1988: Schlumberger Cambridge Research takes possession of a new 1MB drive to be added to its VAXcluster. The drive is the size of ... a small refridgerator. It was quite a day!
In PC Magazine from July 1988 there is an advert for a 15MHz XT for $575 with an optional 30MB Segate ST238 5.25" scsi hard drive inside for an extra $295 [0]
The price hasn't dropped much since, it's now $206 for the drive [1]
OK, so I think memory was wrong on this. I found this online:
> In the 1980's we used 14 inch drives in our DEC VAX cluster. Each 14 inch drive had a capacity of about 450MB
Those platters were definitely the 14" size, and there was more than one of them in the refridgerator-sized unit. At this temporal distance, I can't guess what the overall size was anymore, but it was clearly not 1MB.
Sorry for the misleading post. Still, it was quite a day, regardless.
In Winter 1987 I had an Amstrad PC1640HDMD with a 20MB MFM hard disk. I opened the case many times, the disk was just a 5.25 inch device, certainly not like 20 small refrigerators, or even one.
Bonus: I got an RLL controller and turned it into a 30MB hard disk! Couldn't believe it. But getting the interleaving right was time consuming..
In PC Magazine from July 1988 there is an advert for a 15MHz XT for $575 with an optional 30MB Segate ST238 5.25" scsi hard drive inside for an extra $295 [0]
The price hasn't dropped much since, it's now $206 for the drive [1]
[0] https://archive.org/details/PC-Mag-1988-07-01/page/22/mode/2...
[1] https://www.amazon.com/ST238R-Seagate-3600RPM-Internal-Drive...