage. DVD, a bigger and faster alternative to the compact disc, serves to store multimedia data. -
SD Card
The Secure Digital (SD) flash memory format incorporates DRM encryption features that allow for faster file transfers. Standard SD cards measure 32 millimeters by 32 millimeters by 2.1 millimeters. A typical SD card stores digital media for a portable device. -
Blu-Ray
Blu-Ray is the next generation of optical disc format used to store high definition video (HD) and high density storage. Blu-Ray received its name for the blue laser that allows it to store more data than a standard DVD. Its competitor is HD-DVD. -
HD-DVD
High-Density Digital Versatile Disc (HD-DVD), a digital optical media format, uses the same disc size as Blu-Ray. It is promoted by Toshiba, NEC, and Sanyo. -
WMB-HD
The Windows Media High Definition Video (WMV-HD) references high definition videos encoded with Microsoft Media Video nine codecs. WMV-D is compatible for computer systems running Windows Vista, Microsoft Windows XP. In addition, WMV-D is compatible with Xbox-360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. -
Holographic (PDF)
The future of computer memory resides in holographic technology. Holographic memory can store digital data at high density inside crystals and photo-polymers. The advantage of holographic memory lies in its ability to store a volume of recording media, instead of just on the surface of discs. In addition, it enables a 3D aspect that allows a phenomenon known as Bragg volume to occur. -
Cloud Backup Solutions
Zetta’s cloud enables businesses to protect data using backup, recover from a disaster, and archive unused files using only a lightweight sofware client and Zetta’s bi-coastal datacenters. As storage hardware and internet bandwidth continue to develop, so will Zetta's performance.
