History (1981): 14-Inch IBM 3380

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1981: IBM 3380
Early adopter of thin-film heads (2nd) & Last 14″ disk (oxide).
Most successful HDD product family

Why it’s important
As a family it was in production for 15+ years (industry is typically less than 2 years).

To a certain extent it was a dinosaur pushing technology to and perhaps beyond limits.

The initial production shipment was delayed from 1Q81 to October 16 1981 and during its life it had at least two major recalls, for contamination (1987) and bearing failure (1989).

It uses film head technology and has a unit capacity of 2.52GB (two hard disk assemblies each with two independent actuators each accessing 630MB within one chassis) with a data transfer rate of 3MB/s. Average access time was 16ms. Purchase price at time of introduction ranged from $81,000 to $142,200.

Nonetheless, the 3380 family was the most profitable product family in the history of IBM and is thought to be the one of the most successful product family in the history of commerce.

The last models were withdrawn by IBM in May 1996 representing a production run of 15 years; a run longer than most HDs.