When was the hard drive first developed?
History of hard disk drives
In 1953, IBM recognized the immediate application for what it termed a "Random Access File" having high capacity and rapid random access at a relatively low cost.[1] After considering technologies such as wire matrices, rod arrays, drums, drum arrays, etc.,[1] the engineers at IBM's San Jose California laboratory invented the hard disk drive.[2] The disk drive created a new level in the computer data hierarchy, then termed Random Access Storage but today known as secondary storage, less expensive and slower than main memory (then typically drums) but faster and more expensive than tape drives.[3]
Tape drive
Magnetic tape drives with capacities less than one megabyte were first used for data storage on mainframe computers in the 1950s. technology had advanced enough to enable capacities of 10 terabytes or higher of uncompressed data per cartridge. 