Tracking the ups and downs of the hard disk drive (HDD) industry's lengthy history isn't easy. HDDs were introduced in 1956 by IBM and have endured while a series of tech industry analyst firms charting the revenue and sales volume of the mechanical storage segment has come and gone. However, Tom Coughlin, President of Coughlin Associates and a storage analyst and consultant, recently shared some illuminating HDD industry performance charts spanning the whole 67 years to the present day. He collaborated with a hard disk business colleague, Tom Gardner, to produce the graphics below.
