305 RAMAC (1956): This obviously was not in a personal computer, but most say IBM's 305 RAMAC was the world's first hard drive

Shugart ST506 (1980): The first hard drive developed for micro computers and stored a whopping 5MB of data. It spun at 3,600 RPM and had a seek time of 85ms on its 2 platter design. Unlike modern hard drives that contained the controller card, the controllers in the ST506 were separate. Integration not happen for another five years. Shugart, named for its Al Shugart, would eventually become Seagate.

Shugart ST412 (1981): The 10MB ST412 was the standard drive in the IBM PC XT that was introduced in 1983. The ST412 was a 10MB enhancement of the original ST506. The ST412 had a rated transfer rate of 5mb/s and an MTBF rating of 11,000 hours.

(1983) Rodime is credited with creating the first 3.5 inch hard drive.

Quantum Hardcard (1985): The newly created SCSI interface was immediately put into service by many computer makers with the most prominent being Apple.

(1986): Conner introduces a 3.5-inch drive that is but 1-inch tall. The form factor would persist into modern computers.

(1986): The newly created SCSI interface was immediately put into service by many computer makers with the most prominent being Apple.

Western Digital WD1000JB (2001): Western Digital ignited the buffer wars by offering its "Jumbo Buffer" versions with 8MB of cache in its 100GB WD1000JB. Typical consumer drives of the period offered 2MB of cache.

SATA (2002): In 2002, SATA would offer the biggest change to consumer PC drive interfaces in a long time. Pushing aside the ATA100 (and ATA133), SATA (initially at 150MB/s) would successfully become the standard interface for PCs.

Western Digital 36GB Raptor (2003): Western Digital would offer enthusiasts the first bone by introducing a 10,000 RPM drive targeted at consumers. The 36GB Raptor using the SATA interface would continue to be popular until being eclipsed by affordable SSD drives.

Seagate 750 (2006): Seagate would take the capacity war up another notch by being the first to introduce a 750GB hard drive.

Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 (2007): People like round numbers and breaking the 1,000GB barrier would set the industry on a capacity battle unlike any other.

Barracuda 7200.11 (2008): Seagate ships the first 1.5TB hard drive.

Western Digital 2TB Caviar Green (2009): WD ships first 2TB hard drive.

Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green (2010): The capacity war would break the 2TB barrier by leaps and bounds but only the newest computers with UEFI and 64-bit OSes could boot to them.

It wasn't nearly the first 2.5 inch SATA drive on the market, nor the fastest in write speeds. But it was the sweet-spot enthusiast SSD for quite a while. With 22MB/s read speeds but just 65MB/s sustained writes, it displayed none of the flakiness that plagued early SSDs.

Drives with Indilinx Barefoot controllers appeared in mid-2009, bringing write speeds north of 175MB/s, TRIM support, and solid performance. Barefoot drives like the Patriot Torqx held our hearts until the SandForce SF-1200 controller showed up.

In 2010, SandForce burst out of stealth mode to deliver the SF-1200 controller, which could be used with any NAND flash, carried its own onboard cache (no DRAM!) and brought 200MB/s+read and write speeds married with blazing-fast 4KB random write speeds. Though Barefoot drives remain a solid buy, SandForce's first-gen controller powered nearly every great drive of 2010.