I think my first was 20MB (might have been 40). It was a WD external one attached to a Mac Plus.
I remember for sure having a Kyocera 20MB MFM but I might have had a 20MB Seagate before that (yup, now the memory is coming back - I had ST-225s and 231s). I got the Kyocera because it was one of the first to lift its heads off the platters on power down so I wouldn't have to remember to park the heads any more. The next was a 30MB Kyocera RLL drive which also had the head lifters. IIRC, the Kyoceras were among the earliest 3.5" half-height drives (same thickness as standard optical drives). I've also had my hands on some of the original 5 and 10MB full-height drives but I never actually owned one - except for a dead one that I used as a desk ornament/paper weight.
For those with an interest in old drives, here is a site to check out: http://redhill.net.au/d/d-a.html
.bh.
For those with an interest in old drives, here is a site to check out: http://redhill.net.au/d/d-a.html
.bh.
Probably a 20MB one in my 286 rig. Boy was that a long time ago (read: Wing Commander 1 era guys). The IBM XT rig before that only had two 5.25" floppy drives.
I tend to remember my 386 rig better... that probably had an 80MB and a 40MB (I thought it was mondo storage back then, especially when combined with Microsoft DoubleSpace :laugh: ).
After that was a Seagate 525MB on my 486 rig (still with me) before I entered the gigabyte era with my Pentium 1.
I tend to remember my 386 rig better... that probably had an 80MB and a 40MB (I thought it was mondo storage back then, especially when combined with Microsoft DoubleSpace :laugh: ).
After that was a Seagate 525MB on my 486 rig (still with me) before I entered the gigabyte era with my Pentium 1.
I had a 386SX-16 with a 100MB hard drive in (around 1989-90 I think it was). Before that I had a Tandy 1000 in (around 1987) and Commodore 64 (around 1983) that never had hard drives. I was lucky just to have a floppy drive when everybody else had tape drives for their C64s.
I got a Dell XPS Pentium 90 in 1994 that had a 500MB hard drive. I think it was about a $100-$200 option to upgrade to a 1GB hard drive. I know they were available. I decided I really didn't need it, though, and upgraded the video card to a Number Nine GXE64 Pro instead. I'm not sure why it was called the GXE64 Pro, since it only had 4MB of VRAM, but it was a pretty huge PCI card and said "TICKET TO RIDE" on the back. I think that P90 only had 8MB RAM and I upgraded to 16MB for Win95 beta. Those P90s and P100s that came out in 1994 were good machines for a long time. 486-100s and cheap P75 were still selling a couple years later. It's not like you needed to upgrade your graphics when Everything from Wolfenstein to Doom 2 was rendered in software.
I remember the important part of that 386SX-16 wasn't the hard drive. It was the 512K Paradise SVGA card and the 2400baud modem for the BBSes. 640x480 with 256 colors was pretty high end. There was much downloading of things that said "McHenry BBS" and "Amateur Action."
I got a Dell XPS Pentium 90 in 1994 that had a 500MB hard drive. I think it was about a $100-$200 option to upgrade to a 1GB hard drive. I know they were available. I decided I really didn't need it, though, and upgraded the video card to a Number Nine GXE64 Pro instead. I'm not sure why it was called the GXE64 Pro, since it only had 4MB of VRAM, but it was a pretty huge PCI card and said "TICKET TO RIDE" on the back. I think that P90 only had 8MB RAM and I upgraded to 16MB for Win95 beta. Those P90s and P100s that came out in 1994 were good machines for a long time. 486-100s and cheap P75 were still selling a couple years later. It's not like you needed to upgrade your graphics when Everything from Wolfenstein to Doom 2 was rendered in software.
I remember the important part of that 386SX-16 wasn't the hard drive. It was the 512K Paradise SVGA card and the 2400baud modem for the BBSes. 640x480 with 256 colors was pretty high end. There was much downloading of things that said "McHenry BBS" and "Amateur Action."
first I bought 1gb
first extra a family member bought 340mb
first computer the family bought 10mb
first extra a family member bought 340mb
first computer the family bought 10mb
Mine was a 10MB double height 5.25" IBM MFM disk. Average seek was 92ms or so 
I remembered that since I had a really cool drive benchmarking software which painted a nice graph in text mode to show the seek latency. Went from 15ms on inner tracks to some 150ms or so on the outer ones Had a 286 (8 MHz) back then which wouldn't run in turbo (16MHz) for more than about 3 minutes since the RAM was too slow.
I remembered that since I had a really cool drive benchmarking software which painted a nice graph in text mode to show the seek latency. Went from 15ms on inner tracks to some 150ms or so on the outer ones Had a 286 (8 MHz) back then which wouldn't run in turbo (16MHz) for more than about 3 minutes since the RAM was too slow.About 120 mb in 1991. DOS compressed to ~240 mb. Still have it somewhere. No reason it would not still work.
I had a 5.25" full-height MFM drive from an early 80's IBM that I took apart. It was something ridiculous like 10MB on 2 platters. Had its own power supply. There's something really cool about those reddish orange platters.
My first was also a 20MB, and it wasn't even my first PC. The first machine I had used only 5 1/4 Floppy Disks, in order to use the machine you needed to pop in the DOS Boot Disk to start it up.
Our second family computer (if you could call it that) was a Tandy 1000 HX (circa mid 1980s) with NO HARDDRIVE!! :-O My first personal computer was a custom built Pentium 75MHz with a 800MB hard drive in 1995.
1gb, CTX 133mhz computer. That's not counting my old Tandy computers with 16k memory. The big 5" floppy and tape drives.
theknight571
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- Mar 23, 2001
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1st HDD was 20MB in a PS/2 386SX 16MHz.
The first computer I owned didn't even have a HDD (Apple II).
The first computer I owned didn't even have a HDD (Apple II).
It was either a 10 or 20mb unit on my Amiga 500, can't remember exactly. The difference was like night and day, couldn't believe how fast and convenient a hard drive was as I spent years prior with floppies only. You kids who've had hard drives from the beginning have no idea how painful loading stuff was back then.
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